Revenge of the Nervous Nellies

Ever since they decided to start acting like an opposition last week, the Libs have largely managed to suppress any public doubts within their own party as to whether they're more comfortable returning to their traditional role propping up the Harper Cons. But John Ivison column features what looks to be the first major wave of internal backlash:

(M)any members of the caucus have come down with a bad case of cold feet since Mr. Ignatieff announced last week his decision to bring down the government at the first opportunity. Speaking privately to a number of MPs and backroom Liberals yesterday, many professed extreme disquiet at Mr. Ignatieff's strategy.

One MP said the mood at the caucus meeting in Sudbury was "near unanimous" against a fall election. Yet, less than an hour after caucus had debated the issue, the Liberal leader emerged to hand down his decision.

"We might as well have stayed in bed," said the MP.

Another Liberal said Mr. Ignatieff should have explained to Canadians why the Conservatives have to go, and why the Liberals deserve to replace them, before saying he intends to bring down the government.

"I'm waiting for Mr. Ignatieff to make that case. The cart is before the horse," he said. "We need to provide a compelling road map."

The MP said it is not too late to pull back from the edge. "If the membership and the public clamour loudly that this is not what we need at this point, cooler heads may prevail. If not, we risk a significant backlash over spending $300-million on an election at a time when the country can't afford it -- a backlash that could push the Conservatives into majority territory."

Mind you, it'll be another step for Libs to start attaching their names to further attempts to back down. But all indications are that at least some of Ignatieff's troops are trying to push for yet another retreat - and there can't be much doubt that the Libs' ability to go into battle will suffer for that fact.

Ujjal Dosanjh Agrees with Bob Rae: Liberals Haven't Done their Jobs for Two Years

While Bob Rae may be the leader of the Libs' self-loathing caucus, he's apparently far from alone. Here's Ujjal Dosanjh:

i believe I was not elected to support Harper. Am pt o/offcl oppsn. So now doing what I wae elctd todo.

And of course these are two members of Michael Ignatieff's inner circle. So if even those closest to power in the Libs recognize and acknowledge that they haven't been doing what they were elected to do...then what reason is there to think they'll act any differently if they get rewarded for that failure at the polls?

On self-loathing

When it comes to public demonstrations of stupidity like this, the main message to be taken away is that for all their preening about not having to contrive criticisms about Stephen Harper, they're threatened enough by the NDP to flat-out make up nonsense. But what does it say about the Libs' view of their own party that their supporters' idea of a damaging attack is to shriek that another party might (but on all available evidence won't) do what they've been doing for two years and counting?

Bob Rae: Liberals Haven't Done their Jobs for Two Years

Or at least, that's the implication of what he now says about what he wasn't elected to do:

"I didn't come to Parliament to vote for Stephen Harper, I wasn't elected to vote for a neo-conservative government," Rae told CTV's Canada AM.

And yet, that's of course exactly what Rae and the rest of his party-mates have done. Repeatedly. 79 times, one might even say. And all without a word of protest at the time.

But fortunately, Rae explains why he's now able to acknowledge the fact that he's spent his last two years doing exactly what he was elected not to do:

"I'm a member of the Official Opposition, Mr. Ignatieff is the leader and he's said we're not going to continue to support the government."

So apparently Rae is only allowed to point out the problems with Stephen Harper and his neoconservative government with the Lib leader's dispensation. And if Ignatieff himself has some Harper-like or neoconservative tendencies...well, Rae's own actions in propping up Harper under Iggy's orders tell us just how likely he'll be to do anything to counter them.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

Simple answers to simple questions

Greg asks:

The Tories have a minority government and need the support of only one other party. Whether we have an election or not is up to the government's willingness to negotiate with other parties, not the Liberals. The Liberals alone have no ability to bring down the government. Why won't they work with the other parties in parliament to avoid an election?

Because after three and a half years of staying in power by bulldozing weak opponents as part of a hyperpartisan strategy rather than compromising even once on anything of substance, they flat out don't know how to "work with" anybody. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Iggy said it, not us

I'd point out that it's really been for two years, but otherwise Michael Ignatieff seems to be coming to terms with the role his party continues to play:

“We've kept this government on life support for 10 months. It's important to remember that,” he said at his news conference.

