Testing the limits

Based on what Stephen Harper and his party have managed to get away with so far, it's been an open question for quite some time whether there's anything the Cons could do which would manage to earn genuine media condemnation, rather than being painted at least in part as a legitimate byproduct of Harper's partisan fervour.

This may provide the answer.

Collaborative efforts

There was never much danger of the Cons making any real attempt to work with anybody outside their party in Parliament. But today we get another indication of just how far they're going out of their way to avoid cooperating.

The two independent MPs who sent out an invitation to all party leaders are likely the most Con-friendly members of the House of Commons in Parliament outside of Harper's caucus: Andre Arthur is sufficiently popular with the Cons that they chose not to run a candidate against him, and Bill Casey is of course as a former member of their caucus. Yet Harper couldn't even be bothered to respond to a meeting proposed by those two MPs - offering yet another indication that the opposition parties can't expect anything even remotely resembling a good-faith effort either.

Meanwhile, there's exactly one leader who did show real interest in response to Casey and Arthur's proposal to get Canada's federal parties working together:

A spokesman for Jack Layton said the New Democrat leader would attend such a meeting.

"The leader of the NDP is always willing to meet the other leaders," said Karl Belanger. "It has been his practice."

Of course, the opposition parties need to be about Harper's motives - and Layton is surely as much so as any opposition member.

But particularly in looking to sell the message that opposition cooperation is exactly what Canada needs, it can't hurt to keep putting the message about collaborative efforts into practice - especially when contrasted against Harper's continued refusal to work with anybody. And if Arthur and Casey can be added to the voices pointing out the problem with the Cons' aversion to any meaningful discussion, that can only help in persuading the public that a coalition now and a reduced Con contingent in the House of Commons later make for the best solutions.

No surprises

At long last, the Cons' contempt for party democracy is getting some of the widespread media attention it deserves. The Chronicle Herald is leading the way with a particularly scathing editorial, while the Citizen and the Star have joined in with prominent ex-Cons in condemning the determination of Harper and company to suppress their party's own grassroots.

What's particularly unfortunate, though, is that anybody seems to be surprised.

It may be new for the Cons to actually dismiss two candidates who had already been nominated. But it was clear as early as last summer that the Cons were going to great pains to prevent riding associations from having any choice of candidates at all. And it surely can't be seen as a particularly large step from denying a riding association any choice to begin with, to simply cancelling the results of such choices based on the whims of the party's central command.

Hopefully the latest examples won't be soon forgotten - and maybe more attention will be paid to the Cons' past actions now that the issue is getting a more widespread airing. But Canadians should know that the recent incidents are part of a general contempt for democracy rather than isolated occurrences...and that the Cons only figure to get worse as long as Harper perceives the party crackdown as helping his political cause.

Undeserved benefits

In fairness to the Libs and Stephane Dion, they aren't the only ones who seem utterly willing to ignore all available evidence to give Stephen Harper the benefit of any doubt. After all, the Cons' own riding association in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley seems to have kidded itself into thinking that Harper might care about internal democracy, despite all evidence being to the contrary:

A Conservative riding association in northern Nova Scotia is defying Stephen Harper and standing behind renegade MP Bill Casey, leaving the prime minister with the choice to either reverse course or brush aside the wishes of local Tories...

(T)he Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley riding association's board voted Sunday to reinforce Casey's nomination, putting the longtime MP's future as a Conservative candidate back in Harper's hands.

"There is a democratic process in place, they nominated me once, they reinforced that tonight," Casey said in an interview following riding association's two-hour meeting in Truro, N.S.

"If (Harper) believes in the democratic process, then that decision will hold."

Casey and riding association president Scott Armstrong acknowledged that Harper has the final say on candidate nominations, but they remained hopeful the prime minister would change his mind.

Now, the riding association deserves credit for standing up for its own principles. But it's hard to believe that it was completely unaware of either Harper's stated refusal to countenance independent thought like Casey's, or the Cons' track record of suppressing anything approaching internal democracy - making its appeal to some "belief in the democratic process" look utterly naive at best. And the more Harper's chosen opponents (whether within the Cons or the Libs) continue to pretend there's reason to assume the best of him, the less likely Canadian voters are to be skeptical enough of Harper to avoid writing him a blank cheque in the next federal election.

Plus ca change...

Remember back when the Cons' Reform base first crystallized backing the idea of empowered individual MPs as an alternative to the patronage and arm-twisting politics of Brian Mulroney?

Just wondering, since it looks like the ones who made it into office are once again in desperate need of a reminder.

Reason for surprise

Shorter Peter MacKay:
I would never have said our party is willing to tolerate MPs voting their conscience if I'd thought one of our members still had one.

Exceptions and rules

Good on Bill Casey for putting his constituents first by voting against the Cons' choice to break a promise to his home province. But it should be noted that none of the Cons' Saskatchewan MPs - nor any of the other Nova Scotia or Newfoundland members - showed any comparable backbone...making Casey an endangered exception among Con MPs rather than an indication that the party will rein in future promise-breaking by Deceivin' Stephen.

Update: And not surprisingly, the Cons are breaking another promise in response, making an example of Casey by booting him out of caucus.