The Tories made them do it
By Andrew Coyne, Maclean's, Nov 30, 2008
"Well that didn’t take long. Barely three days after the Finance minister rose to deliver his annual fall update, it is all in the dumpster: the fiscal plan, the curbs to subsidies to political parties, the suspension of public employees’ right to strike, maybe even the government itself.
And the settled wisdom of every single pundit in the country is that it is all the Conservatives’ fault. After all, they provoked the opposition beyond endurance. They made demands of the opposition that they could not possibly accept. How could Harper have been so reckless? What a toxic gambit! What a colossal miscalculation!
Absolutely no one pins even a sliver of blame on the Liberals, the NDP or the Bloc. Of course not. Faced with the unreasonable and extreme proposal that they raise funds in the same way as the Conservatives have been doing for years — by asking people for their money, rather than taking it from them — they really had no alternative but to seize power. What on earth were they supposed to do? Revamp their moribund fund-raising organizations? Find a message and a leader capable of motivating large numbers of Canadians to click the “donate” button on their websites? Get off their collective duffs? What were the Tories thinking?
No. No, the sensible, restrained, pragmatic thing to do when threatened with the loss of subsidy is to take down the government. The sober, reasonable, moderate thing to do in this time of economic uncertainty is to provoke a constitutional crisis — to cobble together a coalition without a prime minister or a program, propped up by a separatist party, and demand the governor general call upon it to form a new government, replacing the old one we just elected. It’s been six weeks, after all.
Thank God that Canada has such statesmen in this time of peril, willing to put partisanship aside in pursuit of high office. What a contrast to those hyper-partisan, power-mad Conservatives, with their insane demands that the parties make do on the millions in tax credits and reimbursements they receive outside the subsidy.
But what am I saying? Notwithstanding the hundreds of column-inches attacking the Tories for their intolerable affront to opposition sensibilities, it is important to remember that the opposition’s sudden lurch for power had nothing to do with the impending loss of public funds. No, the reason they are absolutely forced to defeat the government this time, having declined to do so over Afghanistan, or global warming, or budgets 2006, 2007 ot 2008, is on account of the fall update. Nothing bespeaks the fierce urgency of now so much as an annual statistical review.
Again, the commentariat is as of one maddened mind. How could the government be so blind? Can it not see that unemployment has soared to 6.2%? Why, that’s four-tenths of a percentage point above its recent, thirty-year low. And what about Canadians’ fears of losing their home, what with the proportion of mortgages more than 90 days in arrears standing at an all-time record 0.2%? Okay, it’s an all-time record low, but still. When will it realize there’s a Depression on? Or coming? Or quite possible, certainly, in other countries.
While this laissez-faire, do-nothing government contents itself with spending more than any government in the history of Canada — 25% more, after inflation and population growth, than at the start of the decade — and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the banking system, what Canadians demand is “stimulus.” And stimulus, we all know, in a sophisticated, 21st century economy, can be delivered in only one way: by hiring large numbers of unionized men to dig holes in the ground (see “infrastructure.”) Loosening monetary policy doesn’t count. Tax cuts don’t count. It only counts as “stimulus” if the government spends it.
Or rather, it only counts as stimulus if a Liberal government spends it. The Tories have already promised to deliver billions more in “stimulus” in the next budget. But that’s, like, 58 days from now. We can’t possibly wait until then. We cannot wait to see how the economic situation evolves, or what effect the extraordinary series of measures countries around the world have taken to date will have. We cannot wait to see what the Americans will do. By then the polls might have shifted. By then the crisis might have passed. The government must fall now — so that it can fall again in a month’s time.
Because, as absolutely everyone agrees, the Conservatives made them do it. Not that that had anything to do with it.
CODA: To be clear, the opposition is entirely within its rights to defeat the government, and to request the Governor General to call upon them to form a government. And it is entirely within her prerogative to accept their request, rather than to defer to the Prime Minister’s apparent preference for dissolution.
On the other hand, it is also within her prerogative to refuse their request. They have to show, at a minimum, that they can command the confidence of the House, that is to say that the coalition is stable and secure — which at this point is anything but certain. For goodness sake, the Liberals can’t even agree who should lead them, let alone whether and on what terms they can get along with the other parties."
"Well that didn’t take long. Barely three days after the Finance minister rose to deliver his annual fall update, it is all in the dumpster: the fiscal plan, the curbs to subsidies to political parties, the suspension of public employees’ right to strike, maybe even the government itself.
And the settled wisdom of every single pundit in the country is that it is all the Conservatives’ fault. After all, they provoked the opposition beyond endurance. They made demands of the opposition that they could not possibly accept. How could Harper have been so reckless? What a toxic gambit! What a colossal miscalculation!
Absolutely no one pins even a sliver of blame on the Liberals, the NDP or the Bloc. Of course not. Faced with the unreasonable and extreme proposal that they raise funds in the same way as the Conservatives have been doing for years — by asking people for their money, rather than taking it from them — they really had no alternative but to seize power. What on earth were they supposed to do? Revamp their moribund fund-raising organizations? Find a message and a leader capable of motivating large numbers of Canadians to click the “donate” button on their websites? Get off their collective duffs? What were the Tories thinking?
