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…

"An odd (!) understanding" of how Parliament works

By John Geddes - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:29 PM - 68 Comments

As I did yesterday, I turn to Prof. Don Desserud, the University of New Brunswick expert on our parliamentary system, for insights into what is being said by Stephen Harper about that much-debated episode in 2004—you know, back when he was cooperating, but not coalition-conniving, with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

This time, I asked Desserud about the prime minister’s fuller explanation today of what exactly he had in mind when he signed that joint letter to the governor-general with the NDP’s Layton and the Bloc’s Duceppe.

Continue…

Harper's version

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:17 PM - 88 Comments

Though it’s not reported exactly what question was put to him, Stephen Harper seems to have explained this morning what he meant when he asked Adrienne Clarkson in 2004 to consider her “options.”

“What was the option? The option was very clear. It’s the option we did. Which was as opposition leader I was seeking to put pressure on the government to influence its agenda without bringing it down, without defeating it and replacing it.”

Harper said that at the time, Martin was saying that any change in government policy, no matter how small, would be treated as a confidence measure and he would go to the governor general. “My position was if he did that the governor general should come to us. I would have told the governor general we in fact are not trying to bring the government down. All Mr. Martin has to do is sit down and talk with us. And I’m sure we will find a resolution.”

This, though it would seem to involve dabbling with the confidence convention, is similar to what Mr. Harper said when asked in 2004 about the letter to the governor general and whether he was interested in forming government. Except that at that time, he described the possibility of forming government as “extremely hypothetical.” Both Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe maintain Mr. Harper was interested in the possibility of forming government at the time, despite being one of the “losers” of the 2004 election.

Nonetheless, if this answers the first of those two questions for Mr. Harper, that leaves only the second in need of a response.

Layton's version

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 64 Comments

Two questions remain for Stephen Harper to answer. But to this and this and this, you can add what Jack Layton wrote five years ago. In Chapter 9 of Speaking Out Louder—published in 2006—Jack Layton detailed the aftermath of the 2004 election from his perspective.

After meeting first with Paul Martin—and finding little room for cooperation—Mr. Layton met with Mr. Harper and Mr. Duceppe. Below, a few excerpts concerning those discussions. Continue…

Coalition matters: the Coshist talking points

By Colby Cosh - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 5:23 PM - 149 Comments

1. The grouches who are complaining that the election talk so far has focused too obsessively on coalitions and post-election hypotheticals are apparently incapable of seeing that discussion goes faster in the 21st century. That they are making this complaint all the way into the official first full day of the election should have served as a hint to them. (You’re exhausted already? Poor lambs.) There is plenty of time left to have this conversation, and to obtain desirable assurances from various party leaders. Particularly ones that are (or were, until yesterday) trying to get away with being a little mealy-mouthed about it!

2. The coalition chit-chat, after all, concerns a field of ethics and procedure in which there are few firm rules and novel, still-unresolved complexities. Canada is trying to govern itself with a separatist party close to (and unlikely to be driven very far away from) the fulcrum of power in its popular assembly. It is worth taking a little while to get this right. Continue…

The '04 leaders debate

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 3:53 PM - 72 Comments

Mr. Harper says the Conservative party “allowed” Mr. Martin to govern after the 2004 election. Mr. Duceppe says what Mr. Harper says now is the opposite of what he said then. Mr. Layton says Mr. Harper was prepared to form government.

“What Mr. Harper was intending to do, it’s absolutely crystal clear to me, was to attempt to become prime minister even though he had not received the most seats in the House. And that letter was designed to illustrate that such an option is legitimate in Canadian constitutional traditions and there was no question about it,” Mr. Layton told reporters Sunday morning in his first new conference of the election campaign. “I was in meetings where this was discussed” … “For me it’s a question of trust. I do not believe you can trust Mr. Harper with his word,” Mr. Layton said. “And I think this recent position that he’s taking now that the idea of parties working together is somehow contrary to Canadian institutions and totally unacceptable is a false outrage because he was willing to do that himself when he would have become prime minister.”

