It's almost impossible to understand everything that's going on in Ottawa this week (although I'd like to give the Macleans.ca bloggers a round of applause for the best coverage I've been able to find), but one thing is clear - everybody involved is, to some degree, at fault.
The Conservatives are the easiest to pin blame on - promising a Parliament of bipartisan cooperation was a good move. The fiscal update tabled last week wasn't necessarily a horrible idea either - if you're not going to make any meaningful gestures towards fixing the economy, symbolic gestures likes the ones contained therein are appreciated. That said, if those are your primary objectives - working with other parties and making symbolic gestures that don't have any real meaning - one of those gestures being an attempt to bankrupt every other political party shows a stunning lack of common sense.
If that were the end of it, fine - the Conservatives made their bed, and now they have to lie in it, but at least they're not as bad as the opposition parties (I'm now convinced that the Conservatives could not introduce a single piece of legislation which a single other party would support, no matter how well it fit with their ideology).
But that's not the end of it. Instead, the Conservatives are caught completely off guard by the opposition realizing that the pledge of bipartisanship was completely bogus, and now claiming that the coalition is somehow 'undemocratic', 'un-Canadian', or 'a coup d'etat' (all terms used by Conservatives in the past 24 hours).
It's not. No matter how many times this Conservative-created talking point is espoused on your local talk radio station (our governing party has spent at least part of their week publishing a list of Conservative-friendly radio hosts and talking points people can use when calling in), there's no reason to believe it. Think back to the last election you voted in - did you vote for the Prime Minister? Unless you were in his riding, no, you didn't.
You voted for your MP. You voted for somebody to represent you in Parliament - and it's up to those people to organize themselves in such a manner that the Prime Minister is able to make legislation that is supported by more than half the House of Commons. Stephen Harper is no longer able to do that, Stephane Dion is (and as a bonus, his ability to do so is in writing).
"Oh," the Conservative supporters will whine, "nobody votes for their MP anymore, they vote for the party." Not true. People might vote for the MP because of his party, but they're voting directly for the MP. In fact, if people do vote because of party allegiance, I can think of worse affronts to democracy in recent memory.
What other Conservative talking points can I dispel? Not too many as it turns out, they're almost all along the lines of "people didn't vote for anything other than the Conservatives". However, here's what I did dig up...
I mean, I follow the news, virtually every single day you have Harper or Flaherty out there telegraphing exactly what they plan to do with the economy.
And completely contradicting each other in the process. Harper told the APEC summit in Peru that Canada would run a deficit. Jim Flaherty has repeatedly claimed that he will never put Canada into deficit, even if it means selling off assets at low costs to make sure the books stay balanced. (Actually, I guess Harper would be in favour of that plan - undervalued assets? Sounds like some good buying opportunities!) That worked out really well when he tried it in Ontario, didn't it? Highway 407 is making truckloads of money for a foreign corporation, and Flaherty secretly left Ontario $5 billion in debt anyhow!
Oh, by the way, you don't need to mention that you follow the news - if you really do, it'll show in the rest of what you say.
And I wish the media would be more clear on this point – the opposition aren’t being singled out by this fact the Conservatives stand to lose the most money of all. The only difference is that Canadians are voluntarily giving money the Conservatives, so they don’t need taxpayer handouts. The only reason the opposition would be hurt more is because nobody wants to donate to them. They should be putting their efforts towards fixing that problem.
Ooh, I like this one. Where to start?
Okay, let's see. The reason the Conservatives get so much money from other donors is because they govern for the rich. The NDP, because of their ideology, will never attract large support from the upper class - so unless you're suggesting that the most important function of a political party is to make money, rather than, oh, I don't know, maybe to help people, those subsidies are the most democratic means of party finance there are.
As for the part about the Conservatives losing the most money of all? Absolutely. But look at the Green Party or Christian Heritage Party or Natural Law Party or whoever you want - they're not getting money any other way, and without that money, they can't have their voices heard. And I'm sure most Conservatives don't mind losing a few million dollars in party money, since they're still getting Cabinet positions (and Cabinet salaries) in record numbers.
I don’t want another election. But what I want even less is a surprise backroom Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy.
Not so fast there, Connie. Okay, I'm cheating a bit on this one - I wanted to mention the "plotting with socialists and separatists" line the Conservatives have been so fond of this week. Boy, that sounds familiar. Of course, it's only an insult to democracy when you're on the receiving end, isn't it?
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I'm not saying the coalition is completely in the right. As I mentioned earlier, they're in the position there where they've hyped up this coalition idea so much, Harper could offer a carbon tax, doubling the corporate tax, and Quebec being legally allowed to separate on the whims of its Premier, and Dion, Layton, and Duceppe (in that order) still wouldn't jump ship.
In a minority parliament, such as we have, it's the job of all parties to make the government work. The Conservatives weren't willing to do that - but now, they might be (although I haven't seen them make any serious attempt at reconciliation), and the other parties have forgotten that they can't shut the Conservatives out until Michelle Jean grants their request to let them form government themselves.
(I do think she'll grant it. The job of a Governor-General is to ensure that there is always a government running Canada, with the ability to get its agenda through the House of Commons. The Conservatives no longer have that ability, the opposition does - and we don't need an election to prove it.)
--Ryan
P.S.: Longest post ever?
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