Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Just six weeks after the last federal election, our brand new government has already failed. This week, Finance Minister Flaherty gave an economic update to the House of Commons that was belittled and scorned by members of the opposition for not including a stimulus package for the ailing economy. While not a full budget, the update also tweaked federal spending, most notably by proposing the cessation of public funding for federal parties. This so called ‘vote-tax’ awards $1.93 per vote per year to each of our political parties, and if cut, will eliminate roughly half of the funding for all opposition parties.

In response, the Liberal and NDP parties have made news by threatening to topple the current administration and replace it with a coalition government, possibly lead by Stephan Dion. Enter partisan politics, as over-the-aisle bickering ensues, and government grinds to a standstill in the midst of the worst economic situation faced by Canadians in over a decade. Early yesterday morning, Harpers’ office issued marching orders to their Ministers across Canada that urged them to go into campaign mode over the weekend, rallying support for the Conservative minority with the following key talking points:

• We’re not even two months removed from the last election, and a group of backroom politicians are going to pick who the Prime Minister is. Canadians didn’t vote for this person. We don’t even know who this person will be.
• Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition. Certainly not a single voter voted for the Liberals to form a coalition with the separatists in the Bloc.
• This is what bothers me the most. The Conservatives won the election. The Opposition keeps saying that the Conservatives have to respect the will of the voters that this is a minority and so on.
• …how about Liberals, NDP and Bloc respecting the will of the voters when they said “YOU LOSE”.
• And what’s this going to do to the economy. I’m sorry, I don’t care how desperate the Liberals are — giving socialists (Jack Layton) and separatists (Gilles Duceppe) a veto over every decision in government — that is a recipe for total economic disaster.
• But how more phony could these guys be?
• I mean, I follow the news, virtually every single day you have Harper or Flaherty out there telegraphing exactly what they plan to do with the economy. And not once did you hear the Liberals, NDP or separatists talking about toppling the government in response.
• No — do you know what set this off. When Flaherty said he was going to take taxpayer-funded subsidies away from the opposition. Now there is a reason to try and overturn an election— because the Conservatives the audacity to say “Hey, it’s a recession, maybe you should take your nose out of the trough.”
• And I wish the media would be more clear on this point — the opposition aren’t being singled out by this fact the Conservatives stand to lose the most money of all. The only difference is that Canadians are voluntarily giving money the Conservatives, so they don’t need taxpayer handouts. The only reason the opposition would be hurt more is because nobody wants to donate to them. They should be putting their efforts towards fixing that problem.
• I don’t want another election. But what I want even less is a surprise backroom Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy

This kind of trash belongs in the No Spin Zone on Fox News, not in Canadian news media. “Not a single voter voted for a Liberal-NDP coalition”? Give me a break; that wasn’t an option on the ballot! That said, while only 36% of Canadians voted for a Conservative minority, some 64% of Canadians voted for either the NDP or the Liberals, so a coalition would certainly represent a larger slice of the population than the current government.

“…how about the Liberals, NDP and Bloc respecting the will of the voters when they said “YOU LOSE”"? The very idea of a minority government is that nobody won or lost the election. No one party was popular enough to garner the majority of voter support. Thus, there are no winners and no losers, only a loose collection of Ministers charged with working together to best represent the views of all Canadians.

“…[I don't want a] Prime Minister whom I never even had the opportunity to vote for or against. What an insult to democracy.” This is a particularly distressing point that puts forth the notion that in forming a coalition government, the opposition will in some way be forfeiting the rights of Canadians and the ideals of democracy. In fact, by forming a coalition, the opposition parties are saying to the current government that they (and thus the citizens that they represent) no longer have any confidence in the Conservative party to responsibly govern our country. If the Governor General agrees with them, she will then appoint a new Government that will act in the interests of all Canadians. This is not in any way a sneaky, underhanded, or backroom move; it is a precedented function of our democratic system. Winston Churchill was the leader of a coalition government that ousted Neville Chamberlain when his appeasement techniques failed to prevent Germany from invading Poland in 1939. For his leadership throughout the Second World War, Churchill is widely regarded as one of the best Prime Ministers ever to hold office in Britain.

While there is no doubt in my mind that the oppositions’ outrage stems mostly from the proposed cuts to their public funding, and not from the lack of a stimulus package as they continually insist, I can’t help but think that the opposition in the right. Public funding puts niche parties like the Greens and the NDP in a position to repeatedly run against the big boys, ensuring that the voices of millions of Canadians that do not otherwise identify with either the Conservatives or the Liberals are heard. A strong multi-party system that allows the opinions of all Canadians to be heard in the house is essential to our ideals of democracy. To add to the debacle, the vote tax costs taxpayers an estimated $27 million per year. Considering the size of the yearly budget, this is a decidedly puny expense to pick on. I for one, do not believe that saving every man, woman, and child in Canada less than $1 per year will help us out of a recession. To that end, I feel that this cut is a purely political move by Harpers’ Conservatives in an effort to undermine the ability of the opposition to challenge his hopes for a majority when the next election rolls around.

However, on the other side of the argument, I cannot understand the incessant push by the opposition for the government to immeidately roll out a stimulus package for our economy. As of yet, the world has no idea what, if anything, a multi-billion dollar injection of borrowed funds will do for the economy in the long term. Our currently projected defecit is a manageable one, and the two major industries in Canada that are in the most need at the moment – the auto and forestry industries – are almost wholly dependent on the economic situation of the United States, one that an injection of cash into our economy would have little effect on. Just because the rest of the G7 have opted to go hundreds of billions of dollars into debt doesn’t mean that Canada needs to follow suit. If we instead attempt to ride out the crisis and make cuts where necessary to minimize our defecit in the intermittent years, our position will be a rosy one in comparison to others when the world economy finally rebounds.

Under threat of the opposition toppling his party, Stephan Harper decided this morning to drop the cuts to the vote-tax from the budget update. Of course, this will not stop the threat of a coalition government, as the opposition cannot back down now, lest they admit that their threat was a response to the vote-tax cuts in the first place. The threat still stands, with the opposition parties demanding economic stimulus immediately, the Conservatives promising it in their full budget due shortly after the new year, and the next vote that could topple the current government scheduled for Monday, December 8. Meanwhile, Conservative MP’s continue to thrash the opposition’s demands, claiming that “the Liberals, the separatists and the socialists, all of whom were resoundingly rejected in the last election, want to overturn that election and impose a coalition that they promised they would never entertain.” Transport Minister John Baird echoed these sentiments, saying that “We’re tremendously disappointed that the opposition parties didn’t share our view that you lead by example. This is all about trying to overturn the results of the last election campaign.”

While I am whole-heartedly dissapointed in all parties of our Government, who instead of pointing fingers and laying blame should be working on solving this problem, I have to put most of my ill feelings on the Tories for their incessant use of partisan scare tactics to rally Canadians to their side of the argument. I would like to think that in this day and age, our Government could be above this kind of crap and instead present real, compelling arguments in favour of their election.

Further Reading:
Use Every Tool at Your Disposal – The Globe and Mail, November 29, 2008

Harper Moves to Avoid Political Showdown – CBC News, November 28, 2009

Won’t Change Economic Update: Flaherty – CBC News, November 28, 2009

Conservatives Drop Party-Funding Cuts from Key Motion – CBC News, November 28, 2009

Tories Blink on Party Funding – Canwest News Service, November 30, 2008

Conservatives Scrap Plan to Cut Party Subsidies – CBC News, November 30, 2008