No less an authority than Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has spoken the truth of the Great Unfixed Election of 2008 – Stephen Harper’s got it.

Candid and relaxed in the last of his many leaders’ debates, Duceppe pointed to his fellow challengers and told them they, like he, will not be Prime Minister.

“Some of you know it but don’t say it,” he added, hinting that one or more still believe they’re going to win one day.

It won’t be Jack Layton or Elizabeth May. The NDP and Greens are at this moment proposing we scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yeah, that’ll help stabilize the currency and banking system.

Layton wants to scrap the softwood lumber agreement too. Does he really think that will get the mills going again?

Do B.C.’s union mill workers really believe poking that old hornets’ nest, as U.S. producers shut down their own mills, will get them back to work up here? These are the kinds of dangerous errors that render both left-wing parties unfit for duty at the federal level.

Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s trajectory is illustrated by the fact that the big blue Conservative machine has swung its guns to Layton.

In a made-for-B.C. attack ad, a Layton lookalike holds his fingers in his ears. The sins of the “Ottawa NDP” are opposing the GST cut, tougher jail sentences and road and bridge construction.

Of course the experts agree that it was a mistake to cut the GST to five per cent. First, this policy is a popular move that even the politically uninvolved don’t miss. To a political strategist, the experts griping about the GST cut are like hockey coaches complaining about a new call-up: all this kid does is score goals.

Second, the GST cut represents a long-term shrinkage of federal tax revenues. Sorry, conspiracy theorists, but Harper’s master plan isn’t to legislate church attendance and be thrown out in a blaze of glory. It’s to slowly steer the federal state back to tending the army and the Arctic, and let the provinces do their jobs.

Indeed, in the TV debate Harper boasted of spending as briskly as any Liberal.

He’s subsidizing aerospace and auto plants. He has increased funding to, of all things, the CBC. He even saved the Great Bear Rainforest. (And you thought Gordon Campbell did that.)

Harper’s big mistake of the pivotal debate was to invite people to look at his platform. His was the only party without a formal policy document at the time, just a sprinkling of new releases with little tax credits. The platform is supposed to be out this week, an afterthought with advance polls already past.

Fortunately the leaders were surveyed on what their first moves would be.

Dion would have meetings to assess the international financial crisis, mostly meetings that happen anyway. Layton would reverse $50 billion in corporate tax cuts. May would put in a carbon tax four times as big as B.C.’s and enact proportional representation for federal elections.

Harper would “manage in turmoil” with a tax credit for first-time home buyers, and tax cuts for diesel and small business income.

Harper wins by being calm and cautious, and buying friends.

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (Peter MacKay, prop.) managed 25 funding announcements in the first five days of September alone.

Western Economic Development Canada got off 11 for B.C., the same week, including such “pine beetle strategies” as an arts centre for Christina Lake, lights for Vanderhoof airport, mine training in Prince George, an expansion of the Smithers library and $161,000 for a geocaching club in Cache Creek.

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Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca