Over the last several weeks it has become clear that the Prime Ministers goal, rather than fixing our economy or reforming our senate has been to ensure future Conservative election victories and increase the power of the Prime Ministers office. He doesn't attempt to ensure future victories by presenting popular legislation or create a more amicable parliament like he promised to during the election campaign. Instead the first goal of his party is to attack the opposition parties he promised to work with by attempting to eliminate vote subsidies, a system where a political party is given $1.95 for every vote it receives to subsidize campaigning costs. This was the very first initiative undertaken by the new Conservative government, putting its own agenda ahead of the needs of the Canadian people.
The opposition parties reacted to this governments divisive initiative the only way they possibly could. They formed a coalition to defeat Harper's short-sighted and selfish agenda. Besides the transparent swipe at the opposition parties with the elimination of voter subsidies, the opposition is more worried about the attacks on their constituents rights. Under the Harper agenda all federal employees would be prohibited from striking until 2011, essentially forbidding their use of collective bargaining. The Harper agenda also attacks the rights of women, denying them the ability to appeal pay equity disputes with their employer to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
The Prime Minister, along with his loyal talking heads proceeded to create vicious lies about how this coalition was an attempt at coup and how it was undemocratic. My own Member of Parliament, Bev Shipley, a backbencher accustomed to spewing nothing but party talking points joined in and repeated those same lies in an open letter to his constituency, as did many other Conservative M.P.'s across the country. The Conservatives spent a great deal of time and money manufacturing outrage over the formation of this coalition, time they neglected to spend on creating a plan to sustain our economy.
After days of the Conservatives feigning shock at a coalition they created with their unpopular legislation and utter disrespect for parliament, the Prime Minister announced he would be addressing the country in a pre-recorded television address. The address clearly had high production values and showed the Prime Minister sitting at his desk speaking in a nice, smooth, reassuring voice. What was lacking from this appearance however was substance. The Prime Minister presented no plan of action, which was what the Canadian people were expecting, but used the televised address as a showcase to present the same tired arguments he had been repeating ad nauseam for days on end.
When the Prime Ministers address ended it was time for the coalition rebuttal, delivered by the Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. Due to a misunderstanding on what video format was to be used and mistakes by technicians at the networks, the coalition rebuttal was delivered twenty minutes late and in poor quality. What this video lacked in quality however, it made up for in substance. Unlike the Prime Minister, the Liberal leader was capable of presenting a logical argument. It didn't really matter what Mr. Dion said in his video address though, because that wasn't going to be the topic of news in the following days. No, the topic was going to be about the videos quality and tardiness, because an argument is just not an argument unless it's presented on a crystal clear 1080p wide screen LCD and a Dolby Digital 6.1 surround sound stereo system. It seems that the news media made a bigger deal about the production values of the videos than points which were being made.
This brings us up to the biggest travesty in this political drama. On December 4th Stephen Harper requested that parliament be prorogued until January 26th and the Governor General granted his request. This allowed Harper's government to avoid a confidence vote which would have taken place on December 9th where the Conservatives would have been defeated. As it stands now the legislation which was to be voted on will die on the order table. This will give the coalition a chance to defeat the Conservative government during the confidence vote on the speech from the throne, assuming of course it doesn't fall apart by then. I can't begin to tell you how dangerous this precedent the Governor General set could be. Using this precedent, any Prime Minister of a minority government can simply have parliament prorogued to avoid a no-confidence motion.
Harper's strategy is simple. He's biding his time in the hope that the coalition will lose support and fall apart. Dion has since agreed to step down as the leader of the Liberal party and Michael Ignatieff should be confirmed for the leadership position sometime later today. The other candidate which was vying for the leadership of the party was Bob Rae, the former Premier of Ontario. Bob Rae dropped out of the race yesterday in order to promote party unity. Harper and the Conservatives hope that this new Liberal leadership will cause a schism in the Liberal caucus, either tearing the coalition apart or making it so volatile that the Governor General wouldn't consider allowing them to form the government.
On January 26th, if the coalition does not hold together and Harper is allowed to continue with his right wing agenda, Canada is going to be in a very bad predicament. We will have a government that's more focused on increasing its own power than helping Canadians get through this recession. Don't think that they will stop at removing collective bargaining rights from federal employees, they will come after you and your rights as soon as they are capable of doing so. This is a party that clearly has no regard for the rights of Canadians based on their "economic update" during this parliament and also their shameful campaign against equal rights for gays during the 38th parliament. We need to support this coalition government and show Harper and his ilk that most of the country didn't vote for his far right agenda, that he has no mandate and that we have no confidence in his ability to lead our country. We need change, so write your M.P., write your local newspapers and talk to your friends and family and demand that change.
Social Disorder by Stephen Henderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at www.socialdisorder.net.