A Parliament in Peril

We will not have an election this fall and, God willing, we won’t have one this winter either. Just two short weeks ago it seemed a fall election was all but unavoidable. Michael Ignatieff had announced his intention to no longer support the governing Conservatives, and it seemed incredibly unlikely that the Bloc Québécois or NDP would start supporting the government after years of resolute opposition.
What had before been unlikely came to pass. Last Friday, Gilles Duceppe and his party voted with the Conservatives on a motion of confidence. This Friday, the NDP is preparing to do the same.
All of this reeks of political gamesmanship. Since the coalition crisis, Ignatieff and his party have supported the government not on ideological grounds, but out of political necessity. The second they decided, correctly or otherwise, that their political survival would no longer be imperiled if they were to stop supporting the government, they withdrew their support. Likewise, the Liberals’ continued support of the government created an environment in which the NDP and Bloc could constantly oppose the government, without regard to any overarching ideology or guiding principle.
That fact that the Liberals will no longer support the government, and the other two opposition parties will, won’t have any significant effect on the way our country is governed. The brief episode of musical chairs was followed by a typical public relations skirmish in which each of the parties accused the other of being morally bankrupt, lacking in principles, or something to that effect.
The only things Stephen Harper will change about his approach is that he will include small tokens of appeasement, to maintain the support of the NDP and Bloc. He wont even have to give them too much, as neither party is in a position to make significant gains were an election called.
So, all things considered, Canadians have gained nothing from this civic exercise. Those who remember last December’s coalition crisis will surely see the irony in the fact that the Conservative government will survive in the coming weeks at the leisure of socialists and separatists. Harper’s opponents were just as quick in jumping on this, as Harper was in deflecting their criticism.
The result of all this senseless bickering is that parties who are not cooperating with one another, but instead are acting exclusively in their own self-interest, are claiming to be working together in the spirit of non-partisan and responsible government.
During last fall’s election campaign, at the height of Obamamania, the Canadian public’s utmost desire was for the parties to put aside their partisan bickering and focus on the business of running the country. During the televised debates, five Canadian party leaders announced their intention to lay down their swords and get to work. They promised us cooperation.
Then in December when the NDP, Liberals and Bloc decided to become united in their opposition, to cooperate, the very same Stephen Harper who had promised to cooperate called this union a front upon the very foundations of our democracy. He demonized the coalition attempt and accused opposition leaders involved of trying to usurp his legitimately earned power without the consent of the Canadian people – essentially calling it a palace coup.
Harper continues to use the spectre of the coalition, literally the embodiment of political cooperation, to scare voters away from the other parties. According to the Prime Minister, we have two choices: Canada’s Conservative government or the coalition forces. That this kind of rhetoric is allowed to pass for political discourse is frightening. What’s even more frightening is that it works.
In the current political climate, genuine cooperation among the parties is almost impossible. Political necessity has forced the parties into separate and opposed corners. They offer and withdraw their support with complete disregard for ideology. Before we give any of these parties a majority government, we must reform our political system so that it rewards political conviction rather blind partisanship.