Spun out

Sadly, there are far too many half-baked outside arguments being made about the federal NDP's leadership review and how it connects to provincial-level choices. (To be clear, I contrast those against some genuine concerns being raised by members.) But let's highlight one particularly telling example of how the NDP in general is being misrepresented by the same people trying to push Mulcair out of the picture.

Here's the Alberta NDP's platform in the campaign which resulted in its historic victory last year, emphasizing a royalty review, an increased minimum wage, more progressive taxes, reversing cuts and enhancing public services.

The exercise for the reader is to assess whether this better reflects:
(a) a "rush to the centre", as Warren Kinsella says in an attempt to tar the NDP's successful campaigns with the same brush as its unsuccessful ones; or
(b) "a progressive platform consistent with the NDP's values", as I argued in pointing to it as an example worth following.

I'm not sure how anybody can conclude (a) without needing to do so in order to fit a convenient narrative. And again, we can fairly say that anybody whose main agenda includes trying to diminish the NDP's progressive victories shouldn't be paid much heed in deciding on the NDP's future.

History repeating

2008, pre-election: Liberal bigwigs make a ridiculous spectacle of themselves proclaiming that they'll never deign to cooperate with the likes of the NDP.

2008, post-election: Having spent the campaign echoing Stephen Harper's desperate message that a coalition would be illegitimate, the Liberals conclude that they're willing to cooperate after all, only to botch the job.

2011, pre-election: Liberal bigwigs make a ridiculous spectacle of themselves proclaiming that they'll never deign to cooperate with the likes of the NDP.

2011, post-election: Having spent the campaign echoing Stephen Harper's desperate message that a coalition would be illegitimate, the Liberals conclude that they're willing to cooperate after all, only to botch the job.

2015, pre-election: Liberal bigwigs begin to make a ridiculous spectacle of themselves proclaiming that they'll never deign to cooperate with the likes of the NDP.

From all available precedent, we should fully expect the Libs to again walk back their inexplicable aversion to cooperation once the next federal election has passed. But is it too much to ask that they stop wasting so much of their (and our) time and energy convincing themselves not to do what in all likelihood will need to be done to ensure a better federal government?

On political legacies

Ready the fainting couch for Warren Kinsella, because I've got a scoop that he'll find shocking and appalling.

The NDP has been fund-raising for years based on appeals to Jack Layton's public image.

In fact, Layton's face and signature regularly appeared on financial appeals to his party's supporters not just in the year since his death, but in the entire time since he became the leader of the federal NDP. And one might even speculate that Layton and the NDP made a concerted effort to build his public profile, then to maximize its effectiveness as a means of raising money and otherwise encouraging NDP supporters to participate in electoral campaigns.

I can only assume this comes as an out-of-the-blue revelation to a political naif like Kinsella in light of his latest column. Because otherwise, one might have to ask some rather awkward questions.

For example, who could possibly think it surprising that a political leader - and indeed one who put ample personal effort into his own party's succession planning - would be pointed to as an example of that party's ideals after his passing?

And who could possibly look at one of the most unabashedly political lives in recent Canadian history, and conclude that it must be drained of political meaning? (Particularly when that order comes from somebody who fought tooth and nail against nearly everything Layton stood for during his lifetime, rather than anybody with even a vaguely plausible claim to speak to his wishes?)

I do hope that the above will prove enlightening for Kinsella and anybody else spending time demanding that NDP supporters erase his legacy from the historical record in order to honour it. And Warren, when you come to, you might be even more horrified at what you'll discover in your own party.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted content for your pre-debate reading.

- Dave connects a few more dots as to who's behind Robocon. Guy Giorno helpfully acknowledges that the Cons were supposed to have business-style processes to avoid the exact kind of electoral fraud that's been discovered across Canada - signalling both that they're indeed on the hook for any illegality in their midst, and that they seem to have followed the familiar corporate pattern of prioritizing immediate profit over mere trifles such as legality or human decency. Susan Riley wonders whether Robocon will have much staying power, but I tend to think Warren Kinsella is right in theorizing that it will - particularly as the Cons desperately try to cover up facts which are bound to come to light as the next federal election approaches even when a bit more willingness to acknowledge reality might serve both they and the country better in the long run.

- Erin points out some good economic news which shows that matters are getting somewhat better despite corporate tax slashing rather than because of it. And Paul Krugman continues to expose the completely contradictory claims about corporate taxes which are alternately used by corporate apologists to suggest either that the wealthiest already pay their fair share, or that the brunt of any taxes is felt entirely by workers.

