Archive for December 2008
A pox on all your houses
Prime Minister Stephane Dion.
Get used to that title, MPs may be mouthing it constantly at the House of Commons, if a Liberal-NDP coalition unseats the Tories next week.
This is wrong on so many levels.
Last October Dion led the Liberal to one of the party’s biggest election defeats in history, dropping nearly 20 seats after running a disastrous campaign centred around the ill-received Greenshift economic program.
Shortly afterward Dion agreed to step down as leader of the party.
Today, the Liberal caucus agreed to make Dion leader of an NDP-Liberal coalition government, should they agree to unseat the Harper government during a vote of no-confidence next week.
What a difference a month makes.
Amid reports of sinking stock markets, auto plants and manufacturers announcing mass layoffs, and economists casting out predictions of a possible recession and federal deficit in the undefined future, Canada’s opposition parties have somehow decided now is the time to change governments.
Failing that let’s have another election, shall we?
I mean it’s been days and days and days since the last one.
The Dion-led coalition will reportedly include six NDP cabinet ministers and 18 Liberal cabinet ministers.
Canadians soundly rejected Dion and his economic program during the last election — and yet the Liberals may soon be in a position to push through that rejected program next January.
This feels more like a coronation of “Canada’s natural ruling party” than it does the formation of a coalition government. The NDP and Liberals combined don’t have enough seats to form a majority; for that they must depend upon support of the Bloc Quebecois — you know, the party that wants to break up this country.
Prime Minister Harper and his party is partly to blame for this mess — as the Calgary Herald’s Don Martin wrote in a column this morning, Harper’s bullying tactics have finally backfired.
Trying to push forward election financing changes that would hurt the opposition parties and packaging it with a federal budget meant to stimulate the economy was both arrogant and stupid.
Now the Tories are scrambling to stay in power, resorting to Nixonian type tactics of listening in on other parties phone calls — is this legal by the way? — and screaming foul to the media.
Well boo hoo. You made your bed, Mr. Harper, but it looks like Canadians will have to sleep on it.
A pox on all your houses.
bedwards18