How to get the Liberals and NDP off each other’s shoes

By Paul Wells - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

“Everyone’s interpreting May 2 differently,” Nathan Cullen told me the other day over lunch at a reliably secluded Ottawa spot. May 2, you’ll recall, is the day we had a federal election. Stephen Harper won his majority. The New Democratic Party won 103 seats.

Nathan Cullen is a New Democrat. “There’s a lot of people in our party who are interpreting this incorrectly. They think we’re predestined to win power the next time. I take the other view.”

Which is? “We should co-operate.”

“We” here is the NDP and the Liberals. And maybe the Greens. Or not. Cullen isn’t nailed down on the details. Those would be settled through discussion and negotiation before the next election. The goal for that election would be to have a single candidate, Liberal or New Democrat (or Green) (or not) (to be confirmed) running against the Conservative incumbent in those ridings the Conservatives now hold.

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This is why we can’t have cooperative things

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 10:44 AM - 35 Comments

Chris Selley blames Stephane Dion for the continued toxicity of coalition governance.

Coalition-demonizers like Stephen Harper tend to take more heat in the media than coalition-boosters like Mr. Dion. And the demonizers deserve what they get. It’s appalling that Canadian politicians and their supporters, who know perfectly well how Parliament works and would happily support a coalition if it favoured their side, will go around talking of coups d’état, pretending as if Canadian voters directly elect their governments…

That said, Mr. Dion and his backers did plenty of harm themselves. His coalition was hamstrung by the explicit support of the Bloc Québécois, but its even more fundamental problem was that Mr. Dion had promised not to form a coalition. This isn’t a minor policy flip-flop. We’re talking about someone promising never to become prime minister under certain circumstances, and then reneging. A promise is not nullified because it would have been awkward not to make it.

Welcome to the club

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:58 AM - 30 Comments

The Conservatives formally initiate Brian Topp with a leaked memo of partisan attacks.

“Topp is a union boss and has deep union ties,” they say in a memo to MPs and party faithful. “How could Brian Topp speak on behalf of all Canadians, when he is so tied to big union special interests…

“Topp is not just the candidate of union bosses but also NDP insiders,” the Tories say, noting that he worked for former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow, former left-wing Toronto mayor David Miller and former NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin.

And if that does make Tories shake in their boots, the party back-roomers add that “Brian Topp is most notable for being NDP Leader’s hand-picked negotiator in the coalition talks with the separatist Bloc Québécois … Brian Topp will do anything – including forming a wreckless [sic] coalition with separatists – in order to gain power.”

Via Twitter, Brian Topp pronounces himself honoured.

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 4, 2011 at 3:52 PM - 1 Comment

The race for NDP leader began here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Gary Doer, Brian Masse, Joe Comartin, Ryan Cleary, Wayne Marston, Peter Stoffer and Chris Charlton are out. Brian Topp, Megan Leslie, Libby Davies, Paul Dewar, Charlie Angus, Peter Julian, Francoise Boivin, Nathan Cullen and Romeo Saganash might be in. Pat Martin will enter the race if no one else will champion the idea of a merger with the Liberals. Thomas Mulcair might get in if the timetable is to his liking.

Stephen Gordon and Frances Woolley considered the end of the HST in British Columbia. Scott Brison blamed the Harper government, which would like that $1.6-billion back now. Continue…

Is it safe to talk about a coalition?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 10:52 AM - 15 Comments

Chris Selley says the New Democrats and Liberals should talk about a coalition before they talk about a merger.

… there’s very little standing in the way of such an arrangement except a little bit of leadership — legitimate coalitions cannot come from elections in which they’ve been explicitly disavowed — and, of course, an election result that makes it possible.

Both parties have much to do, if they’re to achieve such an outcome. But there’s no reason to believe they can’t do it separately and co-operate later, and plenty to like about having more choice in political parties rather than less. It would be a shame if one big idea was discounted in pursuit of another.

If memory serves, Jack Layton’s stance in the last election was that the NDP would work with any party in the House of Commons. If that position holds, the onus would seem to be on the Liberals to take a similarly open-minded position.

'The Liberals walked away from an opportunity to throw Harper out'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 20, 2011 at 5:02 PM - 103 Comments

Former NDP MP Tony Martin looks back on his time in Ottawa.

I thought we had a real chance at a progressive government in the fall and winter of 2008-2009 – the coalition. For me, the lowlight was not being able to achieve that. I thought we had a chance to achieve a progressive government that would have allowed us to do a whole bunch of things, including working on the reduction of poverty. The government we have has no interest in doing anything about poverty. The lowlight was we didn’t achieve it and that the Liberals walked away from an opportunity to throw Harper out.

