Harper Can't Govern in a Minority?

1. 1. Stephen Harper was supposed to lose the Canadian Alliance Leadership Race in 2002. He won handily.
2. 2. Stephen Harper was supposed to be unable to pull the Canadian Alliance out of single digits of support, and was supposed to end up turning the Alliance into a minor right-wing party. He made it the leading opposition party once again.
3. 3. Stephen Harper was supposed to be unable to bring about unification of the right-wing parties in Canada. He and Peter MacKay did unify them.
4. 4. Stephen Harper was supposed to be unable to win the Conservative Party Leadership against popular Ontarions like Tony Clement and Belinda Stronach. He won a decisive victory.
5. 5. Stephen Harper was supposed to be unable to compete with Paul Martin for votes. He ended up holding Paul Martin to a minority government after having only 6 weeks to prepare and rest after his leadership campaign.
6. 6. Stephen Harper was supposed to never become Prime Minister. He was suppoed to never win in Quebec. Stephen Harper will be Prime Minister in a couple of weeks, and he won 10 seats in Quebec beating the Liberals in popular vote by over 10%.
7. 7. Stephen Harper is now said to be unable to govern in a minority parliament.

Without denying that the task will be hard, we may want to hold off and watch him try before we assume he isn't capable.

Paul Martin Supports Free Vote on Abortion

Martin says he'll let Grit backbenchers choose freely on issue

Even I thought Paul Martin could be "trusted" on this issue. I guess there's no end to Paul Martin's dithering and lying.

Martin is No Progressive Like Layton

Something that I've been having a lot of trouble coming to grips with over the past week is how so many people on the far left (e.g. Buzz Hargrove, Jim Laxer) would rather kill their own party (the N.D.P.) to prop up Paul Martin. Is a Stephen Harper government so scary that they cannot handle a Conservative minority? If so, they're seeing something that is invisible to me. Harper is so moderate these days that it is difficult to distinguish him from the Liberals.

And that's really the heart of this point: Paul Martin is no friend of the progressives. He's much closer to Stephen Harper than Jack Layton. We're talking about the person who slashed health care and education funding putting those two systems into their current state. He's the one who made the huge tax cut in November 2000. He was a key member of a government that has been mired in scandals for decades: helping out cronies (Dupuy affair, the Eggleton girlfriend contracts), the tainted blood scandal/Krever Inquiry which was quashed, the Somalia Inquiry into abuse of children (also quashed), the APEC Inquiry into protester abuse (surely something that progressives should care about), Shawinigate, AdScam, and the HRDC boondoggle. That's Paul Martin's record. What has he done for progressives? Apart from same sex marriage and the child care program, just a lot of hot air.

People want a Conservative Government?

EKOS's latest poll shows that a plurality of Canadians (29%) want a Conservative majority government, while a majority (51%) want a Conservative government.

Red Book Leaked?

Supposedly a copy of the Liberal Red Book has been leaked. I make no claims to its authenticity beyond saying that on a cursory examination, it looks real.

If this is true, this is embarrassing.

Also, if this is true, how can they be so sure that the income trust annoucement didn't leak as well. (Not that I'm claiming that there necessarily was a leak—just that they can't be sure.)

Finally, can someone point me to the Notwithstanding Clause reference. I can't seem to find it.

So, um . . . Foreign Affairs?

Three debates and still no talk about foreign affairs. And not much candidate-initiative on foreign affairs. When did foreign affairs stop being important?

Empty politics

In the previous post, Mustafa responds to a response to a response to a response, and I presently fed up with linking them for continuity. While he doesn't say anything new, at least, he does bring things into sharper focus:

Contingent != the Same

Mandos writes

Note that Mustafa hasn't really responded to what I wrote: he just switched codes. So "accountability" discourse gets replaced by "supporting corruption." Discussion of Jack Layton's actions are once again voided of political content by Mustafa's "accountability/corruption" discourse. Further discussion of motivations, policy considerations, and so on: short-circuited, illegitimate. So it's the same thing as before.

Correct, and you are missing the whole point of my argument. I'm not debating a wide set of policy issues. I am making a very simple argument:

1. Jack Layton was willing to support a corrupt government for a change in the budget
2. Jack Layton previously promised that he would support a government only in exchange for a referendum on proportional representation.
3. Jack Layton is therefore a liar.

I also make the following assertion:

• Jack Layton has, in my opinion, a too low a threshold at which a corrupt government can buy his support.

If Mandos wants a deeper policy debate on the merits of the N.D.P. amendments to the Liberal budget, we can have that debate as well. But that's not what I'm currently trying to argue. (I have argued this in part, here, here, and here.)

Mandos continues

Worse, though, is that even if he didn't simply repeat what I criticized, his response makes no sense. "It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption," quoth he. Dude, they're contingent. It stretches credibility, not to mention reality and logic, that you would be the latter without being the former. They and my criticism of them are all of a piece.

They may be contingent, but they are not the same. And so my motivations for the two do differ. I am angry that the Liberal government survived because it subjected Canada to an extra 8 months of Liberal rule. I am disgusted at Jack Layton since he can be brought off at what I consider to be a cheap price.

If I were to say that I like to eat, and that my favourite passtime is eating chocolate cake (neither of these is true, BTW), you would be correct to point out that these are contingent: my favourite passtime cannot be eating a certain kind of food if I dislike eating. However, the two statements are not the same and neither are the motivations. In particular, chocolate cake has lots of sugar that stimulate taste buds to send positive neural responses that are separate from the neural responses created by having a full belly.

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They're contingent, dude

Mustafa Hirji attempts to wiggle out of the implications of his own post in his response to my own recent post [this backlinking is really annoying and makes it difficult to hold a conversation here...hmm, I wonder what common blog feature solves this problem...]:

Mandos responds to a post of mine by falsly attributing that I dislike Jack Layton not because he supported corruption, but because I'm angry at him for preventing the Liberal government from falling. At risk of boring readers, all I will say is that while I am angry that the Liberal government fell 6 months later than it should, that is not my reason for being angry at Jack Layton. It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption. Though I'm sure there is no convincing Mandos who's decided for me what my motives are already.

Worse, though, is that even if he didn't simply repeat what I criticized, his response makes no sense. "It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption," quoth he. Dude, they're contingent. It stretches credibility, not to mention reality and logic, that you would be the latter without being the former. They and my criticism of them are all of a piece.

(Of course, Mustafa deflects all further criticism by saying that I am beyond convincing. I'm only reading what he wrote.)

As an aside, he also seems to have missed my point about the NDP's crediblity as a party. I'm saying that the NDP's problem is, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't." There's just no pleasing everyone. Part of the problem is exemplified by Mustafa's treatment of Jack Layton's actions re sponsorgate.

Update: Since the much touted alternative to comments---trackbacks---don't seem to work here either, here's my hand-crafted trackback to my Politblogo post referring to this discussion. Comments are enabled there *wink*.

Running Amok A Little More

Mandos responds to a post of mine by falsly attributing that I dislike Jack Layton not because he supported corruption, but because I'm angry at him for preventing the Liberal government from falling. At risk of boring readers, all I will say is that while I am angry that the Liberal government fell 6 months later than it should, that is not my reason for being angry at Jack Layton. It is possible for me to be both angry that the Liberal government survived and to be disgusted at Jack Layton willingness to support corruption. Though I'm sure there is no convincing Mandos who's decided for me what my motives are already.

As well, Mandos remarks

If [the N.D.P. members] don't behave like Normal Politicians, some people don't consider them a serious party. And if they do, then people like Mustafa Hirji don't consider them to be a party worth voting for. And that's far more worth worrying about than the failure of the Liberals to fall on the sponsorship scandal, which so apparently disappoints Mustafa.

I actually agree with Mandos on the worrying absence of anyone worth voting for. I find myself in the irritating position of wanting to vote against every candidate in my riding. In reflection of this, over the past week, I believe I have criticized the Conservatives, the Liberals, the N.D.P., and the Greens. Of course, just because I criticize Paul Martin and Jack Layton more than Stephen Harper and Jim Harris, Mandos has decided for me that I only dislike Martin and Layton. (The real reason that I pick on those two more is that fighting government corruption is the most important issue to me, and because Martin and Layton are easy targets and I'm intellectually lazy.)

Mustafa Hirji: Running amok

Readers of this site may notice that my contributions have lately become, um, sparse. There should probably be an "um" before the "lately" as well. That is because I declared sovereignty association and created my own blog with comments. As I have said before, it's very hard for me to pay attention to blogs that don't have comments on them. And now I have joined yet another blog with comments: I have become Quixotic.

In the process of flogging another hobby horse, I happened to chance back on this site, and I noticed that my humourless friend Mustafa Hirji was running amok! He is also flogging a hobby horse: his tired old sponsorgate outrage. I sort of felt compiled to remark on it in passing. In fact, in one post, the rhetorical depth of this obsession is fascinating:

Something Smells Rotten About This Income Trust Business

Andrew Coyne, via some other bloggers, discovers a couple of interesting tidbits. First:

Richard Nesibtt, the Toronto Stock Exchange chairman who cleared a cool $100,000 on the timely purchase of a bundle of stock hours before the income trust decision, is registered to lobby the government on matters related to ... wait for it ... income trusts. Which doesn't prove anything, nor should any conclusions be drawn: no libellous speculation, please.

I find this very disturbing. The Toronto Stock Exchange Group is a quasi-regulatory body that runs the stock exchange. Stock exchanges need to be beyond all suspicion of manipulation or the exchanges risk collapse. If the person who runs the stock exchange is also a government lobbyist, then I think that person is in a huge conflict of interest. There's no other way to describe it. It's like saying that the Chief Electoral Officer should be a government lobbyist. The TSX Group like Elections Canada should be above politics with the sole mission of making sure operations are efficient and completely unbaised and fair.

The lobbyist for Yellow Pages Income Fund, meanwhile, which jumped 3.4% that day, turns out to be none other than Barry Campbell, former parliamentary secretary to ... wait for it ... Paul Martin. Doesn't prove anything etc.

Something smells fishy. The rotten fish type of fishy to be precise. Hmmm.

Charter Reform

The Green Party has unveiled their platform. It includes this curious provision

Amend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to enshrine the right of future Canadians to an ecological heritage that includes breathable air and drinkable water.

Constitutional rights exist to protect the people from government. In particular, constitutional rights protect people from government policy that would create or widen inequalities that would undermine the democratic system: if certain classes of people are abused, then they cannot play a part in the democracy.

I'm not sure breathable air and drinkable water belong in the Charter. While these are important policy goals, they aren't the stuff of constitutional rights. If these sorts of policy preferences get added to the Charter, effectively democracy is undermined: these issues are removed from the normal democratic policy-making discourse. Preventing the people from making a choice in policy is undemocratic. It's almost aking to, say, putting the right to be protected by a strong militiary into the Charter.

Governments should have the discretion to invest the people's money where the people want it invested. And government should have the discretion to make policy that reflects what the people want. Only in extreme cases where democracy and the rule of law are threatened—preventing racism, preventing the denial of voting rights, preventing denial of due process in judicial proceedings, etc.—should the majority preference be constrained.

Also interesting in the Green's platform is their call for use of the notwithstanding clause:

Use the full force of the Canada Health Act, federal spending power and the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to oppose any steps that open the way to two-tier health care in Canada.

Paul Martin's Knowledge of the Income Trust Decision

Ralph Goodale is now saying that Paul Martin did not know of the income trust decision. Previously, Paul Martin had said that he learnt of the decision the day of the annoucement.

I don't have any evidence to determine which of either (or both) of these accounts is wrong, but it strikes me as very odd that the Prime Minister would not know about his government's policy decisions well in advance. If Paul Martin was in the dark about this issue as Goodale claims, I have serious questions about his management style. Chief executives normally ensure that they are informed before any major decision is announced. It's part of the chief executive's duties to be in the know well in advance of others.

Harper's Priorities

Stephen Harper today outlined his priorities should he become Prime Minister:

• Clean up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act;
• Provide real tax relief to working families by cutting the GST;
• Make our streets and communities safer by cracking down on crime;
• Help parents with the cost of raising their children; and
• Work with the provinces to establish a Patient Wait Times Guarantee.

This is probably our first clear vision of what a Harper-led government would do. One one level it is good to see that Harper, unlike Paul Martin, understands what priorities are and the need to have them (for Paul Martin, everything is a priority in his speeches, but nothing is a priority in his actions).

On another level, these priorities are fairly disappointing. No reforming of democracy, no debt reduction, no reduction of income taxes (cutting the GST poor economics and defeats the biggest reason for cutting taxes—improving productivity which will lead to a higher standard of living). In fact, none of the five are really broad changes showing some sort of underlying vision for the country. Harper isn't putting forward comprehensive plans for improving the economy, or for improving health care. He's putting forward little spending promises that could form part of a larger plan if such a larger plan existed (it doesn't).

As a final comment, it does look likely that Harper would be able to get this agenda through Parliament if he is elected. I'm sure the N.D.P. and the Bloc Quebecois would support the first (Federal Accountability Act), second (GST cut), and fifth (Patient Wait Time Guarantee), and the third (getting tough on crime) is mostly non-legislative so it could largely happen without any support in the Commons (instituting minimum sentences would require legislative changes though). Only the child care proposal is likely to draw some opposition, and I can see the Conservatives possibly getting it passed by picking up stray Liberal M.P.s.

So, a realistic set of priorities, but one devoid of any vision for the country.