Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- While I don't share her pessimism about the possibility of votes translating into seats, it's well worth noting Lysiane Gagnon's column on the NDP's position as the top national party in Quebec:

Mr. Duceppe used to focus his attacks on Stephen Harper, since the biggest fight in Quebec is waged between the Conservatives and the Bloc in the Quebec City area, while the Liberals are painfully holding on to their old bastions in a dozen of Montreal’s predominantly anglophone ridings. Rumour, meanwhile, has it that, because of the bonne entente between the Bloc and the NDP, the Bloc is running a weak candidate in Outremont to help Thomas Mulcair, the lone NDP MP in Quebec and the right-hand man of Mr. Layton, keep his seat in what used to be a traditionally Liberal riding.

But the latest Angus Reid poll is a wake-up call for the Bloc. For the first time in its history, the NDP has become the second political force in Quebec, with 24-per-cent support – only 10 points behind the Bloc, which lost two points since the previous Angus Reid poll on March 24.

Moreover, Mr. Layton is more popular than ever in his native province: 36 per cent see him as the best choice for prime minister (against 15 per cent for Mr. Harper and 10 per cent for Michael Ignatieff).

- Cheryl McNamara points out plenty of the good reasons for Canada's current opposition parties to work together in unveiling a new citizens' group pushing for a post-election coalition:

Harper is banking on a disengaged and ill-informed electorate for his political success. He accuses the opposition of forcing an election on Canadians, who clearly do not want it or understand the magnitude of the contempt of Parliament charge; and he presents a Conservative majority as the only stable solution to the dysfunctional Parliament that his government has orchestrated over the past six years.

If his party is handed another minority, what then? The contempt of Parliament charges and past indiscretions have made it impossible for the opposition to work with it. The only alternative is a coalition government, and Harper knows this.
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If the Canadian electorate are sick of elections every few years, they better start warming to the idea of coalition governments.

Everything Harper has worked hard for is in danger of taking a hit. He will not go down without a fight. Caving into his anti-coalition tactic will neither serve the left nor democracy. It's up to the engaged electorate to give the Liberals and NDP the political will to stand up to Harper and do what they must do to restore stable governance.

- Most of the criticism of the Cons' latest patronage arrangement has understandably focused on the plan to pay more salary and severance to political staffers. But perhaps the more telling change is that the Cons are also robbing from the non-partisan to pay the partisan by funding ministers' and staffers' travel expenses out of the pool of money normally directed toward the civil service:

(M)inisters will have a little more money to play with since the government has decreed that their offices should no longer have to foot the bill for international travel by ministers, their staff and parliamentary secretaries. Those costs will now be absorbed by government departments instead.
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The policy document specifies that separation payments "are to be funded through departmental operating budgets," a policy that does not apear (sic) to have changed.

However, the offloading of international trips onto departmental budgets is new.

- Finally, Bill Curry trumpets a "new" development model for First Nations communities - consisting of partnerships between band governments and developers which is leading to direct investment returns for the communities themselves in addition to the development they're seeking to promote.

Needless to say, that outcome looks like a win-win for the communities involved. But it raises the question of why our municipal and provincial governments are bound and determined to avoid any development models which would result in similar returns for our own public sector.