Sunday, December 07, 2008
What Would You Have Done?
The recent kerfuffle in Canada has prompted all kinds of talk from TV personalities, newspaper columnists, and bloggers. Everybody has an opinion.
One of the common threads is that all politicians in Ottawa are behaving badly and every single one of them needs to grow up and act like an adult. Some blame Harper and some blame Dion. Right now it seems to be Dion who is coming in for the most criticism.
Here's a handy way to distinguish facts from bias. Don't ask for what might have happened in an ideal world but ask instead what you would have advised when the crisis began. When you hear people spouting off about how Dion is ruining the country, for example, ask them what they would have done in his place.
Here's my take.
If Harper had called me before presenting his budget I would have told him to take out the clauses that eliminate party funding, ban civil servant's right to strike, and block pay equity challenges. I would have pointed out that all three are inflammatory and designed to alienate the opposition parties that he needs for support in the House. This is not the time for partisan politics, especially since none of these measures are necessary and, furthermore, they were not something that the Conservative Party made into election issues in October.
Obviously Harper didn't call me and didn't listen to anyone else who might have warned him of the consequences.
Once the budget was made public, what should Stéphane Dion have done? This is an important question and everyone who criticizes Dion should be prepared to answer it. Here's my answer.
The Liberal Party could not have supported such a budget because it was a deliberate slap in the face. It would have been devastating to party finances to eliminate federal funding of political parties and Harper knew that. In the previous sessions of parliament the Liberals abstained on many votes allowing the Conservatives to govern as if they were a majority. That behavior was widely, and correctly, criticized last year and it could not continue in the current session of Parliament.
The fact that Harper proposed an in-your-face challenge on the very first bill was an indication of how he intended to behave for the next few years. This was the only chance the Liberals were going to get to take a stand.
I would have advised Dion and the Liberals to vote against the budget no matter what the consequences. If Harper wanted to call and election, so be it. Having been forced into a corner, I don't believe the Liberals had a choice.
When the idea of a Liberal-NDP coalition came up, I would have advised Dion to agree, provided the plan did not compromise Liberal principles. If the Bloc agreed to not vote in favor of any non-confidence motion for 18 months then that would be perfectly acceptable. In other words, if I had been advising Dion I would have advised him to do exactly what he did. The coalition avoided an unnecessary election and was perfectly in line with the principles of a parliamentary democracy.
Anyone who criticizes Dion's decision should let us know what alternative was preferable. Here were the choices: abstaining, voting for the government, voting against the government?
During this waiting period we can ask ourselves the same questions. What's the best way out of the crisis? Here's my answer ...
The best solution is for Stephen Harper to resign as leader. His replacement should seek out a compromise budget that many parties can support. The new leader should announce that the three inflammatory proposals are not part of the new leader's priorities.
That's probably not going to happen.
Assuming that Stephen Harper is still Prime Minister at the end of January what should Liberals do? I don't think they can support a government led by Stephen Harper. They should vote against the budget, or the throne speech, at the first opportunity. Not only has Harper revealed his agenda in the earlier budget, he has made things much worse by lying about our system of government, stirring up regional bigotry, and provoking a constitutional crisis. Such a man cannot be Prime Minister of my country.
I really don't care whether Dion remains leader of the Liberal Party or whether he is replaced by an interim leader who becomes Prime Minister under a coalition government. The Liberals can even appoint a permanent leader if that's what they decide to do. (Not my preference.) The important point is that the Liberals cannot support Stephen Harper in January.
We cannot have an anti-French, anti-democratic, vindictive, megalomaniac, liar as Prime Minister. I hope that Conservative MPs will realize this themselves before January. If they don't, they should be moved to the Opposition benches, which they will share with the Bloc Québécois.
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13 comments :
I agree that Mr. Harper inflamed the situation with his "clauses" but I am certain the coalition plot would have eventually happened but likely not until after the Liberal leadership convention in the spring. By the way I support Mr. Harper's clause about eliminating party funding. I also think Harper should have resigned when he visited the GG. What will likely happen is a new budget will be presented on Jan. 26th (Dion will be gone by xmas and Iggy will be in), the house will vote no confidence and an election will follow by March 10. I'll take bets.
If Harper had called me before presenting his budget
To begin with, it wasn't a budget or anything close to it. That's an important point.
This is not the time for partisan politics
And that statement is simply naive, and any of the parties would throw you out of the room immediately.
The best solution is for Stephen Harper to resign as leader.
Wishful thinking. And I don't agree that this would be the best solution anyhow.
They should vote against the budget, or the throne speech, at the first opportunity.
Only if they want to guarantee a Harper majority.
We cannot have an anti-French, anti-democratic, vindictive, megalomaniac, liar as Prime Minister.
All this does is beg for someone on the "other side" to respond with a similarly overheated and silly slagging of Dion/Ignatieff/Rae. Accomplishes nothing useful, and just exacerbates the already worrying polarization of opinion.
In my view, given Harper's nasty economic statement (not budget), the coalition has served a useful purpose in allowing Harper a chance to reconsider and start behaving like a minority prime minister (which I hope he does).