Mr. Ignatieff seems not to have much sympathy for Mr. Harper. This from a meeting with reporters a short while ago here in Montreal. Continue…

Gilles Duceppe, federalist hardliner

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 3:10 PM - 67 Comments

“Mr. Duceppe clarified that he, too, would never be part of a formal coalition with the other parties, saying it would be “against nature” for the separatist party to be government ministers.”

Thus putting him offside with the countless Canadian academics, politicians and blog commenters who are quite ready to explain why it’s perfectly all right for a party dedicated to the destruction of Canada to also be governing it.

Repeat after him

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 11:35 AM - 46 Comments

The prepared text of Mr. Harper’s remarks to a rally in Brampton this morning, including no less than 21 instances of the word “coalition.”

“Friends, yesterday I reluctantly visited the Governor-General.  I say reluctantly because as much as I appreciate your enthusiasm, as much as I enjoy campaigning all across this great country, and as confident as I am in our team and our chances, this is not where I should be.

“Not where any of us: Leaders, Ministers, MPs, should be.  We should all be back in Ottawa.  At our desks.  And working!

“Working to protect our economic advantage.  Working to complete our economic recovery.  And working to keep your taxes down by implementing the budget that the minister of finance tabled on Tuesday.  That budget is the next phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, a plan by which this country, Canada, has been leading the global recovery!

“It is a low-tax plan of critical importance to jobs, growth and the financial security of hardworking Canadian families.

“But, as you know, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois Coalition had a different priority: an election the country didn’t want, an election the economy doesn’t need.

Continue…

Iggy's (continuing) problem, Harper's opportunity

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 11:33 AM - 113 Comments

As others have pointed out, and as I’ve said myself, Ignatieff’s formal disavowal of any post-election coalition with the NDP and the Bloc does not mean he has sworn off trying to form a government with their support.

Indeed, if Harper does not win a majority, that is the almost certain result: though it’s always possible Harper might try to strike a deal with them himself, and not impossible they would accept, the greater probability by far is that a Conservative minority government would soon be defeated in the House. Depending on the numbers, and assuming Ignatieff could give the Governor General some assurance, sans coalition, of its stability, a Liberal minority government would then follow.

That’s fine. It’s how the system works. But it still presents Ignatieff with a problem, and Harper with an opportunity. The problem for Iggy is similar, though less acute, to that which bedeviled him so long as coalition talk was in the air. His strategy for winning left-leaning voters, who might otherwise vote NDP, depends upon insisting that they must vote Liberal to keep the Tories out — that unless the Liberals win the most seats, they are doomed to be governed by the Conservatives. But if in fact the Conservatives can be removed from power without giving the Liberals more seats — if the other parties can combine to defeat them in the House and put the Liberals in government in their place — then the NDP-leaning voter can vote Dipper in good conscience, and the traditional Liberal fear campaign loses its potency.

To be sure, Ignatieff can plead with voters to give him enough seats to persuade the Governor General to call upon him: without the cement of a coalition deal, he’ll need some other means of proving his ability to provide stable government. But it doesn’t have quite the same dire appeal as Us or Them.

That’s why Iggy is so reluctant to talk about what would happen if the Liberals don’t win the most seats. (Even the no-coalition pledge neglects to mention it, an elision which at first appeared as if it might have been intended to provide an escape hatch, but which I am accepting the party’s word does not.) And that’s why it’s perfectly fair game for Harper to talk it up. He just has to be less hysterical about it.

It’s not a matter of such parliamentary transfers of power, by a vote of the House rather than a vote of the people, being “illegitimate” — an argument he is in no position to maintain. And he’ll have a hard time keeping up the argument that Ignatieff is simply lying through his teeth for five weeks. The point is, he doesn’t need to. All he needs to do is point out that the most probable alternative to a Conservative majority is not a Liberal majority, but a Liberal minority, in cahoots with the NDP and the Bloc. It needn’t be a coalition, with New Democrats in cabinet and all that, but it would still very likely involve some sort of deal that would pull the Liberals to the left — particularly if the Liberals do not possess even the plurality of seats in the House, and must pitch the Governor General on their ability to hold a government together. (Of course, if by some miracle the Liberals seemed headed for a majority, that argument would be moot. But then Ignatieff would face a different problem: NDP switchers defecting back to the left to force him to work with the Dips.)

