Then Dion made Harper's life infanately easier. In September, Dion said that unless the Throne Speech met four Liberal conditions, he would join the NDP and the Bloc in voting against it. Because the Throne Speech involves a confidence vote, its defeat would bring down the government and force an election.
The prime minister called Dion's bluff in spectacular fashion. He declared that not only would the Throne Speech be a confidence vote, so would any legislation that came from it. The Liberals could either pass the Conservative's agenda, or they could force an election.
The Opposition was stuck. The Liberal Party is still engaged in its neverending civil war and their ground operation in Quebec is in shambles. There have been reports of an internal Liberal poll that showed if an election were held now, they could be left with only two seats in Quebec. Not only would the Liberals lose the election, they would be devastated by it, perhaps for a generation.
Dion was trapped by his own empty threats. He couldn't force an election and he couldn't support the Tories. So he chose the most cowardly option available to him. In
a rambling, 45-minute response to the Throne Speech Wednesday that was more a monument to cowardice and ignorance than a statement of political principle, Dion announced that his caucus would abstain on tn Throne Speech vote.
Yet, somehow, in thinking about this a lot, I may find something relatively positive to say about the speech. It is not as bad as the one we would have heard from the Conservative Party if it had been a majority government.
As the Prime Minister's most trusted political adviser, Professor Tom Flanagan, recently described, if the Conservatives form a majority government, rural economies would be threatened by a fatal assault on supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. Health care would be subject to an agenda of Conservative “radical reform”. One may imagine what that means.
The work of our police officers and the safety of our citizens would be threatened by the absolute dismantling of the gun registry and our environment would be neglected by those who believe that, to quote Mr. Flanagan's incredibly irresponsible statement, “global warming may threaten the planet, but it actually improves the weather in Canada”.
Canadians can count on the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party will never form a majority.
Actually, the Conservative Party now has a majority and they didn't have do something as inconvenient as ask the voters for one to get it. In his 45-minute dissertation on everthing that is wrong with his leadership, Dion gave the Conservatives their majority. An election now would on ratify that status.
It follows that if the Liberals are going to abstain on the Throne Speech, they'll also abstain from voting on the legislation that flows from it. Essentially, the Liberal Party of Canada has abdicated their role as Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and given the Conservatives the majority the voters denied them. After this silly little stunt, no one will ever take Stephane Dion seriously again. As much as people like me say that the Liberal Party is a collection of unprincipled nitwits, it took Monsiuer Dion to actually prove it.
It is worth noting that quotes Dion attributes to Tom Flanagan come from his recent book,
Harper's Team, which I recently finished reading. Dion mischaracterizes almost everything Flanagan wrote. In his book, Flanagan offered his opinion that the Conservative Party should avoid campaigning on or trying to enact some of their more ideological beliefs because Canada is not yet a majority conservative country and to do so would therefore be politically suicidal,
not that the Conservatives would do those things if they had a majority government. What he wrote is little more than a recognition of current Canadian reality as opposed to a secret platform.
A concise digest of Flanagan's thinking can be found
here, and you'll find that it is very different than what Dion suggests.
This is yet another feeble attempt to play the "Harper has a hidden agenda" card that backfired on Paul Martin in the last general election. The Liberals are so bereft of ideas that they feel that a failed strategy is better than no strategy at all. No wonder they want to avoid an election. They might get to
run those ads that have Harper filling the streets with tanks again. And no, I am not making this up.
Unfortunately, the voters won't be able to "choose their Canada." Stephane Dion did that for us. And Stephen Harper's continuing in office is a rather significant part of that Canada.
Among the items in Harper's omnibus crime bill - which will be a confidence vote - is a dangerously stupid and tangibly evil change to Canada's dangerous offender law. In Canada, a convicted criminal may be declared a "dangerous offender." That status results in an indefinate prison status. Since the measure was introduced in 1977, only one dangerous offender has been released.
Harper will introduce a "three strikes, you're out" sentencing guidline that has proven to be such a miserable failure in the United States. Upon a third convinction for an unspecified "serious offense," the Crown can apply for dangerous offender status to be imposed and the burden of proof will rest on the defendant. While not clearly unconstitutional, such a reverse onus is antithetical to everything a democratic society is supposed to stand for. It is so odious that no person of conscience should support it. It is something that more properly belongs in a Kafka novel than the Canadian judicial process.
The Liberals oppose it and it is one of the measures that they have been using their senate majority to clock. But in all likelihood, Dion will now let it pass for no other reason than he's a coward with a big mouth.
As much as the Tories would
like an election now, they no longer
need one. With the Liberals buried in a hole of their craven incompetence, Stephen Harper now has the governing majority he's dreamed of since he was a child. Even though he only controls 125 of Parliament's 308 seats, he may as well have the super-majority that Brian Mulroney won in 1984. Despite the thinness of his minority, Harper may well be the most powerful prime minister in Canadian history. And Stephane Dion made it so.