No. No, the sensible, restrained, pragmatic thing to do when threatened with the loss of subsidy is to take down the government. The sober, reasonable, moderate thing to do in this time of economic uncertainty is to provoke a constitutional crisis — to cobble together a coalition without a prime minister or a program, propped up by a separatist party, and demand the governor general call upon it to form a new government, replacing the old one we just elected. It’s been six weeks, after all.
Thank God that Canada has such statesmen in this time of peril, willing to put partisanship aside in pursuit of high office. What a contrast to those hyper-partisan, power-mad Conservatives, with their insane demands that the parties make do on the millions in tax credits and reimbursements they receive outside the subsidy.
But what am I saying? Notwithstanding the hundreds of column-inches attacking the Tories for their intolerable affront to opposition sensibilities, it is important to remember that the opposition’s sudden lurch for power had nothing to do with the impending loss of public funds. No, the reason they are absolutely forced to defeat the government this time, having declined to do so over Afghanistan, or global warming, or budgets 2006, 2007 ot 2008, is on account of the fall update. Nothing bespeaks the fierce urgency of now so much as an annual statistical review.
Again, the commentariat is as of one maddened mind. How could the government be so blind? Can it not see that unemployment has soared to 6.2%? Why, that’s four-tenths of a percentage point above its recent, thirty-year low. And what about Canadians’ fears of losing their home, what with the proportion of mortgages more than 90 days in arrears standing at an all-time record 0.2%? Okay, it’s an all-time record low, but still. When will it realize there’s a Depression on? Or coming? Or quite possible, certainly, in other countries.
While this laissez-faire, do-nothing government contents itself with spending more than any government in the history of Canada — 25% more, after inflation and population growth, than at the start of the decade — and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the banking system, what Canadians demand is “stimulus.” And stimulus, we all know, in a sophisticated, 21st century economy, can be delivered in only one way: by hiring large numbers of unionized men to dig holes in the ground (see “infrastructure.”) Loosening monetary policy doesn’t count. Tax cuts don’t count. It only counts as “stimulus” if the government spends it.
Or rather, it only counts as stimulus if a Liberal government spends it. The Tories have already promised to deliver billions more in “stimulus” in the next budget. But that’s, like, 58 days from now. We can’t possibly wait until then. We cannot wait to see how the economic situation evolves, or what effect the extraordinary series of measures countries around the world have taken to date will have. We cannot wait to see what the Americans will do. By then the polls might have shifted. By then the crisis might have passed. The government must fall now — so that it can fall again in a month’s time.
Because, as absolutely everyone agrees, the Conservatives made them do it. Not that that had anything to do with it.
CODA: To be clear, the opposition is entirely within its rights to defeat the government, and to request the Governor General to call upon them to form a government. And it is entirely within her prerogative to accept their request, rather than to defer to the Prime Minister’s apparent preference for dissolution.
On the other hand, it is also within her prerogative to refuse their request. They have to show, at a minimum, that they can command the confidence of the House, that is to say that the coalition is stable and secure — which at this point is anything but certain. For goodness sake, the Liberals can’t even agree who should lead them, let alone whether and on what terms they can get along with the other parties."
I'm of the opinion that Andrew is right on the money with this. Harper was entirely correct to blow this subsidy out of the water; it never should have existed in the first place. Political parties which can not find sufficient public support for their policies have no business being supported on the public dole. If their political positions resonate with a sufficient number of Canadians, they will find support. If not, then so be it - that is what is democratic, not simply feather-bedding an endless string of fringe groups.
I believe, however, he is being unnecessarily ham-handed with the civil service. Many of the civil service are still reeling from the drubbing they took during the years of Finance Minister Paul Martin. Income levels for many professional and semi-professional positions severely lag their counterparts in other governments or the private sector. This has become particularly acute in the major metropolitan areas where income levels of civil servants have not had economic increases consistent with the rise in cost of living in these areas.
The net result is that the quality of service is declining because civil service positions are becoming secondary income positions for families, rather than primary careers. Simply put, qualified, skilled people can no longer afford to work for the government offering high quality public service because they cannot maintain a home and feed their families in these high cost areas at their present pay scales. The unions have been ineffective at addressing this, partly because its not in the union's best interest to pump for more wages, but rather more (lower paying) jobs. Union dues are the same regardless of the pay scale. More workers, more dues. From a union perspective, numbers count for more than quality of work.
A coalition of the left will be a disaster for Canada's economic well-being. Harper has set Canada on the right path, and Canada needs the CPC for now. The upcoming Obamanation will quite probably be a financial catastrophe for the US, given that democratic policies lie at the root of the existing crisis. Canada cannot benefit from piling on.
posted by Stephen | 12/01/2008 11:18:00 AM
1 Comments:
ummm, ok. actually in regards to your ideas on funding "subsidies" being undemocratic I believe that public funding is largely based on public support. Hence the $/vote. I don't understand how this can be unfair. Rather if we are after democracy private funding should be abolished because this means people with the most money command the most influence. I think democracy is based on one person one vote. People with equal influence. Or maybe I am wrong? Maybe democracy is really that the rich rule? If that is the case then I guess you are right.
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