Canadian Constitutional Fun!

I haven't blogged in a long time, but frankly I didn't feel there was much I wanted to blog about for a while. Seems a bit different now. My main reason for writing this here isn't to promise to keep blogging though. It's just to comment on this and I know it'll go to my facebook and some people who are curious about what I think can see it there. Anyhoo..

There are a lot of things to say on this from a lot of different angles. Let's play 20 questions.

Just whose side are you on Cory MacDonald?

I still consider myself non-partisan. I did vote for Stephen Harper. I still think he's a very intelligent leader and the most competent one available. I do not believe the liberals are ready for prime time yet and after thirteen years of Liberal rule, I felt it was more than time enough for a Tory turn. I also have to say that while others have found Stephen Harper to be some evil controlling bully, I loved seeing a master strategist who was able to give elbows to the liberals the way Tories have traditionally taken them. I've also felt for a long time a healthy conservative party is vital for our polity and Harper delivered one. Kudos.

At the same time I didn't agree with him on a lot, it turns out. I don't have a social conservative bone in my body, don't believe in draconian law and order policies, and did not like sending a huge chunk of the surplus off to Quebec to remedy a fictional fiscal imbalance. A strong federalist centrist liberal leader could get my vote. I actually started thinking that maybe what we needed was a strong conservative party with me not in it. If Stephane Dion had proven to be a better communicator and had been more obsessed with the economy than an ill-conceived Green Shift plan he might have gotten it in this last election. So that's where I'm coming from ideologically and politically speaking.

Who caused this mess?

Harper's economic update caused this crisis to happen "for sure" by threatening to cut off political funding for the other parties. But there is a good chance it might have happened anyway. My good friend Atlas Hugged actually predicted it: http://atlas-hugged.blogspot.com/2008/10/another-minority-government-too-bad.html. For the record I did not. I did predict Prime Minister Stephane Dion way before he won the Liberal leadership so at least I can have that in my cap. The rest of his economic update was similarly unapologetically conservative, taking pot shots at groups that the conservative ideology doesn't much like and I doubt he would have survived a vote even without the funding cuts. I don't think any of the parties could support it really. He should have seen this coming. It's not like he doesn't know about Coalitions.

Why the Hell did he do this?

Harper is very intelligent but I get the sense that he's out of patience. He wants a chance to govern and do some things in office that he actually wants to do. And he is faced with a Parliament that will only support him if he governs primarily as a liberal. Anything else he'd like to do, he's already done or can't do. So there may, deep down, be a certain passive aggressive self-destructiveness, or at the very least a "To Hell With It" attitude to the economic statement, whether he realises it or not. People seem to think Harper only cares about politics. It isn't true. Harper cares about problem solving. He's spent a lot of time being a serious policy thinker. But he can't find a way to exercise his policy muscles until he solves the political weakness of conservatives problem. He can't solve it and it is fraying his nerves. That showed in his flippant remarks about arts funding during the election and it showed in the economic statement.

What's going to happen?

The Governor General was appointed by Liberals. Her husband is suspected of being at least sympathic to the nationalist/sovereigntist/separatist cause. Neither of them would vote for Stephen Harper I don't think. Expect any discretion to lean towards them. If the Governor General wants to be non-controversial though, and I think she will, expect her to allow the prorogation until January. Then expect the Parliament to come back in January.

What will happen then? Well it's a whole new ballgame then. I expect that it is in the Liberal's best interest to keep pushing for a coalition government because, if they can pull it off, there leader will enter as Prime Minister of Canada. He can then govern and demonstrate competence to Canadians. He will then at some point after he has proven himself a good leader go to Canadians for a mandate. The election issue will be "how did the coalition govern" not "should there be a coalition" and there will be a new Conservative leader at that time. My bet would be on Jim Prentice given the absence of a strong Quebec Contender.

Should the coalition be allowed without an election?

Under Parliamentary rules, absolutely. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. In fact, just the opposite. It is highly commendable behavior to cooperate in a divided house, and perfectly reasonable that centre-left parties representing 62% of the vote should cooperate to push their agenda rather than being beholden to a centre-right party representing 38%.

Interestingly there is a very good argument against it but the Tory side isnt playing it up as central enough in my view. Rather than suggesting that coalitions are wrong, it should focus on the fact that the two parties at the core of the coalition expressly stated that they would NOT form a coalition. As a result the argument can be made that they have no mandate to govern as a coalition. Elections shouldn't be seen as some horrible inconvenience in this case. Focusing on coalitions and parliamentary cooperation being illegitimate seems cynical and disingenuous in light of their own efforts in the past, and ultimately weaken their case in the medium term even if they can win a 24 hour news cycle or two, I think.

What about this idea of cooperating with separatists?

Sorry to burst my Tory friends' bubble but this is empty rhetoric. The BQ has the balance of power in our parliament and they are the reason the Conservatives have stayed in power this long. The only difference between the BQ's relationship with the Tories in the past and the Liberals in the future is the formality of the press conference.

AND THERE'S THE REAL PROBLEM!

If you are left wing and reading this you are rooting for the coalition. If you are right wing you'd like Harper to survive. But the real problem for me as a federalist is that the Bloc Quebecois holds the balance of power in our federal parliament and there appears to be no change to this in the foreseeable future. As a result both Conservatives and Liberals are holding a pork auction for BQ support and feeding more and more goodies to Quebec in the form of more powers and big wheelbarrows of money, irrespective of whether that is good for the country as a whole. The BQ extorted a King's ransom in the Coalition agreement and extorted a King's ransom from Harper over the last two years. Want to hazard a guess why they only promised eighteen months of support?

That's our real problem as a country, folks. Best we go about solving it.