That’s Harper’s appeal to centre-right voters: Us or All of Them. But it also has the virtue of reminding left-wing voters of their options. And if he doesn’t, you may be sure Layton and Duceppe will. Iggy may have put the coalition monkey to bed, but he still has a problem on his hands.

CODA: The problem facing Harper until now has been this: so long as the choice appeared to be between a Conservative majority and a Conservative minority, a certain number of centre-right voters preferred the latter. That’s one reason he’s been unable to get above 40% in the polls.

But the election presents an opportunity to recast that choice, since it presumably removes the option of a Conservative minority: such a government would almost certainly be defeated at the first opportunity. So now Harper can present the choice as one between a Conservative majority and — on present standings — a Liberal minority, heavily dependent on the NDP and the Bloc.

That sort of government might sound perfectly fine to a lot of voters, but not to the ones he needs: centre-right, Lib-Con switchers. The ones who until now have been opting for a Conservative minority. He’s got to impress upon them that that’s no longer an option.

Who's on first

By Andrew Coyne - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 10:06 AM - 51 Comments

Argh. I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right as I was typing it, and should have checked: it’s not actually true, as both the Liberals and I have lately suggested, that the party that wins the most seats in an election has the right under convention to be called upon first to form a government.

In fact, as a scholarly friend reminded me, it is the party in power at the time the election was called who has that right. The presumption is that it enjoys the confidence of the House until the House votes otherwise. Of course, in most cases the incumbent party, having suffered defeat at the polls and knowing defeat is certain in the House, does not attempt to hold onto power. But not always.

As I should have remembered, an important exception was the trigger event for the King-Byng affair. Defeated in the election of 1925 by Arthur Meighen’s Conservatives — with 101 seats to Meighen’s 116 — Mackenzie King nevertheless insisted on the right to form a government, hoping to persuade the 28 Progressive MPs to support him. A reluctant Lord Byng agreed, on condition that he would then call upon Meighen if King were ever defeated in the House.

When that moment arrived, however, King nevertheless demanded Byng dissolve the House and call new elections. Byng refused, citing their agreement, and asked Meighen to form a government instead. King seized on the supposed “interference” by a foreign potentate as an issue which he used to great effect in the next campaign.

A more recent almost-example: after the defeat of Paul Martin’s Liberals in the election of 2006, there was a brief flurry of speculation that Martin might try some sort of last-ditch deal to remain in government. He immediately ended it by announcing his resignation.

CODA: While incompetence explains my mistake, I suspect this was not an entirely honest error on the Liberals’ part. Rather, it was to put Harper on the spot, to foreclose any chance of him trying to carry on without a plurality of the seats on election day. Hence Ignatieff’s demand to know whether Harper agreed “with how I have described the workings of our democratic system.”

It’s a hard enough case to make, politically, at the best of times — “I may not have won the most seats, but I’m still Prime Minister, dammit!” — but given the stands Harper has taken, probably impossible. In other words, Ignatieff’s giving Harper a taste of his own populist, constitutional-niceties-be-damned medicine.

Two questions for Stephen Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 27, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 60 Comments

In light of all this confusion surrounding Mr. Harper’s previous practice and present stance on parliamentary cooperation, there are perhaps two questions that might (need?) be asked of the Conservative leader for the sake of clarification.

1. What “options” did you intend the Governor General to consider when you, along with Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Layton, wrote to her in September 2004?

2. In 1997, 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?

Harper's hypocrisy problem

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 9:37 PM - 413 Comments

As Jerry Springer might put it, what have we learned after day one of the campaign?

This morning’s statement from Michael Ignatieff on the coalition question was, for the most part, admirably clear:

Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government.

If that is the Liberal Party, then I will be required to rapidly seek the confidence of the newly-elected Parliament. If our government cannot win the support of the House, then Mr. Harper will be called on to form a government and face the same challenge…

If, as Leader of the Liberal Party, I am given the privilege of forming the government, these are the rules that will guide me:

… We will not enter a coalition with other federalist parties. In our system, coalitions are a legitimate constitutional option. However, I believe that issue-by-issue collaboration with other parties is the best way for minority Parliaments to function.