What’s the real issue here?

By Josh Dehaas - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 5:40 PM - 3 Comments

In last week’s English-language debate, Stephen Harper didn’t bother mentioning his income-splitting plan or proposed fitness tax credit. Neither Jack Layton nor Michael Ignatieff talked about their support for cap and trade policies. Layton only brought up old age pensions once and Ignatieff only squeezed in one mention of his home renovation tax-credit promise. In fact, there was almost no policy discussion at all.

That explains why there were significantly fewer mentions of the major policy issues in newspapers following the debate, says Stuart Soroka, the McGill University political scientist who runs the Federal Election Newspaper Analysis Project. (Soroka tracks which issues get written about in eight major English language papers, and the tone of the coverage. Maclean’s publishes analysis of the results each week.) “The debate seems almost invisible,” says Soroka, referring to its impact on the statistics. “If the objective was to get people to think more seriously about policy differences, it sure didn’t happen.” Only health care was written about in a greater share of stories following the debate, up from 12 to 14 per cent. Crime and justice fell from 54 to 31 per cent. Even the economy dropped from 32 to 22 per cent.

Not all debates are so unmoving. When Martin challenged Harper on gay marriage and abortion in 2004, social issues moved to the front pages. In 2008, coverage shifted to the economy after the debate.

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Two questions for Stephen Harper (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 50 Comments

After interviewing Mr. Layton and Mr. Ignatieff, Peter Mansbridge will sit down with Mr. Harper on Thursday. Assuming that the parameters of our democracy might be a topic raised, here, again, are two questions for Mr. Harper.

1. Earlier in this campaign, you explained that when you referred to “options” in the your letter to the Governor General in September 2004, you hoped only that she would give you the opportunity to assure her that you were not intending to defeat the Liberal government. University of New Brunswick professor Don Desserud has quibbled with this understanding of convention, suggesting the only options for the Governor General would have been to call an election or ask the leader of the opposition, in this case you, if he had the opportunity to form a government. Do you believe the Governor General can compel the Prime Minister to work with the opposition parties or do you believe you were given poor advice in 2004?

2. In an essay penned with Tom Flanagan some years ago you spoke favourably of an “alliance” between regional parties and lamented for the “winner-take-all style of politics” in Canada. In 1997, during an interview with TVO, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

Statement of the obvious

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 5:07 PM - 126 Comments

Michael Ignatieff reminds everyone how our democracy works.

If the governor general wants to call on other parties, or myself, for example, to try and form a government, then we try to form a government,” Ignatieff told CBC’s Peter Mansbridge in an exclusive interview Tuesday afternoon.

“That’s exactly how the rules work and what I’m trying to say to Canadians is, I understand the rules, I respect the rules, I will follow them to the letter and I’m not going to form a coalition. What I’m prepared to do is talk to Mr. Layton or Mr. Duceppe or even Mr. Harper and say, ‘We have an issue, and here’s the plan that I want to put before Parliament, this is the budget I would bring in,’ and then we take it from there.”

Here's where the whole campaign vanishes down a rabbit hole

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 4:56 PM - 202 Comments

This just in from the Conservative war room (here‘s the Globe account of the CBC interview that sparked it all):

April 19, 2011
For Immediate Release

Ignatieff Admits plan to become PM if he loses the election

After denying it for weeks, Michael Ignatieff today finally admitted he is open to trying to become Prime Minister with the support of the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, even if Stephen Harper’s Conservatives win the election on May 2.

During an interview with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, Michael Ignatieff said:

“If Mr. Harper wins most seats and forms a government but does not have the confidence of the House and I’m assuming that Parliament comes back, then it goes to the Governor-General.” Continue…

Mansbridge v. Layton

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 10:57 AM - 27 Comments

The NDP leader talks to the CBC host.

Layton said “there’s no question” Harper’s goal in 2004 talks with his party and the Bloc Quebecois was to become prime minister. Harper has also denied that he was trying to topple the Martin government and seize power in 2004.

Layton told Mansbridge that Harper is “fabricating things here.” Layton said the Conservative leader, who was then the Leader of the Official Opposition, was the driving force for the “arrangement” with other opposition parties at the time. ”We were called together by Stephen Harper to send a letter to the governor general to make it clear that if Paul Martin was defeated by the speech from the throne, she should turn to the other parties to govern,” Layton told the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge on board his campaign bus near Charlottetown. ”There was no question about it that the ultimate goal here was for Stephen Harper to become prime minister.”

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 55 Comments

I spent last Sunday hanging around with Stephane Dion. Here is what that was like.

