Blessed by the Potato

So for those who haven’t heard, we’re having a little bit of a crisis of faith in our government here in the great white north. We just had an election, which returned Harper with a “strengthened minority” — but a minority nonetheless. There was no “message from Canadians” — our ballots are not that detailed. Nonetheless, I’ve seen Con pundits all over say that Harper has a “mandate” from Canadians and that the opposition parties attempting to form a coalition to govern in his place is “undemocratic”.

Of course, it’s nothing of the sort — the majority of people voted against Harper. He spent years trying to self-destruct parliament with brinksmanship and confidence measures. The message from Canadian voters if anything was “you can’t rule as though you had a majority; here’s another minority now go play nice with the other parties.” Then the first thing he does when he gets back is introduce a partisan fiscal update (that takes away a source of funding for smaller parties) and made it a confidence measure to try to bully it through (oh, it also takes away the right for public sector workers to strike and the right for women to sue for pay equity). So the opposition has indicated that it is prepared to call his bluff, and he throws a hissy fit and threatens to shutter parliament for over a month. Or, as explained over at Whatever by Leila:

“Stephen Harper is not being removed because he proposed to eliminate the $1.95/vote, although that was an underhanded tactic intended to cripple the opposition parties. He withdrew that proposition […] Stephen Harper is being removed because he seems to think that 143 seats and 37.6% of the popular vote is a mandate from Canadians to do whatever the hell he pleases. He has a minority government. As such, it is his responsibility to cooperate with the opposition parties. He refuses to do so. “

Yes, in the midst of the worst economic turmoil in a generation, he wants our government and our leaders to go take a little vacation. Maybe spending more and having economic stimuli and bailouts won’t save us. Maybe it will just create more government debt and make the hole even harder to dig out of — but he’s not even willing to discuss the issue. At a time when the worldwide markets are facing a crisis of confidence, Harper wants to show Canadians that the government is not just asleep at the wheel, it’s not even at the helm!

On top of all this has been the Harper-Flaherty boondoggle of the last few years: lying to Canadians (income trusts, the prospect of a deficit), fiscal mismanagement, politicizing everything, including the safety issues of an ageing nuclear reactor, and breaking their own fixed election date legislation because they were so desperate to get an election in ahead of this turmoil that they’ve long known was coming (but did nothing about).

In a word, the Cons have lost the confidence of parliament, and of Canadians. Having the other parties work together to come to a compromise position that everyone can agree to is democratic, and it’s how our system is supposed to work with minority governments.

Now, my dad is in a bit of a huff over all this — he doesn’t care who ends up in power, but we need some stability to restore confidence in the markets. The Bloc is going to support a coalition for 18 months, so that might be enough, whereas a continued Harper government could be back here again in a week (assuming it is allowed to carry on by some back-pedalling and compromising by the PM) because of just how unstable those personalities are. The market has been burned by Flaherty before: the surprise income trust tax, and two rounds of buying mortgages from banks (not quite a bailout, but close) when the banks didn’t really seem to need it (which actually hurt confidence a bit). Because of that, on a per capita basis, the bailouts in Canada have been almost as large as the ones in the States, and we’re just getting going with this party.

Some perspective is, of course, required. This is not really a “takeover” or a “crisis” — tanks are not going to roll up parliament hill. The MP you elected is still your representative in parliament. All that’s changed is that the majority of ABC MPs have decided to cooperate since the Cons won’t. It’s been pointed out that Stephan Dion and the Liberals will probably take a drubbing in the next election over this — 18 months away, if the Bloc are to be believed — and that’s probably true. For that reason I have to respect the man. He’s willing to take the hit to his own reputation and long-term outlook in order to step up and do what is right for Canada now. Hopefully the coalition will manage to fix the economy (and our environmental plan at the same time) and turn it around within the next year and a half and they’ll be vindicated. If not, at the very least the next Con government we face won’t have Harper (and hopefully not Flaherty either) at the helm; hopefully it’ll be a Progressive Conservative rather than a Reform/Con man.