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

Candid and relaxed in the leaders’ debates, Duceppe pointed to other challengers and said they, like he, will not be Prime Minister.

“Some of you know it but don’t say it,” he added.

It won’t be Jack Layton or Elizabeth May. The NDP and Greens propose we scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yeah, that’ll help stabilize the currency and banks.

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 close their own mills, will get them back to work? 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 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 as the “Ottawa NDP” oppose the GST cut, tougher jail sentences and road and bridge construction.

Of course, the experts agree 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.

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 “pine beetle strategies” like 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.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press newspapers. tfletcher@blackpress.ca