If you’re interested in a director’s cut, full of never-before-seen material, see below.

You can add this as a post-script to what I wrote the night of the 2008 election.

Continue…

This complicated democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 15, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 36 Comments

Frances Woolley sets out to consider the efficiencies of vote-swapping and ends up considering the nature of our democracy.

The question is the wrong one to ask. If Party A wins three seats, then it can pursue policies that benefit people who do (or potentially might) vote for party A. If parties A, B and C win one seat each, they will pursue policies that benefit a different set of electors, not just those who vote for party A. But will a coalition government pursue policies that benefit a broader section of the electorate?

It’s not obvious. It all depends what happens at the coalition stage, when different parties are attempting to form governments. An interesting working paper by Amedeo Piolatto argues that, in certain circumstances, the power wielded by small parties in the coalition formation process can cause proportional representation systems to lead to political outcomes that are less representative of the interests of the broader population than first past the post type systems.

The Ontario accord

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 15, 2011 at 9:46 AM - 3 Comments

David Peterson and Bob Rae talk to The Mark about the Liberal-NDP accord in Ontario

How bout now?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 12:47 PM - 29 Comments

After this and this comes this new attempt to pin Canadians down on what they will and will not accept from their Parliament.

The party with the most seats forms the government and seeks support from other parties on a case-by-case basis. Acceptable 72% Unacceptable 12%

The party with the most seats enters into a coalition with another party in order to form a government. Acceptable 57% Unacceptable 27%

Two or more parties, none of which have the most seats individually, enter into a coalition in order to form a majority government. Acceptable 48% Unacceptable 33%

Of course, none of those options appear on anyone’s ballot. And these options don’t fully cover the options available to the parties in Parliament.

Vague notions

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 1:55 PM - 49 Comments

Fifty-four percent of Canadians prefer a Liberal-NDP coalition to a Conservative majority, but a plurality of Canadians feel uneasy about the idea of coalition government.

When you think about the idea of a coalition government in Canada do you have a positive, somewhat positive, somewhat negative, or negative impression?

Positive 18%
Somewhat positive 22%
Somewhat negative 17%
Negative 32%
Unsure 12%

The sound of stopping Harper

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 11:04 PM - 226 Comments

Two articles today make arguments Stephen Harper predicted on the day in March when he visited Rideau Hall. Tonight’s, from Postmedia:

“‘Say Mr. Harper is returned with a comparable minority’ to what he has now, says Franks. ‘Say within a few weeks of Parliament meeting there’s a vote on the speech to the throne and Mr. Harper is defeated. The Governor General is then entitled to determine if any other party leader will enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons.’

“…Ignatieff has not explicitly ruled out the idea of trying to lead a non-coalition, minority Liberal government if the Conservatives fail to secure the majority Harper says is crucial for the country, and then fail to secure enough support in Parliament to govern.”

This morning’s, from the Globe:

“Stack it all up, set events in motion, and they tumble toward a Tory minority government quickly falling and being replaced by a Liberal government propped up by at least the NDP. (Conservative partisans: Please note the lack of the word ‘coalition’ in the preceding sentence. Liberal partisans: Please note that nothing your leader has promised rules out such a move.)

“…Errol Mendes, professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of law, says there will be no stay of execution: whatever the risks, the opposition will move immediately. The Tories are ‘doomed’ in a minority situation, he says…”

There will be more and more of this discussion as election day approaches. Its effect on voter intentions is hard to predict.

Two questions for Stephen Harper (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 4, 2011 at 8:46 AM - 55 Comments

In light of what we saw and heard during the first week of the 41st general election, those two questions for Mr. Harper need to be updated.

1. Last week, you explained that when you referred to “options” in the your letter to the Governor General in September 2004, you hoped only that she would give you the opportunity to assure her that you were not intending to defeat the Liberal government. University of New Brunswick professor Don Desserud has quibbled with this understanding of convention, suggesting the only options would have been to call an election or ask the leader of the opposition, in this case you, if he had the opportunity to form a government. Do you believe the Governor General can compel the Prime Minister to work with the opposition parties or do you believe you were given poor advice in 2004?

2. In an essay penned with Tom Flanagan some years ago you spoke favourably of an “alliance” between regional parties and lamented for the “winner-take-all style of politics” in Canada. In 1997, during an interview with TVO, you said if the Liberal majority government of the day was ever reduced to a minority government, there would be an opportunity for one of the other parties “to form a coalition or working alliance with the others.” In 2004, during your news conference with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, you were asked if you were prepared to form government and said such a scenario was “extremely hypothetical.” You and your party now argue that only the party that wins the most seats can form government. Why and when did your views change on the functioning of our parliamentary system?