Indeed it is - particularly when it comes time to decide who can be taken seriously in saying they're prepared to offer a better alternative.

A Decreasingly Brief, Updated History of Liberal Declarations that they Can't Go On Supporting the Harper Government's Every Whim

Since they've delivered more material since this post...

October 20, 2007:

Dion told his MPs that it would be unthinkable for him to yield to the humiliation of supporting the throne speech and Harper's vision of Canada. He said that he'd merely be suffering the death "of 1,000 cuts," as long as he propped up the government and he would emerge from the whole ordeal with reputation and leadership damaged.

December 2, 2007:

Dion has had a rough year dealing with constant questions about his leadership abilities, crucial by-election losses in Quebec, and low poll numbers that have forced him to prop up the Conservatives in order to avoid heading to the ballot box.

However, Dion vowed to The Canadian Press that the coming year will be a different story.

"2008 will be another ball game," he said. "You cannot keep alive forever a government who wants to die."

January 14, 2008:

"I honestly don't see how they can support the budget. They are the opposition, they are there to oppose. This notion of appeasing and sitting on your hands, that's run its course. The political price to be paid for doing nothing is too high. If the Tories were to come out with a very Liberal budget, that might diffuse it, but what are the chances of that especially since they [the government] don't have a lot of money," said one top Liberal who requested anonymity.

"The Liberals are coming around to the notion that they can't continue to abstain so I think that's not a viable long-term strategy. So, I don't see the government getting Liberal support on this budget or abstaining."

February 17, 2008:

"We hear now that ... Chretien and Jean Pelletier, his former chief of staff, are telling him it's a matter of credibility, that he can't support the government any more and that the timing would be right," Jean Lapierre told CTV's Question Period on Sunday.

Lapierre, now a political commentator for Quebec's TVA network, said Dion would be "comfortable with that advice."

April 9, 2008:

The Liberals have hammered away at the government in recent weeks over the bill, accusing the Conservatives of seeking a back-door way to enforce an anti-immigrant agenda. But they have refused to say when or if they will actually oppose it in Parliament.

Some political observers say the Liberals could suffer damage within one of their core constituencies — ethnic communities in urban and suburban ridings — unless they back up their rhetoric with action.

October 20, 2008:

One of the chief questions, being asked of returning Liberal MP's- are they prepared to endure another period of abstentions? The theory being, a weakened opposition, with no leader and no money, will be forced to dodge and weave to avoid another election. I would argue, that there should be little chance for a repeat of last spring's embarrassing string of abstentions.

April 10, 2009:

At some point, you can't wait forever. You can't play cat and mouse. You have to have the courage to defeat the government. With the economy deteriorating, you have to be capable of providing an alternative, or else you're endorsing the government.

June 29, 2009:

A Liberal source told The Hill Times that the Liberals are unlikely to vote for the Harper government on confidence votes anymore.

"There's an inherent dichotomy in, 'This government is terrible but I'm going to support them.' How do you reconcile that? [Stéphane] Dion took a lot of political hits because he never reconciled that," said the Liberal source.

And now today:

(O)thers close to Mr. Ignatieff — and many MPs, who loathe propping up the government — are raring to plunge into a campaign. They argue that Mr. Ignatieff's and the party's credibility can't withstand yet another retreat.

Thursday Night Link Blast

Clearing out a few random links currently taking up much-needed browser tab space...

- Yes, the Libs deserve to be mocked more than any one post can handle. Fortunately, Greg, NBC Dipper, pogge and Cameron are all up to the task.

- One piece of Gary Doer's announcement that he'll be stepping down as Manitoba's premier which doesn't seem to have received any attention yet is the question of whether he sees his legacy as set already, or whether there will be anything big to come this fall. Though it's probably true that Doer's previous governing style suggests he'll go out quietly rather than even considering any major initiatives as he steps down.

- For those who haven't seen it yet, Kent Peterson's Humble Opinion is the latest addition to a growing stable of Saskatchewan NDP blogs - and worth a read particularly for his youth-oriented perspective on politics.

- Finally, Michael Geist's post on federal copyright consultations this morning focused largely on the fact that submissions from some activist sites may have been wrongly lumped together. But it's interesting as well to take a look at the compiled numbers of submissions - particularly since in addition to an expected number of mainstream pro-user perspectives, they show more submissions backing outright "open copyright" than supporting stronger penalties for infringement, more support for eliminating copyright altogether than for halting "illegal file sharing", and more respondents endorsing the status quo without changes than backing the industry-driven bill which the Cons tried to foist on Canadians.

Inspirational message for the day

Shorter Lib positioning before the fall session of Parliament:

So it turns out that our last set of confidence threats involved an issue that we don't think matters enough to be worth an election. But that's just as well, since we've been doing a lousy job of laying the groundwork for one anyway.


Incidentally, if there was any hope left for the EI panel, can there be any doubt that the net result will be zero now that the Libs have happily and voluntarily given up whatever leverage they could possibly have held?

And it begins...

Of course Michael Ignatieff couldn't even hint at an election for a matter of days before bending over backwards to say he doesn't want one:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is showing the party flag in the Northwest Territories.

It's not just white, it's bright!

During a visit to Yellowknife Ignatieff tried to dispel rumours of a fall election. He says federal Liberals want good government, not an election.

And apparently Ignatieff is part of a shrinking minority still holding out inexplicable hope that "good government" might be forthcoming from the Cons after three and a half years of incompetence and thuggery. But even if Iggy himself is on the fence as to whether Harper would govern better than he would, shouldn't someone within the Libs be pointing out how self-defeating it is to take that position publicly?

The vicious cycle

When Michael Ignatieff first chose continued Con government rather than the progressive coalition, I noted the obviously fleeting nature of whatever gains Ignatieff could possibly have hoped to make. At that time, my focus was on the influence of Con-friendly media which wasted no time in declaring that the exact decision which they demanded ultimately served as a sign of weakness. But in retrospect, it's natural that the same forces would be at play in public perceptions as well: having opted for the short-term boost of having Harper supporters approve of his decision to roll over, Ignatieff set himself up for a slow bleed of support which has been playing out ever since.

And Ignatieff has only exacerbated that result by wrongly figuring that the formula would work again. Having built his original reputation on an elite-friendly choice to prop up the Harper government, Ignatieff has apparently assumed that he could keep boosting his numbers by setting up new confidence tests and then once again pretending to be a voice of conciliation. But in what should have been a predictable outcome, the response has been rather different when Ignatieff has manufactured his own crises in the absence of any leverage against the Cons. And that's resulted only in Ignatieff falling into the same vicious cycle as his Lib predecessor.

Every single time the Libs roll over, they lose at least a bit of confidence and support as demoralized voters realize that they're backing down in exchange for nothing. Which has served to accelerate the decline which Ignatieff was bound to face anyway - and made it more difficult for the Libs to break out of the cycle, as the opportunities for a confidence vote in the rear-view mirror look ever better than the ones up ahead.

That background brings us to the latest polling which the Libs are so eager to dismiss out of hand. The most obvious example is the latest Ipsos-Reid offering, which may well be rightly seen as an outlier in terms of party preferences. But the signs of weakness on Ignatieff's part go much further than that - and they can't be explained away by the Libs' current excuse about opposition parties having a tough go of it during the summer.

After all, even if one throws the Ipsos-Reid poll out the window entirely, the Libs have indeed dropped over the course of the summer in most polling - which can't be said for either the NDP or the Greens despite their facing the same obstacles as opposition parties. And the Ipsos-Reid result itself is best viewed as part of the polling picture rather than discarded entirely - both for the sake of completeness in taking into account all available data, and because there's plenty of reason for suspicion that it merely fits the pattern of Lib decline rather than serving as a result out of the blue.

Perhaps most notably, though, Ignatieff himself now has sunk to the lowest approval rating of any of the national leaders in Parliament, to go with a net rating comparable to Harper's. So rather than maintaining any political capital personally based on his post-budget warm-and-fuzzies, he now figures to act as a drag on his party.