- Which leads nicely to Marc Zwelling's commentary as to how we need to reframe discussion of taxes:

The correct way to talk about taxes is to tie them to the services taxes deliver and the outcomes they generate. Say taxes and services in the same breath. For instance:

* In a Vector Poll™ in 2010, 57 percent favoured more government spending for health care "even if it means higher taxes."

* 56 percent in an Angus Reid Public Opinion survey this year agreed that "even if it means increasing taxes" the federal government "has an important role to play to redistribute the wealth and intervene in the economy." Some 36 percent disagreed, and 8 percent were unsure.

* Despite the Right's 30 years of anti-tax rhetoric, six in 10 people (63 percent) in a 2010 Vector Poll™ say they would rather have good public services even if it costs more in taxes, not lower taxes "if public services are not as good" (37 percent).

Arch-conservatives will continue shrieking about taxes the way the Puritans talked about the Salem witches. But there's no excuse for progressive people to help the Right with burning at the stake.

- Finally, Martin Regg Cohn nicely highlights the absurdity of Alison Redford demanding that Ontario take its side in promoting the tar sands over any other economic development. And that pressure combined with the Cons' service to the oil industry in refusing to work with anybody who might raise concerns about pipeline construction and oil tanker traffic (even with donated money) only amplifies Bruce Livesey's concern that petrotyranny isn't far down the road.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- I'll agree with Barbara Yaffe that one of the most important tasks for the Cons as a majority government will be to avoid having their heads inflated to dangerous levels. But I'm not sure how Yaffe could possibly see their actions so far as evidence that they're on the right track: after all, can a party get more arrogant than to claim credit even for the rise of their strongest national rival?

- A couple of notes on the megatrial bill that looks to have the support of the official parties in the House of Commons, but may not pass before the summer if Elizabeth May blocks it.

In effect, the issue looks to be one where all sides have taken a relatively reasonable stance. The huge plus is that the Cons haven't tied a mostly non-controversial procedural bill to their dumb-on-crime legislation in order to try to posture against their opponents - which combined with the fact that the megatrial legislation actually has some basis in a neutral party's review makes it a bill that none of the parties should have trouble ultimately supporting.

But while the other parties in the House have had time to review its previous incarnation of the bill, it's also understandable for May to want to carry out her own assessment rather than being pressured to grant unanimous consent to pass it immediately. And the onus will then be on the other parties (and particularly the Cons) to make the case to her as to why the usual legislative process should be dispensed with - which should hopefully strengthen the resolve of all of the opposition parties to push back against some of the Cons' requests.

- That is, if the Cons can even remember what a reasoned case for a policy looks like. And their rejection of Health Canada's advice on asbestos doesn't exactly serve as a shining example on that front.

- Finally, Warren Kinsella's election post-mortem is well worth a read. But I can't help but to be reminded that some of us were pointing out the dangers of the Ignatieff Libs' ultimate mistakes long before they were ever made.

On foreseeability

Warren Kinsella asks whether anybody managed to anticipate the NDP's gains in Quebec (which look to create the prospect of a strong ripple across Canada). And the answer is...yes, some of us did.

Not to say that I've made any strong predictions about what might happen. But the signs of a possible NDP surge have been readily visible for some time, even if the odds of a sea change actually coming to pass have never been clear.

Let's start after the 2008 election, when I noted this in discussing the NDP's path forward:

(T)he most obvious source of strength for the NDP is...the progressive Libs who for now have hooked onto a party which they see as more likely to take power. But the draw for those people has to be a strengthened NDP from other sources to persuade them that they don't have to accept playing second fiddle to the centre-right in order to win power.
...
Perhaps most intriguing is the question of whether the Bloc could be largely brought on board. If leftish Bloc members have any interest in joining a Canada-wide government in the making in order to boost progressive efforts both inside and outside Quebec, then the balance of risks and rewards would look to be by far the most favourable.
...
In sum, the NDP certainly should be building connections into all of the other "left" parties, and continuing to frame a message of unity similar to the Unite 4 Change concept which received some mention during the most recent campaign. But its efforts are almost certainly better directed toward winning individual supporters one by one, rather than looking to any formal merger as a short cut to the same final goal.