Options that don't appear on the ballot

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 9:59 AM - 109 Comments

Ipsos Reid asks Canadians to choose between a Liberal-NDP coalition and a Conservative majority.

A new Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Global National and Postmedia News indicates the majority of Canadians would prefer to see a Liberal-NDP coalition government (54 per cent) than a Conservative majority government (46 per cent). Also, almost half of Canadians (48 per cent) support the idea of a coalition of opposition parties forming the government. A little more than half (52 per cent) of Canadians oppose the idea.

Don't call it a coalition

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, April 1, 2011 at 9:55 AM - 132 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

The first mistake people make when they talk about the coalition question is to talk about coalitions, when they usually mean something quite different. So let’s clear this up right off the top: a coalition government is a very specific arrangement, in which two or more parties agree to share executive power, that is to sit in the same cabinet, and divide the ministries among them. Just because two parties co-operate on something, or support one another in the legislature, does not make it a coalition.

For example, if the Conservatives were to win the most seats in the election, but not a majority, and if Michael Ignatieff were to enlist the support of Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe to defeat the Conservatives in the Commons soon after, and if the Governor General, rather than call new elections, asked him to form a government, that would not necessarily imply a coalition government. He might govern as a minority, issue by issue, as Stephen Harper has for the last five years. Or he might strike a more formal agreement, such as the Liberal-NDP accord that brought David Peterson to power in Ontario in 1985. Neither would be a coalition.

So when the Liberal leader disavows, as he did on the campaign’s first day, any intention of forming a coalition government with the NDP, or any “formal arrangement” with the Bloc, that does not mean he has ruled out taking power by the process described above. By the same token, that Harper, when opposition leader in 2004, schemed to defeat Paul Martin’s Liberal government by exactly the same process with exactly the same people, does not mean that he was bent on coalition, either: or at least, there is no hard evidence that he was.

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Coalition watch

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 4:49 PM - 7 Comments

The NDP has nominated a new candidate in Elgin-Middlesex-London.

Rest assured, the Conservative managed to rush out a new attack ad before their preferred narrative was undermined.

Coyne v. Wells on why we still have to talk about a coalition

By Claire Ward - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 1:27 PM - 11 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

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What Stephen Harper was writing in 1997

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 25 Comments

Terry Milewski digs up an essay penned by Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan around the same time the former was saying things like this. It sketches a potential Reform-Progressive Conservative “alliance”—as opposed to a merger—and then turns to the question of Quebec.

If Quebec stays in Confederation, the Bloc will either disintegrate or become an autonomist party, participating in federal politics as a representative of Quebec’s specific interests. Philosophically, it is logical for liberals to offer Quebec money and privileged treatment, while conservatives find it easier to offer autonomy and enhanced jurisdiction. On that basis, a strategic alliance of Quebec nationalists with conservatives outside Quebec might become possible, and it might be enough to sustain a government.

None of this will be easy or even likely. But experience shows that a monolithic conservative party is unworkable; so conservatives who are unhappy with a one-party-plus system featuring the Liberals as the perpetual governing party may have little choice but to construct an alliance, at least of the two anglophone sisters, and perhaps ultimately including a third sister. An alliance would face many difficulties, to be sure, but it would also have two great advantages. It would reflect the regional and cultural character of Canadian society, and it would give that character an institutional expression. Also, it would allow leaders of the regional parties to defend necessary compromises as precisely that — necessary compromises. In a single national party, compromises have to be defended as party policy, which tends to drive dissenters out of the fold.

Mr. Harper and Mr. Flanagan then concluded with an ode to political cooperation, including mention of the “coalition governments” that exist in Europe. Continue…

What he was trying to say

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 3:19 PM - 32 Comments

Stephen Harper was apparently asked today about his comments in 1997 about a future “coalition or working alliance” among parties in Parliament.

“This clip was a clip of me discussing uniting the right,” Mr. Harper told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t think it was any secret we were trying to bring together the Progressive Conservatives, the Reform Alliance and the Democratic Representatives. We were very clear we were looking for mechanisms to bring us together – and we did create a merger as you know.”

He stressed: “I have never attempted to take office without winning an election. The other guys did.”

The TVO interview seems to have occurred shortly after Mr. Harper resigned in 1997 and, as Paul notes, the Democratic Representative Caucus wouldn’t come into existence for another four years. (When Mr. Harper spoke, five parties existed: the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, NDP and Reform.)

That aside, his specific comments in 1997 about the future arrangement of our parliamentary democracy seemed to exceed both a simple merger of the PCs and Reform and his contention now that only the party that wins the most seats can form government.

Continue…