Now, it may well be true that the Cons can be expected to lose a couple of points of relative strength once they're back under the scrutiny of Parliament this fall. And I'll deal shortly with the one issue which looks like it could well create the conditions for a vote of non-confidence where all of the opposition parties would have an obvious interest in bringing down the Cons.

But there are plenty of pitfalls waiting for the Libs as well. Not only will they have to answer for the apparent failure of their EI panel, but Harper has set up some obvious traps to try to bully the Libs into once again backing down.

And Ignatieff's current message itself seems like an ideal setup for another decision to roll over. For all the Libs' brinksmanship, they aren't sending any consistent message that the Cons need to be brought down (which would itself seem problematic since the current issues are the same ones where the Libs have already given Harper a pass).

Instead, Ignatieff's musings about "when to call an election" invite the Cons and the corporate media to respond with themes of "not now!" and "voters don't want one!". Which makes for the same old no-win situation for the Libs, who don't figure to earn many points in the elite opinion department either by raising the stakes or by backing down.

Of course, we surely know by now that the Libs consistently answer those questions in favour of hoping that factors outside their control will make the next election window a more promising one (even as their position deteriorates in the meantime). But that just leaves the Libs in the same old cycle. And if they haven't yet managed to shoot themselves in the foot enough times to make the Ipsos-Reid numbers into the baseline level of public support, that reality can't be more than a couple more capitulations away.

By necessary implication

Cameron has answered the latest attempt to pretend that opposing the Cons is the same as supporting the Libs with due mockery. But let's go a step further and ask what it means if the Libs' logic is taken at face value.

The claim is based on the following pattern of reasoning:

1. Canadian voters have only two choices for government, the Cons and the Libs. (False, but let's keep going to see where it leads.)
2. Because Canadians have only those two choices, any statement or action related to one of the Libs or the Cons constitutes an endorsement as between the two.
3. Included within (2), any statement that the Cons should be removed from government is then taken to constitute an endorsement of the Libs.

But there's just one glaring problem from the Libs' standpoint if that reasoning is accepted.

Assume that it's true that any declaration that the Cons ought to be removed from power constitutes an endorsement of the Libs as against them. Isn't it then equally true that any declaration that the Cons ought to be kept in power constitutes no less an endorsement of the Cons as against the Libs?

And by that logic, haven't the Libs been endorsing Stephen Harper against their own leaders for the better part of two years?

Again, there are obvious flaws in the argument to begin with (if ones which the Libs have gone to great pains to avoid noticing). But Steve V and other Libs might want to take a closer look at what they're saying in stating that each party can choose between Con government or Lib government, full stop - because they've made a rather damaging choice in that department themselves for the past 79 confidence votes.

(Edit: fixed title, typo.)

Standing for nothing

Warren Kinsella continues the Libs' pattern of projection:

By way of conclusion, we would only echo that old adage: if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

So after rolling over on 79 consecutive confidence votes, what are the Libs doing to demonstrate their strong beliefs which are supposed to keep them from naively falling for anything?

Answers to policy specifics are difficult to come by at the moment. With the party directing their attention to the summer "working group" on Employment Insurance — the line they drew in the sand and a likely election trigger come September — a lot of other policy issues have been sidelined.

Add to this the fact that some Liberal MPs appear to be shrinking from the media this summer. The Liberal communications apparatus is directing journalists to address policy questions to Liberal MPs in their shadow cabinet — but many of those MPs are travelling or on vacation over the summer and not doing media interviews.

"We're being very strategic in the sense that there are certain issues we've come out on — for example on early learning/childcare, and high speed rail," MP Bains says. "The other issues — we will see when we want to communicate those. It could be just before a campaign, during a campaign... it's more of a strategic decision. Right now, it's still a work in progress and we're still consulting the party, stakeholders and Canadians, and the ideas that we do have, that we feel comfortable with right now, we've decided to hold off and communicate those at a later date."

