Showdown on the hill
Published Monday December 1st, 2008
Politics Ottawa rife with tumult and intrigue as Conservatives make frantic play to save government from being toppled
A weekend that offered an unprecedented show of backpedalling, turmoil and trickery in Canada's capital will surely foreshadow the coming days as Prime Minister Stephen Harper desperately tries to fend off a coalition attempt to take down his minority government.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced he would bump up the federal budget date to Jan. 27 - the earliest date in modern times - while his party scrapped a second controversial element of its fall economic plan and hinted at a sector-specific stimulus plan. And that was just to start the day.
Later, it emerged that NDP Leader Jack Layton was secretly taped by Conservatives during a closed-door strategy session boasting to his caucus of plots to bring down the government with the help of the Liberals and Bloc Québécois before the Tories issued their recent economic statement. Now the New Democrats, who inadvertently provided a Tory with the code to a conference call, say the party may pursue criminal charges against the Conservatives.
This capped 48 hours that included a black-tie parliamentary press gallery dinner and staggering political intrigue that could see the government defeated as early as one week from today. The Liberals and NDP have been in negotiations over a possible coalition government over complaints the Conservatives did not do enough in their economic update to stimulate the economy.
Veteran cabinet minister Greg Thompson defended the government's economic plan, calling the idea of a coalition "nothing more than a power grab."
"After having been thoroughly rejected in the last election it's an attempt by the Liberals to seize power," the MP for New Brunswick Southwest said. "We've been spared the economic turmoil the rest of the world has seen. We have yet to experience the downturn and those are the things we have to consider as we move ahead. Our handling of the economy speaks for itself.
"Canadians expect a new government to be given a chance. We were elected less than two months ago and these people are talking about a coalition and an election and defeating the government, knowing full well the economic update is not a budget. That's the type of uncertainty Canadians don't want to see. They're talking about a coalition and they're prepared to hand the finances of the country over to the separatists."
Brian Murphy, the MP for Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe, said the chatter among Liberals - especially on the issue of leadership - is "very tight-lipped on our end out of necessity." He believes the Harper government may fall in a non-confidence vote.
"There is a real possibility there will be a new government by Christmas without an election," Murphy said. "None of us really know what's going to happen. The ball's in their court as to how they are going to persuade the public that their economic statement is sufficient.
"This isn't about having an election. This is about forming a government that reflects Canadians on major issues. The Conservatives took us by surprise. They didn't really take the economic downturn as seriously as we all feel about it. It was a defining moment Thursday when all the opposition parties, despite their vast differences, united."
Madawaska-Restigouche MP Jean-Claude D'Amours said Harper erred irrevocably by refusing to listen to the opposition parties.
"The Prime Minister has never respected the fact he was elected to lead a minority government," D'Amours said. "We're facing an economic crisis in Canada. He only wants to play politics. The forestry crisis in my riding is an example of the government not reacting at all."
Harper, who remade the political landscape by uniting the right, has now united and emboldened the left. And in trying to placate the uneasy alliance marshalling its forces against him, he may have inadvertently made it easier for them to win the battle for public opinion.
There seems little doubt he realized it.
On Saturday, Harper had a key minister deliver news that the Conservatives would back down on their plan, announced just two days before in the fall fiscal update, to cut the $1.95 per vote subsidy to political parties.
On Sunday, Flaherty said the provocative, three-year strike ban in the fiscal update is now "unnecessary" because a settlement had been reached covering minimal wage increases for the vast majority of public service workers.
The Liberals, NDP and Bloc members have outnumbered the Conservative minority in the House of Commons since 2006. They are exasperated with what they see as Harper's "my way or the highway" approach to governing, and believe they have read the public mood in pushing for more intervention to save jobs in a worsening economic crisis.
At Saturday night's press gallery dinner, the possibility of a coalition and the government's future dominated conversation.
Kory Teneycke, Harper's young director of communications, huddled with cabinet minister Peter van Loan, and backbench Liberal and New Democrat members joked about possible portfolios.
One Liberal said the negotiations meant great opportunity for the party, but also great peril. If the talks succeed, they will govern. If they sour, fingers from all sides will point at the Liberals.
Some Liberals said it would be difficult to sell the coalition within the party's own caucus. Some say Liberal leader Stéphane Dion lacks the political instincts to make such an arrangement work. If the alliance doesn't ultimately work for the country, the Liberal brand will be badly damaged long-term.
There was talk, also, that all Dion and the coalition would need is to govern for a year, triggering Harper's departure from the Conservative leadership.
One veteran Liberal staffer pointed to the Prime Minister's history. "If he doesn't get his way, he takes his ball, says he won't play anymore and goes home."
Some Liberals and New Democrats said privately that a coalition won't come to pass. But just as many believe that nothing can stop it, that the idea has too much momentum.
According to one senior opposition MP familiar with the talks, coalition negotiators have a plan that has set priorities for governing for the next two years.
They have also nearly agreed on a "ghost cabinet" that divvies up seats at the cabinet table among seasoned Liberal and NDP parliamentarians.
But perhaps the largest question is that of leadership.
Dion has announced his intention to resign as Liberal leader as soon as his successor is chosen on May 2 at a convention in Vancouver, but there are several scenarios that range from him assuming the role of Prime Minister until then, to withdrawing his intention to resign or stepping down immediately to make way for a replacement.
Liberals aren't saying how they will choose between leadership candidates Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae and New Brunswick's Dominic LeBlanc, who has been meeting regularly with his two rivals.
The Beauséjour MP stated in an e-mail Sunday night that he was "not really commenting tonight" and that "lots will become clearer in the next few days."
D'Amours would not speculate on the leadership situation, saying only that "we will have to address it. Nothing is final."
Thompson sounded regrettable over the events of the past few days.
"We can't guess what the Governor General will do or whether we will fall in the House of Commons as a result of non-confidence," he said. "Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail. It's the sort of political nonsense that all of us who have been around for a while don't like to see because it's distracting and it gets away from the real job of governing.
"It was a deliberate choice by the Liberals to throw this upheaval into the system, and they've done it in great style."
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The Liberals, NDP, and Bloc look ridiculous - it is indeed a power grab. Just when I was starting to believe that maybe the Liberals could have new life breathed into them with a leadership convention.
And then there are the Conservatives that were eavesdropping on a private meeting - it doesn't matter what was happening in the meeting - it was not their place to listen in. This is a "Big Brother" indeed.
This past decade even two, always seeming to throw my vote between the lesser of the devils and having to hope for the best.
I long for a true Canadian Statesman, especially in these days but all I see are politicians. Those politicians with their ideologies who do not speak to the common man. Those with sweet words but with deeds that betray those words with revealing inability to understanding the needs and sensibilites of ordinary folk trying to make their living, raise their children and building a country. Our politics, rife with self interest, builds barriers and today is in need to be rescued from itself, for this countries good. Canada was built by ordinary men and women who struggled, sacrificed, gave their lives for it. These men and women in Ottawa today disgrace these Canadians and make mockery of their achievment paid for and won! Shame on them all if they loose it!