And it didn't take long for polling to show the NDP as the second choice of Bloc voters, hinting at the type of shift that's now taking place:

(B)oth the NDP and the Greens would seem to have ample room to make inroads among current Bloc supporters, with the NDP leading the way at 19%. And with so few current Bloc voters having any interest in either the Cons or the Libs, it would stand to reason that the solid second-choice numbers for the NDP might only be amplified if current "no second choice" voters find reason to start looking elsewhere - say, if Gilles Duceppe makes a long-anticipated departure which gets taken as a sign that the Bloc is on the decline.

Combined with the apparent fluidity between NDP/Lib/Green voters on the nominal left and the Libs' likely move to the right, that figures to open up plenty of opportunities for the NDP to build itself up by focusing its efforts on current Green and Bloc supporters in hopes of building up a 32% minority as a progressive alternative to both the Cons and Libs.

Meanwhile, the talk last year about the Cons and Libs both having reason to abandon any efforts in Quebec opened the door for the NDP to take its shot at winning over a broad swath of support in the province:

(T)he Libs' standing as the default federalist party in Quebec allowed them to build up both substantial riding-level war chests and incumbency advantages in dozens of seats. So their results from 2006 and 2008 can fairly easily be seen to reflect the most resources the party can possibly expect to put into the province - and the result was to come up somewhat short even at a time when less of the vote was being split with the NDP.

Which means that one can make a fairly strong argument that the Libs might have better luck directing their resources toward provinces where they might break new ground, rather than re-fighting the same battles they've lost over the past few election cycles.

And the same goes for the Cons, if perhaps to a lesser extent. In the absence of particularly strong riding-level operations, they poured in money from outside the province to support star candidates like Michael Fortier in Vaudreuil-Soulanges - only to see that effort fall flat as soon as the party became the Bloc's main target. And that largely explains their choice to direct efforts toward flipping Lib seats in B.C. and Ontario rather than launching another all-out attack on the Bloc.

All of which leaves the NDP as the only national party that can claim to be within striking distance of gains in Quebec without having yet tested the limits of its ability to win votes.

And finally, some modeling from earlier this year tested what might happen in the absence of a Bloc, and fits nicely into the projections we're now starting to see:

(In the absence of the Bloc,) the social democratic NDP would take the place of the social democratic Bloc Québécois in the province, winning 30 per cent of the vote in the next election. The Liberals, at 29 per cent, would not be far behind while the Conservatives would take 24 per cent of the vote. This would result in the NDP winning 34 seats in the province, most of them coming in francophone Quebec outside of the two main cities. The Liberals would win 23 seats, mostly in and around Montreal and in the Gaspé, while the Conservatives would take 17 seats, concentrated around Quebec City and the Saguenay region.

Using current projections for the rest of the country, this change in Quebec would boost the Tories to 146 seats nationally, still short of a majority government. The Liberals would win 104 seats. With more than half of their caucus from Quebec, the NDP would win 57 seats. It would give the Liberals and New Democrats the possibility of forming a majority coalition.

Of course, many a commentator has looked silly for predicting the end of the Bloc over the years. But it's worth noting that the Bloc looks to be the one opposition party whose share of votes and seats would lead to an almost certain change in government if distributed along current voting lines - and wondering whether a strong message about the need for progressives to work together inside and outside Quebec (regardless of the party structures involved) might serve to get things moving in that direction.

Again, none of the above is to say that anybody much anticipated the magnitude of the NDP's gains so far in the election campaign - to say nothing of those which may yet develop.

But the factors which have come together to give rise to the NDP's surge have been visible for quite some time for those of us who have looked past the conventional wisdom of perpetual Bloc dominance in Quebec. And there's plenty of reason for optimism that the second part of the overall NDP growth strategy - being a shift from the Libs to an NDP which is finally seen as a contender for government based on its Quebec gains - will similarly change expectations across Canada as election day approaches.

New column day

Here, on why Canadians should vote out of self-interest if nothing else - and why we can't count on political parties to make it happen.

And for reference on the motivations of political parties, I'll point to Warren Kinsella's advice to war room staffers (caps and italics included):

What does a war room do? As I have told every youngster who falls into my clutches at the start of every campaign, OUR JOB IS NOT TO WIN THE WHOLE CAMPAIGN BY OURSELVES. Instead, I tell them, yelling entirely in caps, our job IS TO WRECK THE OTHER SIDE’S CAMPAIGN DAY, ONE DAY AT A TIME. And, if you do that for nine days out of a 36-day writ, you have eliminated the other side’s ability to tell their story for a quarter of the campaign. And that’s a campaign that cannot win. Thus, poor Sebastien Togneri. The hapless Tory aide, being probed by the RCMP, helped the Liberal war room to stomp all over Harper’s message of the day on Tuesday. That’s a win, in my books.

On noxious leaks

Shorter Warren Kinsella:

Since there's absolutely nothing worth criticizing about what the NDP is actually saying and doing, allow me to bash them for what I think they might say and do.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Michael Warren pushes the conversation about a cooperative effort to topple the Cons toward what looks to me to be more fertile territory, suggesting a policy accord as an alternative to a non-compete agreement or merger.

The main issue I'd raise is whether it's necessary or desirable to work out detailed policies in advance, or whether the better course of action is to develop complimentary messaging that encourages as many non-Con votes as possible without eliminating the differences that bring out different groups of voters. But it's well worth noting that there are plenty of options between merging and rejecting the idea of cooperating - and it may not take much to shape the narrative of a campaign in a direction that both parties would seemingly have reason to pursue.

- But of course, that narrative also needs to be directed toward winning seats. And there's good news on that front, as at least one of the parties to any potential coalition is working on expanding its Quebec base.

- I'll deal later with the substantive question of how the NDP in particular should see per-vote funding based on an interesting Rabble discussion. But for now, Duff Conacher notes why per-vote funding is a plus for Canada's broader political system:

The annual per-vote subsidy of $1.95 for federal political parties should not be eliminated as Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposes because it is one of the most democratic aspects of Canada's political finance system as it gives a cash boost to parties that do not elect as many members of parliament as they should because of the flaws of our first-past-the-post voting system.

- Finally, Warren Kinsella is right on target in noting the weak spot in the Cons' latest attack ads:

Canadians aren’t frightened about a coalition. English Canadians don’t like the Bloc very much — but if Duceppe’s party is out of the equation, voters are quite OK with a coalition, in fact.

The issue was hotly debated last summer. A poll conducted by Harris-Decima right afterwards found more than half of Canadians, from coast to coast, were fine with some sort of co-operation between the Liberals and the NDP. About 60% said they supported ideas ranging from a non-compete agreement to an outright merger.

The main focus of the Reformatory ads are off the mark because, one, the Conservative Party itself is the result of a coalition. Two, in 2000, Harper himself secretly signed a deal for a coalition with the Tories and the Bloc. Three, some of the most revered Canadians — Jean Chretien and Ed Broadbent — like the idea. Four, even Harper’s most ardent suitors, like Lorne Gunter, call his coalition fear mongering “fairy tales.”

I’ve put together a few attack ads in my day. To work, they have to “surface feelings” about something.

Problem is, these ads “surface feelings” about something Canadians aren’t afraid of. At all.

A friendly reminder

I generally agree with Warren Kinsella's theory that the Cons' plans to ship yet another chunk of Canadian sovereignty to Washington - in exchange for the bare hope that this time the U.S. will stop clogging up the border - should make for a powerful political issue for Canada's opposition parties.

But before anybody tries to claim that it doesn't matter which of NDP or Libs takes the lead on the issue, it's well worth pointing out that the Libs were working on exactly the same project the last time they were in power. And indeed after the last time the Libs campaigned against a trade agreement, they did nothing but expand it once they took power.

So if the Cons' current integration project raises many of the same opportunities used by the Libs in 1988, there's every reason to hope for a different outcome both on the policy itself, and in the party which earns the most benefit from it.

Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted reading to end your week...

- Kevin Page points out the obvious as part of his effort to get the Cons to stop hiding information from him:

Page, dispatched by MPs on the government operations committee in October to help them get a handle on the impact of the operating freeze, came back empty-handed. The government won't tell him details and has refused his requests for any information citing cabinet secrecy.

Page said the government's secrecy and blanket refusal to release basic documents is blocking the work of Parliament and, if left unchecked, poses all kinds of risks, including the temptation to hide mistakes.

He argues the blocking of information is getting so out of hand that someone should be monitoring what's being refused to ensure they really are cabinet confidences.

- And Aaron Wherry provides a timely example of what happens when a forum like question period is seen as not being intended to convey actual information. And indeed it's hard to see who's supposed to be better off waiting for new set of revelations before anything approaching the truth starts to trickle out when there was a chance to start having a meaningful conversation months ago.