We categorically rule out a coalition or formal arrangement with the Bloc Quebecois…

That certainly sounded like he was ruling out a coalition altogether. Indeed, the conditions were similar to those suggested in my previous post.

There seemed nevertheless to be a possible loophole: the statement explicitly mentioned only what would happen if the Liberals were to win the most seats. But the whole coalition issue has centred on what would happen if the Tories won a minority, but were then defeated on a confidence motion in the House. Did the no-coalition pledge apply in that case? Was the Grit statement a carefully worded dodge, leaving room for the party to claim later that it had never ruled out a coalition in the latter event?

I called the Liberals to inquire. Their MP, David McGuinty, called me back. He was careful to make sure he understood my question, and I was careful to make sure I had heard his answer correctly. And it was unequivocal: the same rules would apply in either case. No coalition, no formal arrangement with the Bloc.

I consider the issue settled. It has taken far too long to get Ignatieff to this point — he should have ruled out a coalition long ago — and there can be little doubt the reason for his silence until today: he was trying to keep his options open. But now he has been forced to choose. Unless he is just flat out lying — the biggest lie that ever was: formally, publicly and in black and white, on a matter of the highest importance and the hottest controversy — there will be no Liberal-led coalition. The Tories are certainly entitled to point out that the Liberals in general, and Ignatieff in particular, said there would be no coalition before the last election, too. But while the Grits might claim, weakly, that those earlier statements were honestly intended at the time, that circumstances arose they could not have anticipated, they can make no such defense of breaking such a blood oath as Ignatieff has just issued. This one is — must be — ironclad.

Now: none of this means that Ignatieff has promised not to topple a Conservative minority government, should one be returned, or replace it with one led by him. He has ruled out a coalition; he has not ruled out a minority government of some other kind. Nor should he. There is absolutely nothing “illegitimate” about one government being replaced by another in this way, that is by the vote of Parliament rather than the votes of the people, and the Tory leader was wrong to have claimed there is. For that matter,  there’s nothing illegitimate about coalition governments, either — though the involvement of the Bloc would be an exception to that rule. On this Stephen Harper was right: you can seek to break up the country, or you can govern the country, but you can’t do both.

The only issue with regard to the possibility of a Liberal-NDP coalition was a political one: would voters, especially right-of-centre voters, care to see a government with NDP cabinet ministers? His pledge today should assuage that concern. Voters must still weigh whether they are comfortable with a Liberal government propped up by the NDP, perhaps via some sort of electoral pact, a la the Peterson-Rae accord in Ontario in 1985 — for the Governor General would want some assurance, in the event the Tories were brought down, that whatever replaced it would be likely to last. And whatever was cobbled together between them would probably still be short of a majority, meaning it would have to seek the support of either the Bloc or the Tories to pass legislation. The Tories are perfectly entitled to point all this out. But that is a very different thing than a coalition. People who consider this a matter of potato-potahto do not know their constitution. It is the difference between the legislative and executive, between MPs and cabinet ministers.

But what of the Conservatives? Weren’t they proposing a coalition themselves, via that notorious 2004 letter to the Governor General? No. While it’s abundantly clear that Harper was ready to replace Paul Martin as prime minister under exactly the circumstances he now denounces — making him not just wrong but hypocritical — it is equally clear he was not proposing to form a coalition. The letter makes no mention of it. All three leaders denied it at the time. And all three have continued to deny it to this day: asked about it at his morning press conference, Duceppe protested he did not want “to invent things.” (Duceppe later tweeted that Harper “talked about” a coalition in their meeting, but has not clarified what this means. Did he propose one? Then why was no such coalition proposed in the letter?) Harper’s readiness to form a government, with the support of the other two parties, in 2004 does not mean he was plotting a coalition, for the same reason that Ignatieff can promise one without the other now: cooperation is not the same as coalition.

Still, it’s worth pursuing Harper on this point. What would he do if his party was returned with a minority, or if the Liberals were? I presume he, too, would rule out a coalition, and I’m prepared to take him at his word on that point. But if he now believes it is “illegitimate” for one government to replace another without going back to the people, is he then formally swearing that he would never again make the kind of agreement with the other parties, whatever it was, he was so evidently prepared to make in 2004?