Could have been avoided

One of the more interesting developments on the federal political scene last week was the first wave of public discussion about the fact that the Cons went out of their way to avoid actually passing their much-promoted home renovation tax credit - presumably (as noted by Paul Wells) as a means of ensuring that the Libs roll over on a fall confidence vote. But it's particularly remarkable in retrospect how thoroughly the strategy was telegraphed.

Here's an exchange between Lib MP Massimo Pacetti and Deficit Jim Flaherty all the way back in February:

Mr. Massimo Pacetti:
...
The home renovation credit doesn't seem to be anywhere in the budget, it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the ways and means. And the third quick question is, has anybody calculated how much money the Government of Canada is guaranteeing via EDC loans, BDC loans, CMHC, swapping bad assets for good assets? Has anybody made a calculation as to how much money the Government of Canada is on the hook for?

Hon. Jim Flaherty:
The home renovation tax credit is not in the bill; it was in the ways and means. It's a tax measure, yes, and it has been approved by the House. I had this discussion recently with your colleague from Markham--Unionville. This is not easy to design. The design is complex. So the home renovation tax credit will be in the usual second budget bill this year.

Let's start by dispensing with the excuse that some complex design was required which would take months upon months for the Cons to work out compared to the rest of the budget. Remember that the bill which the Cons put forward was the same 551-page behemoth which gutted the federal pay equity structure, rewrote rules about competition and foreign investment and created new, accountability-free rules for federally-run "bridge institutions" in the case of a financial meltdown. From that starting point, it shouldn't have been all that difficult to make the case that the Cons should have been able to get their act together to include a single tax credit which supposedly formed the centrepiece of their stimulus package.

But failing that, the Cons would have had a few months in which to pass the home renovation tax credit as a standalone bill before the summer break - which presumably would have made for a reasonable request for cooperation over the balance of the spring session. Instead, the Libs were happy to ignore an obvious trap which seems set to close on them over the next couple of months.

Now, would it have been obvious at the time that the trap wouldn't be sprung until the fall? Let's note that the concept of a "usual" second budget bill is somewhat misleading given that only once have the Cons actually allowed a session of Parliament to last through an entire calendar year beginning with a budget. But for anybody checking their history, it should have been a fairly simple matter to note that their second budget implementation bill in 2006 wasn't even introduced until October of that year.

So from the time of Flaherty's response to Pacetti nearly six months ago, it should have been clear what was afoot. And indeed the Libs' current position is that they saw the problem coming:

Liberal finance critic John McCallum said he asked Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to put the credit in the spring budget implementation bill so consumers would have certainty, but Flaherty apparently declined.

"I still think it will go through at the end of the day because we will certainly honour it, but people might still have a nagging doubt until it is passed and this could have been avoided," said McCallum.

But the reality is that it's the Libs who chose to support Deficit Jim's budget on the Cons' terms. Which means that if and when the Libs get strong-armed into backing the Cons once again based on an inevitable set of threats about the home renovation tax credit, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves.

Liberals Roll Over: Afghanistan

Ever since Canada's combat role in Kandahar began, there's been a significant amount of public concern about the mission. But we've now reached the point where a majority of Canadians want our troops brought back home whether or not they're in a combat role - signalling that the public's concern about the mission has only grown with time.

Unfortunately, that concern has never been reflected in the government's actions. And ever since Stephen Harper took power, it's the Libs who have allowed and encouraged the Cons' desire to keep a combat mission going as long as possible to determine Canada's direction.

The first key Afghanistan vote after the Cons took power was of course on a 2006 motion to extend the mission until 2009. And the vote should have been a gimme for the Libs as an exercise in reining in a minority government testing just what kind of abuse its opponents would put up with.

Not only did the Cons choose not to make the Afghanistan vote a matter of confidence, but they also declared that they'd extend the mission by one more year regardless of the rseult of the vote. So even Libs who agreed with the combat mission in principle had reason to vote the motion down in response to the Cons' arrogance.

Needless to say, no such thing happened on the Libs' free vote on the motion. Most Libs voting did oppose the extension - but enough voted with the Cons to allow them to pass their motion by a slim four-vote margin. And the "yea" votes who had no problem with extending the mission even in the face of the Cons' overreach included both the Libs' then-interim leader Bill Graham, and current leader Michael Ignatieff - whose votes against along with the attendance of former PM Paul Martin would have been enough to defeat the motion.