I would not want the coalition to come to power. All it would do is just about guarantee a Harper majority at the next election, and delay the much-needed piece of Liberal navel-gazing and restructuring that they have not yet done.
While Harper's characterization of the coalition as undemocratic blah blah blah is just as silly as your characterization of Harper, I cannot warm to the idea of a coalition led by Dion, who was repudiated in the recent election and who has already submitted his resignation. And it would be odd for a coalition to be led by a party which holods barely more than half the seats of the party which obtained a recent plurality.
Not illegal or undemocratic, but it's very rare for a coalition not to be led by the party which got a plurality or which was second by a very few seats.
I'm not unhappy with how things are turning out so far. I believe the GG made the better decision on prorogation, and I hope that Harper submits a budget that will (grudgingly) pass.
This would give the Liberals a bit of time to figure out which end is up.
Don't mistake me for a Harper fan. I most definitely am not ... but the Liberals have done nothing since Martin's government fell to deserve being put back into power just yet.
While Harper's characterization of the coalition as undemocratic blah blah blah is just as silly as your characterization of Harper, I cannot warm to the idea of a coalition led by Dion, who was repudiated in the recent election and who has already submitted his resignation.
Do you not see the difference, Scott?
What Stephen Harper is doing is deliberately misleading the country as to how Canada's system of government works. He makes every vote a matter of confidence, and then presents legislation that the opposition cannot stomach. He operates like this for nearly three years, daring the opposition to bring him down because he knows the one party that could challenge him is in complete disarray.
And then they finally call him on it, and he disallows their vote; advocates the disenfranchisement of millions of Quebeckers, and continues to lie about how governments and Prime Ministers are "elected".
No one 'repudiated' Dion as a candidate for PM in the same way that no one elected Stephen Harper as PM. Mr. Harper was appointed PM by the Governor-General, and is responsible, at all times, to Parliament. He knows this damn well, but is lying to Canadians who don't know the difference between Westminster democracies (like Canada) and republican democracies (like the USA); Canadians who think that democracy means that the people get to choose everything.
What Mr. Harper has done is an absolute affront to democracy. Mr. Dion is a fool and must go, no doubt, and we can rationally discuss whether the coalition is or is not a good idea. But what Mr. Harper has done, knowingly lying to Canadians and creating a precedent where PMs can become de facto monarchs, is a reprehensible slap in the face for every person who ever worked (and died) for the system of responsible government. Our country is forever changed.
http://propterhoc.wordpress.com/2008/12/05/the-truthiness-of-stephen-harper/
I'm sure this'll get me labelled as a conservative, but I see the issue much differently.
We are facing the worst economic crisis in a generation - and if things don't get better soon it may well be the worst economic crisis of the past 50 years.
What we needed was leadership and cooperation, what we got was powerplays - Harper trying to push the opposition & the opposition making a play for power. Instead of good governance we got a bag of partisanship and stupidity.
Depending on who's polls you look at, between 55% at 60% of Canadians are opposed to the coalition. At the same time, a similar percentage of Canadians are opposed to Harpers policies. So regardless of how you cut the cake, not one of the "options" we've been presented reflect what Canadians actually want.
In a perverse way, what we have now is about as democratic as this whole mess will get - the desires of the majority of Canadians are being fulfilled - no coalition government, and Harper isn't moving ahead with his plan.
The fact that no government, rather than the coalition or conservatives, represents the majority position pretty much demonstrates how good of a job the current house of commons is doing in representing Canadians.
And while a little unrelated, I actually support removing federal money for supporting poltiical parties. I was pissed off when they put it in, and it still bugs me that my hard-earned cash supports advertising campaigns for parties I don't support. A party should live - or die - off the financial support of its grassroot members.
Depending on who's polls you look at, between 55% at 60% of Canadians are opposed to the coalition. At the same time, a similar percentage of Canadians are opposed to Harpers policies. So regardless of how you cut the cake, not one of the "options" we've been presented reflect what Canadians actually want.
I'm sorry if this sounds argumentative, and it's not directed at you, but I've been preaching on this for a week, and I'm going to try to say it only once more: it makes absolutely, positively, no difference what Canadians want here. Canadians have already expressed what they want through the election that we had in October. Canadians elected a Parliament, and Parliament was doing exactly what it was elected to do, following the rules set out by Westminster-style parliamentary tradition.
Canadians elected a parliament, and two parties, following all of the rules of parliamentary tradition, formed a coalition that would have had the support of the majority of the house. They were entitled to form the government.
Now our PM is intentionally misleading Canadians about how their system of government works, in order to make them believe that they have somehow "elected" the Conservative government. They haven't.
Maintenance of our form of democracy is more important than any other single issue, the economy included.
it still bugs me that my hard-earned cash supports advertising campaigns for parties I don't support.
Arrgh! Your hard-earned cash IN NO WAY supports a party that you don't support. You vote Liberal, the Liberals get $1.95; you vote Conservative, the Conservatives get the money.
That is the closest you can possibly get to actually handing a cheque to your favourite party. Not a dime went to a party you didn't support.
