It is often said that a week is a lifetime in Politics... It has never applied as much as this week.
Wednesday night I was speaking on climate change and my new book, Global Warming for Dummies, at the New Glasgow Public Library. I was handed a note saying that the Conservatives had leaked that the next day they would announce plans to kill the public funding system to political parties. The note asked if I would do an interview with CBC TV immediately after my talk. I checked the YES box on the note and picked right up on the rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
The next day the utter failure of the Harper government to respond appropriately to the current global financial crisis had a shock value far larger than the immediate threat to our finances. Sure, Harper might want to kill the Green Party, but he's supposed to be an economist. The shock of that statement lost the confidence of the House.
And that is what this is really about. It is about the fact that the Harper minority government has lost the confidence of the House.
It cannot be fixed.
The Conservatives still do not get it. They are acting as though they can go back and un-do the act of brutal political force and partisanship over responsibility that was exemplified by the Thursday coup de gras hidden in an empty economic package.
Baird has pulled back the threat to public funding of political parties, saying the Conservatives will bring it back later. They have backed off the attack on public sector unions and their right to strike. Who knows what will be next? As Samuel Johnson wrote: "Impending execution concentrates the mind wonderfully." And the Harper Conservatives are now concentrating. Anything and everything may be announced in the next week. But what good can it possibly do?
Losing the confidence of the House, losing the trust of the public, means that no one believes them any more.
It is not a negotiation.
Today former Conservative, Independent Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey issued a release saying:
"At this critical time of economic crisis, Stephen Harper has failed Canadians as Prime Minister. ....Rather than providing leadership and a badly needed economic stimulus package, Mr. Harper and his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty opted instead to play partisan politics and for some reason, attack unions and women's rights...."
"We are at this point because for two years, Mr. Harper has disrespected the role of opposition parties, traditions, laws, MPs and Parliament."
Bill Casey put his finger on it. This is not a one time display of bullying, might makes right governance.
This is the result of more than two years of disrespectful, abusive behaviour. Only this time they went too far. Bob Rae on CBC this morning said one could almost hear the crack of the Achilles heel in the House as the cruel calculation of the Flaherty economic statement sank in.
They have gone too far. They cannot take it back and the Opposition Parties cannot and must not back down.
Visit: www.progressivecoalition.ca and www.defendourdemocracy.ca