Incidentally, while Stephane Dion voted against the motion, he had previously argued that the Cons shouldn't even allow the matter to be voted on in one of the Libs' more painful examples of defending executive power in the Cons' hands in hopes of wielding the same themselves. But after taking over the leadership, Dion at least put up a facade of wanting to avoid any further extensions. Which should have allowed the Libs to join forces with the NDP and Bloc to demand that the mission be ended in 2009.

In the spring of 2007, though, the Libs put forward a motion which coupled a 2009 end date with an endorsement of combat until that time - the latter of which served as a poison pill to prevent the NDP from offering its support. And as a result of that gamesmanship (which the NDP responded to by putting forward its own motion calling for an end to combat as soon as possible) there was never a united show of opposition to any extension in Parliament at that time.

Mind you, the Cons didn't figure to pay too much attention to a vote which wasn't held on their terms. But they didn't figure to have much choice but to face the issue in their fall throne speech, where another of Stephane Dion's demands was a 2009 end to the combat mission.

Needless to say, the Libs allowed the throne speech to pass despite its inclusion of a further extension and Harper's declaration that everything within it would be a confidence matter.

But the Cons apparently figured they still had room to embarrass the Libs further. Which they did by appointing John Manley to chair a panel of well-known hawks to rubber-stamp an extension for the combat mission.

There may have been an out for the Libs if they'd taken a strong line against the legitimacy of a panel which was obviously selected for the purpose of pushing through an extension which Dion had said would never be permitted. But instead, the Libs sat quietly, and by the time the report came back with (surprise, surprise!) a recommendation of an extension to 2011, there was little doubt that the Libs' rollover was all but complete.

Which isn't to say that the Libs couldn't find a few more ways to shoot themselves in the foot before backing down. Instead, they carried out a set of public negotations which allowed the Cons to threaten an election over the issue, while "winning" only a 2011 end date which is far too likely to be revisited under either of the main parties - along with "accountability" terms which provided for little more than glossy promotional brochures for the combat mission and have failed to stop the Cons from actually hiding more information as time goes on. And all this just months after a 2009 end to the mission was supposedly a condition for the Libs' willingness to keep the Cons in power.

Rather than seeing that result as the disaster that it was when he took over the Libs' leadership, Michael Ignatieff's reaction was to point to it as his template for dealings with the Harper government. Which should make it less than surprising that this year's confidence showdowns have similarly seen the Cons doing nothing more than promising to sing their own praises a bit more often.

So where do we now stand on Afghanistan, a year-plus after the first end date available if the Libs had voted down the Cons' first extension motion? In theory, the most recent motion calls for a 2011 end date for combat. But this year, there's been a noticeable push afoot to hint at an extension now that the U.S. has a more popular administration. And there can't be much doubt that if the Cons want to push through another extension, they can always find a Lib willing to push their own party into backing Harper (say, what's Bill Graham up to these days?) - or simply count on the Libs to roll over on another vote.

Doomed

Shorter EI posturing between the Libs and Cons:

Libs: A 360-hour national threshold is supported by a majority in Parliament and might be worth studying. But we're more than willing to move from it!
Cons: How dare you so much as mention a proposal which we don't like? This proves that you're stuck on an unreasonable position!
Libs: (stunned silence)
Cons: Now start offering us exactly what we want, or this negotiation is over!

In fairness, though, let's acknowledge that the Libs have at least accomplished something by staking any changes on the Cons' willingness to make them look good. After all, they've managed to push the parties who generally agree with their position away from the table to ensure a worse outcome.

Deep thought

Michael Ignatieff's outrage over a few weeks of time for his EI appearance-of-working group might sound a lot more plausible if he hadn't personally ensured that nothing would pass until the fall.