Scott says,
Don't mistake me for a Harper fan. I most definitely am not ... but the Liberals have done nothing since Martin's government fell to deserve being put back into power just yet.
Everyone seems to be making the same mistake.
We all agree (mostly) that Dion is an ineffective leader. We all agree that the Liberal Party is in bad shape. Pointing out these deficiencies is a way of avoiding the question.
We are faced with the lesser of two evils. Harper or a weak Liberal Party. From what you say, I gather you would prefer a known liar who doesn't hesitate to turn the regions of the country against each other in order to stay in power.
I prefer Dion, for all his faults, or whoever the Liberals out up as leader.
P.S. I know the difference between a real budget and an "economic statement." Economic statements contain proposals about what's gong to be in a budget. Things like restricting the public funding of political parties, curtailing equal pay complaints, and preventing unions from going on strike.
Bryan says,
I'm sure this'll get me labelled as a conservative, ...
You betcha. If you walk like a Conservative, talk like a Conservative, and repeat the Conservative spin then you will be labeled as a Conservative.
You're welcome. :-)
Allen says,
What will likely happen is a new budget will be presented on Jan. 26th (Dion will be gone by xmas and Iggy will be in), the house will vote no confidence and an election will follow by March 10. I'll take bets.
You're on! I'll bet you a beer at your favorite pub that there won't be an election in March.
Here's what I think will happen. Iggy will be leader by hook or by crook (mostly crook). Being a wimp, he will find a way to support the Harper budget at the end of January.
Over the next six months Harper will gradually come to realize that Iggy is no different than Dion and he (Harper) will start proposing more and more conservative legislation that the Liberals will have to support (or abstain from voting).
Finally, when an election is called at a time of Harper's choosing, the public will be as disappointed in Iggy as they were with Dion.
We'll have another minority government.
Repeat as often as necessary.
Mike said:
it makes absolutely, positively, no difference what Canadians want here...what they want through the election that we had in October
I'd have to disagree. We elect MP's/parties who best represent our interests. If they fail to do that, then they aren't achieving the very purpose they're supposed to preform. We don't live in a representative democracy - as such our MPs/parties should be representing the interests of their constituents.
Now our PM is intentionally misleading Canadians about how their system of government works
As is the coalition, with their claims vis-a-vis prorogation.
Your hard-earned cash IN NO WAY supports a party that you don't support. You vote Liberal, the Liberals get $1.95; you vote Conservative, the Conservatives get the money.
You're assuming that I support the parties that I vote for - I don't. The last few elections I've held my nose and voted for the party I hated the least. If I want my money to go to a party, it should be upto me to choose to do so. It shouldn't be based on which group of incompetent fools I felt the least amount of revulsion for in the previous election.
Bryan said,
As is the coalition, with their claims vis-a-vis prorogation.
Please elaborate. I haven't heard anything to that effect. Prorogation is certainly allowable, and within the GG's rights. It's debatable, however, how allowable it is for PM to use it to avoid losing a confidence vote, especially when the GG is in possession of a letter signed by a majority of MPs, stating no confidence.
From Bryan,
We are facing the worst economic crisis in a generation - and if things don't get better soon it may well be the worst economic crisis of the past 50 years.
What we needed was leadership and cooperation, what we got was powerplays - Harper trying to push the opposition & the opposition making a play for power. Instead of good governance we got a bag of partisanship and stupidity.
While I agree with the second paragraph, that all parties are playing politics (not actually a surprise... in our minority governments, everything done is playing politics), I am confused about why this matters.
Our economic crisis is about a global economic bubble-burst. What could our government actually do to help? They can stick some band aids on and look like they are working hard, but there is no way they could fix the problems in the "big spender" economies like the US, China, etc. The Canadian government cannot fix this problem, despite will and intention.
Regarding the "leadership and cooperation", it appears Canadians were not paying attention since the CPC assumed the role of governing party. Cooperation was never in the cards, and the first motion in the parliament would have cut the jugular of all political parties but themselves. If we really need "leadership and cooperation", a change is needed. Be it by election or a change of government by the GG, the current leader have proven over and over again he lacks any ability to cooperate (within our outside his party).
While I agree with the second paragraph, that all parties are playing politics...I am confused about why this matters.
Because we (supposedly) vote these people in to govern, not to screw around.
What could our government actually do to help? They can stick some band aids on and look like they are working hard, but there is no way they could fix the problems in the "big spender" economies
Nor should they be involved in trying to fix the economic situation world-wide. But there is quite a bit they could do at home, from re-training programs for people who loose jobs in sectors unlikely to recover, to loans to businesses, even bailouts (although IMO thats almost pointless).
Bryan said,
Because we (supposedly) vote these people in to govern, not to screw around.
This is the point where we disagree. If you do not have a majority, you need to compromise. Harper would not, and introduced a bill impossible for the opposition to support. Now he is rightly being made to pay for his behavior. I hope you do not suggest that the opposition just sit idly by as Harper destroys our democratic system, just because of the hard economic times.
And on the second point, thought these measures sound nice, I doubt they will help anyways. Our greed got us into this mess. We will have to suffer for it. Without a massive amount of tax income, the government just can't spend us out of this one.
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