It takes a great deal of effort to make the NDP appear to be a serious force of opposition, but the Liberals have made it look easy. Jack Layton now has the tools to go to Canadians and convince them that
a vote for the Liberals is a wasted vote - an argument that the Liberals have traditionally made about the NDP. And Stephane Dion made it so.
Stephane Dion's leadership has proven to be such a disaster for the Liberal Party and the people of Canada that
some observers are calling on the Governor General to appoint the NDP the Official Opposition.
NDP supporters, and for that matter any Canadian who believes that Canada benefits from a working democracy, ought to call on the Governer General to strip the Liberal Party of its role as Official Opposition and grant that title, and all the benefits and responsibilities that come with it, to the NDP.
I don't think it would create a constitutional crisis. A constitutional headache at best.
But a move in that direction, or even just musing about such a change, would do a great deal to either galvanize the Liberals into doing their job, or splinter the Liberals and allow the NDP to move in to do the job they've been itching to do.
I think it would be good for Canada.
If you think this is a unique opportunity for the Governor General to help steady this parliament and make it work effectively, you can contact her office in a number of ways.
If you want to encourage the NDP to pursue this change in role and make it official, they would probably appreciate it.
Even if this isn't done officially, the prime minister
has the power to make Jack Layton the unofficial leader of the opposition. All he has to do is ignore Dion during Question Period and state for the record why he is doing so. Harper can address his answers to the NDP, even if the question comes from the Liberal benches.
If the Liberals are going to spend the next two years abstaining on confidence measures, they will have abdicated the right to be acknowledged as the Opposition. They shouldn't be recognized with a title that they refuse to live up to the responsibilities of and Harper should say so in the House at the earliest opportunity. There's very little point in even pretending that the Liberals are the Opposition at this point, so why bother?
Despite the fact that I didn't vote for him, Stephen Harper actually hasn't been a
bad prime minister. The ridiculous notion of a "hidden agenda" that Dion has continued to espouse as recently as Wednesday has been utterly discredited and the voters pretty much know it.
However, the Conservative government needs an opposition as a check and balance. I and all Canadians remember all too well what happened when the Progressive Conservative Party was divided three ways and Jean Chretien had no effective opposition for a decade. Canada became known as
"the friendly dictatorship." That happening again should be avoided, if at all possible.
I never thought I'd say this, but maybe it's time that the NDP becomes the Official Opposition. I disagree with everything that they stand for and believe that they live in a fantasy world of rainbows and unicorns, but they actually
are serious about being the opposition and Stephane Dion is not.
If Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean does not invite Jack Layton to become the Leader of the Official Opposition, which I think is highly unlikely, then Canada's liberal (as opposed to Liberal) voters should do so. I fail to see how any fair-minded progressive can continue to support Stephane Dion. Dion is actually doing Harper's work
for him at this point.
The current Liberal talking points out there are quick to point out that Harper's Conserveratives abstained from voting on Paul Martin's 2005 budget rather than topple his minority. And it's true that they did this in part because they weren't ready for an election then. However, they did vote to bring down the government less than three months later and again, successfully, that November.
What the Liberals are ignoring is that Harper abstained from
one confidence vote. Dion has indicated that he plans on abstaining on confidence measures
indefinately. He's not doing it as a matter of principle, he's refusing to actually do his job until his poll numbers improve, which is an awfully unusual way to improve your approval rating. Given that, I can't see why the Liberals would show up in the House of Commons at all other than they like being on television and looking silly.
How is Dion biding his time?
He's writing make-believe Throne Speeches for the
Toronto Star. Rather than defeating the government so that he might have the opportunity to introduce a
real Speech from the Throne, he'll write a pretend one. I suppose this is because governing is hard and pretending is fun. It's also extremely childish. That should tell Canadians how serious a leader Stephane Dion is.
When Harper defeated Paul Martin in January of 2006, most Canadians, and a good number of Liberals, thought that some time in the wilderness would be good for the party after 13 years in power. That clearly wasn't the case. The Liberal Party instead elected a leader even more craven and indecisive than Martin was. Part of the function of the Official Opposition in a parliamentary democracy is to be "the government-in-waiting." Stephane Dion demonstrated clearly why he should never become prime minister of Canada this week.
No one seriously suggests that the Conservatives are going to lose the next election. In all probabilty, they'll win a majority. The next campaign, whenever it happens, will be about who leads the opposition against Harper. If nothing else, Jack Layton is at least interested in that job, which no one can say about Dion anymore.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Beware of Darkness By: George Harrison
From: All Things Must Pass