The summer of 2004

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 4:29 PM - 101 Comments

Gilles Duceppe again offers his version of events.

“When he says only the party that received the most votes can form a government, he said the opposite in this letter. He lied this morning.” The Bloc Leader said there was a key meeting in a Montreal hotel where the subject of the opposition parties banding together against Mr. Martin was thrashed out. “He (Mr. Harper) came to my office and said: ‘What do you want in the speech from the throne’?” Mr. Duceppe said.

Furthermore, via Twitter, Mr. Duceppe says that Mr. Harper “definitely talked about a coalition” when they met seven years ago. Add that to the accumulated testimony and evidence collected to date.

For whatever it is worth, here is what William Johnson wrote in his biography of Mr. Harper about the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election. Continue…

'We will choose between stable national government and a reckless coalition'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 10:23 AM - 16 Comments

The prepared text of the Prime Minister’s statement outside Rideau Hall this morning.

“Good morning.

“In light of yesterday’s disappointing events I met with His Excellency the Governor General, and he has agreed that Parliament should be dissolved.

“Before I say anything else, I would like to begin by thanking Canadians for the confidence and trust they have given me and my colleagues over the past five years.

“It has been a privilege and honour to serve as Prime Minister of the best country in the world as together we faced the most difficult days of the global economic recession.

“At the same time, because of the great challenges that still confront us I understand that our job is not done.

Continue…

The rules of our democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 9:07 AM - 52 Comments

The Prime Minister will momentarily arrive at Rideau Hall to ask that Parliament be dissolved. Meanwhile this morning, Michael Ignatieff has released a statement on how he would handle a minority government.

This election is not just an exercise in democracy, it’s about democracy.  So as we begin the campaign, let’s be clear about the rules.

Whoever leads the party that wins the most seats on election day should be called on to form the government.

If that is the Liberal Party, then I will be required to rapidly seek the confidence of the newly-elected Parliament.   If our government cannot win the support of the House, then Mr. Harper will be called on to form a government and face the same challenge.  That is our Constitution.  It is the law of the land.

Continue…

'The only course of action that remains'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 3:45 PM - 119 Comments

The Prime Minister’s statement to reporters after his government was defeated in the House.

Good afternoon.  I’ll be brief.  The global economy is still fragile.  Canada’s recovery has been strong but it needs to remain our focus. That’s why the economy has been and will continue to be the number one priority for me as Prime Minister and for all the members of our Conservative government.  This is what Canadians expect of us in Parliament, all of us.

Continue…

Iggy's coalition problem

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, March 25, 2011 at 9:49 AM - 373 Comments

The day-after-the-budget press conference was going rather well for Michael Ignatieff, until the predictable, inevitable question arose: If the Tories failed to win a majority in the coming election, would he form a coalition with the other parties to unseat them and form a government? In other words, is the Tory accusation, repeated at every opportunity, true?

“There’s a blue door and a red door in this election,” he said. Voters can take the blue door (the Conservatives) or the red door (the Liberals), ie they can elect a Conservative government or a Liberal government.

With respect sir, the questioner shouted back, you haven’t answered my question.

Ignatieff began again. “There’s a blue door and a red door…” Continue…

The Commons: Repeat after them

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 6:19 PM - 54 Comments

The Scene. Yesterday and again today, the Prime Minister apparently decided that it was in “Canadians’ interests” that he excuse himself from Question Period. If the House of Commons isn’t going to listen to him, it seems he isn’t going to listen to it. Indeed, given yesterday’s unpleasantness, it seems possible that he has decided to seal himself inside his campaign bubble a bit early.

In his place these last two days, Mr. Harper has sent John Baird, now seeming the human equivalent of a television ad. In the space of 45 minutes and 16 responses, Mr. Baird managed this day to use the word “coalition” nine times. This was followed in frequency by the words “unnecessary” and “unstable” with four appearances each. Not to be outdone were “risky” and “reckless,” which were each employed thrice.

But first, a word of support for the troops. Continue…

What was Stephen Harper up to in 2004?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 9:01 AM - 230 Comments

In response to the charge yesterday during Question Period that the Harper government had shown contempt for democracy, John Baird offered the following.