Still on course to nowhere

Steve V, still holding out inexplicable hope that the Libs will suddenly turn into a different party than the one which has rolled over on 79 consecutive confidence votes, points out the obvious fact that a refusal to stand for anything probably isn't doing the party any favours:

The fact the government still sits tied in the polls, having come through this maelstorm isn't easily fluffed off, it gives reason for some optimism on their side. Not great optimism, problems still abound and the Liberals have plenty in our quiver as well, but much better placed than anytime this year. This reality necessitates that we bring more to the table than simply opposing. Harper isn't popular, but we're not a compelling alternative either, which might explain why we've lacked maximum capitalization. Timing is another consideration, but beyond that, I now think there is no doubt of one thing, which again speaks to a nimble approach- we have to give them a reason to turf the government, the benefit of friendly headlines no longer a given.

And naturally, the Libs...aren't interested in hearing it:

There is concern the Liberal leader is risk-averse. Mr. Ignatieff, some worry, is still thinking things through - something intellectual types are inclined to do. In their wisdom, these leaders see the complexities of the issues, the grey zones, the competing shades and they hedge. Vague imagery results.

What to do? Get out some bold policy initiatives, many in the party say. Give the leader definition. Give Canadians a vision. Roll the dice.

But it's not about to happen. Instead, the Grits are gambling that no change of tack before an election campaign is necessary. “The plan,” a senior Ignatieff strategist said yesterday, “is steady as she goes.”

Liberals Roll Over: The Environment

In working with the "Liberals Roll Over" theme, it's worth mentioning some reminders of the more glaring examples of how the Libs - under multiple leaders - have gone out of their way to give the Harper Cons what they've wanted. So let's get started with the key issue which the Libs have tried hardest to make their own during Harper's tenure in power - only to end up helping the Cons in making matters worse.

After Stephane Dion built his successful leadership bid around the environment, it was to be expected that there would be a few showdowns between a Lib party claiming to see the issue as one of the three "pillars" of its philosophy, and a Con government which has obviously gone out of its way to avoid doing anything meaningful on the issue.

And for at least one fleeting moment, it looked like the result might be for the Libs (in cooperation with the other opposition parties) to manage to get some positive changes passed despite Con recalcitrance. After spending months complaining about an NDP-demanded committee to rewrite the Cons' sad excuse for an environmental bill (C-30), the Libs eventually decided at the last minute to work with it - with the end result being an amended bill supported by all three opposition parties.

It may not be much of a surprise that the Cons' answer was to refuse to advance the bill any further - and of course in the summer of 2007 they prorogued Parliament to completely halt its progress. Which is where the Libs' rolling over comes in.

Dion publicly demanded that the Cons bring back the amended C-30 in their throne speech (and by implication as a government bill in the new session of Parliament) - failing which the Libs would vote down the Con government.

Of course, Harper's throne speech did nothing of the sort: not only did it promise to bring back only the elements of C-30 which had all-party agreement (i.e. the Cons would do what the Cons planned to do anyway), but it included a deliberate shot at the Kyoto process which the opposition parties were still looking to work under.

Did the Libs even consider sticking to their word? Not for a second: instead, their new line in the sand became only a weak statement that they wouldn't vote for Con legislation that would endanger the environment.

Having set a bar low enough to allow them to keep propping up the Cons despite continued inaction on climate change and even damaging regulations or other governmental functions which didn't go through Parliament or even back down on legislation by simply allowing it to pass, the Libs still miraculously managed to keep rolling over since - voting with the Cons on this year's budget with its attacks on environmental protection for Canada's waterways. And by stating that wringing every drop of oil out of Alberta's tar sands is a matter of "national unity" which overrides any apparent consideration of environmental costs, Michael Ignatieff has made clear that the Libs don't have any intention of improving matters anytime soon even if they do manage to stumble into a chance to do so.

So more than two years after a legislative plan to deal with greenhouse gas emissions won majority approval in the House of Commons, and nearly two years after the Libs supposedly made that plan a condition of their support for the Con government, we're now in an even worse position than we were at the time. And all because when given the chance to stand up for what was supposed to be a core principle, the Libs have rolled over time and time again.



(Edit: fixed typo.)

Deep thought

My first reaction to somebody with a reckless habit of playing with fire wouldn't be to keep him in charge of the matches.