Mr. Speaker, it is the leader of the Liberal Party who is showing contempt for Canadian voters. He does not accept the fundamental democratic principle that the person with the most votes wins elections. He wanted to establish a coalition government with the Bloc Québécois and the NDP and now the coalition is back again. That shows utter contempt for Canadians.

Mr. Baird’s invoking of fundamental democratic principles was particularly noteworthy in light of what Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe had said two hours earlier in their respective news conferences. Continue…

Coyne v. Wells on the looming election

By Claire Ward - Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 5:55 PM - 65 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

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The week ahead

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 16 Comments

The 40th Parliament began with a moment of unprecedented democratic intrigue and may soon end similarly. The House returns this morning at 11 and there are various pieces in play, or potentially in play: a budget, a contempt finding against the Harper government, a contempt finding against International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, a budget amendment, a motion of non-confidence and a vote on the government’s financial estimates.

Oh, and there’s a military campaign against Libya to be discussed.

Greg Weston has a comprehensive accounting of what may happen when.

Does Layton have the nerve?

By John Geddes - Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 80 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Wahl

Jack Layton’s return to the floor of the House after hip surgery early this month prompted a rare outpouring of warmth in a bitterly partisan Parliament. As the NDP leader rose stiffly to acknowledge an ovation from all parties, his standing on the federal scene appeared higher than ever. Yet there was an undercurrent of political danger for him even in that moment. With the chance of a spring election growing by the day, would Conservatives and Liberals applaud Layton quite so warmly if they viewed him as a serious threat? At just 60 years old, and only eight years after entering federal politics, he seems at risk of turning into one of those figures, a Robert Stanfield or an Ed Broadbent, more respected than feared.

Still, he remains a man to watch in the pre-election jockeying now consuming Ottawa. The tabling of the budget next week, coming amid the flurry of ethics issues now buffeting Stephen Harper’s government, offers the three opposition parties ample opportunity to fell his Conservative minority—if they have the nerve. To survive, if indeed the Prime Minister wants to put off a campaign, he needs just one of them to vote with him. Layton looks like his best hope. In an interview with Maclean’s, though, he sounded far from conciliatory. He rhymed off measures he wants added to the budget on pensions, health, home-heating costs and home renovations. Asked to elaborate on how much buy-in from the Tories on what combination of these items might satisfy him, Layton declared, “It isn’t a buffet.”

All or nothing sounds like bluster, but Layton says Harper’s situation is comparable to what Paul Martin faced in 2005. Back then, with the Tories and Bloc Québécois salivating to bring down Martin’s scandal-weakened Liberal minority, Layton traded his support for $4.6 billion for NDP priorities like affordable housing and mass transit. Harper now faces charges his party cheated to overspend on ads in the 2006 election, allegations International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda lied to MPs, and accusations that his government denies parliamentarians basic information on how much implementing its policies will cost. It all adds up, Layton argues, to a good time for Harper to learn the virtues of compromise. “If you are going to work in a minority context,” he says, “you are going to have to do some things that you don’t totally agree with.”

Continue…

The Commons: Stephen Harper, ever undaunted

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 6:34 PM - 222 Comments

The Scene. Mr. Harper’s government, as the government of Canada is now to be known, stands accused of various breaches. Of violating electoral law when it won office. Of withholding information demanded of it by Parliament. Of employing a minister who has misled Parliament. Of employing a minister who has misused government resources for his party’s gain. Of paying an exorbitant amount of money to disappear a woman who once held the title of “integrity commissioner.” And yes, of renaming the federal government in the Prime Minister’s own surname.

And so, of course, the government side this afternoon was as gleeful and aggressive as it has ever been. It roared and cheered and mocked and jeered. It laughed and lashed at its critics, it delighted in itself. It was loud and proud.

Mr. Harper sat and smiled and shared the odd chuckle. He reclined as best he could in his chair and fiddled with the cord of his desk’s earpiece. When he stood to answer the Liberal leader’s charges, he shrugged and sighed. If he was the least bit concerned, a tiny bit chastened, it was impossible to tell.

But, of course, he hardly ever appears daunted by such stuff. Indeed, if there is one thing that defines this Prime Minister it is his unrelenting undauntedness, his undaunting relentlessness. He is a man of the post-shame world. Continue…