- Warren Kinsella comments on the seemingly inevitable result when corporate and state resources are marshalled against the likes of Wikileaks:

Getting big companies like PayPal and Amazon and Visa to hit WikiLeaks in the pocketbook is as idiotic as it is predictable. So, too, threatening Assange with untold prosecutions on trumped-up charges – and even now prosecuting him in a case that looks, to many of us, highly coincidental and therefore suspect. To me, what I see in the papers this morning are the institutions that people truly hate these days – banks, and huge corporations, and bellicose governments – doing what they always do: reacting stupidly, corporately, and way too late. They should all send a bunch of “secret” cables to each other about their plans. They do that a lot, apparently.

I tried to think of a metaphor that fits, to make my point. I settled on a fight between a big, slow, dumb dinosaur – being besieged by an army of fast, smart, tiny mammals with really sharp teeth.

And we all know what happened to those big, slow and dumb dinosaurs, don’t we?

- And finally, it's always nice to see some new discussion about why the Cons' choice to gut the census figures to have damaging side effects. But while less accurate information is surely a problem for those actually interested in solving problems, I'm not sure the Cons can be expected to see this precise form of inaccuracy as anything but a plus for them:

Ms. Nakamura noted that simply changing the weights could lead to CPI under-estimating actual inflation. That could help government budgets achieve politically preferred results.

On the revenue side, if personal incomes rise faster than measured CPI, more people get bumped into higher tax brackets. (Tax brackets are indexed to CPI.) That amounts to a tax increase without any discussion in Parliament.

On the expenditure side, CPP and other inflation-adjusted transfers grow more slowly, as do public sector wages and benefits. This holds down government spending below what it would otherwise be.

Lower-than-actual values for CPI would be valuable to the Harper government in other ways too. It would make Canada look good to both foreign and domestic investors who value price stability. It also puts less pressure on the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday.

- The Economist weighs in on the Cons' census debacle:

(I)ntroducing a voluntary census was asking for trouble. The United States once attempted a similar experiment, but abandoned it after determining that data from voluntary surveys are unreliable, since marginalised groups are less likely to fill out the forms. Moreover, in order to keep the sample size constant despite a reduced response rate, the government would have to send out more forms, at an additional cost of C$30m ($29m). Canadians would be paying more money for less accurate information.

As a result, Canada’s statistical gurus staged a rebellion. The government’s chief statistician resigned in protest. Advocacy groups representing Francophone Canadians living outside the French-speaking province of Quebec launched an unsuccessful lawsuit, arguing that programmes for minorities require reliable census data on employment, education and immigration status. The Inuit have made a similar claim. The governor of the Bank of Canada said it uses census data to set monetary policy, and may have to look elsewhere after responses become voluntary. And ministers from Ontario and Quebec say they will no longer know how the labour market is changing and where to target spending on training and education.
...
Despite the uproar, Mr Harper is standing firm. The forms for the 2011 census have been printed, and the prime minister insists it will go ahead as planned, despite a parliamentary motion September 29th and a private member’s bill introduced the next day asking it to reverse course. The UN website promoting October 20th as World Statistics Day says it is meant to “to help strengthen the awareness and trust of the public in official statistics.” At Statistics Canada, currently without a chief statistician, the words have a hollow ring.

And even yesterday's festivities managed to turn up another example of the Cons' disrespect for Statistics Canada and/or basic math:

The first World Statistics Day was celebrated at Statscan on Wednesday with guest speakers, free coffee and enough vanilla cake to feed 400 of the agency’s 6,000 employees. Statistically speaking, that means 93 per cent of staff had to go without.

- From the "people I don't often agree with" file, I'll gladly concur with at least the first half of Warren Kinsella's sentiment here. Now if only we could get his more progressive partymates to recognize that the same can and should apply on the provincial and federal levels...

- And one more in the same category, as Kevin Gaudet gets this much right as part of his otherwise tedious attack on government generally:

TM: Given that the Harper government has run up the federal deficit, and particularly given recent controversial expenditures on G20 security and fighter jets, do you think the Conservatives are politically wise to be attempting to exploit the Liberals' platform shortfall?

KG: The whole "we’re better fiscal managers" conversation is peculiar in Canada because there’s a branding mythology out there that the Conservative Party is one with a strong fiscal history, except that when they govern they don’t seem to have any evidence of that. We can look to the Mulroney government and this government as well, both of which have run some of the largest deficits we’ve seen...I don’t think voters have much of an alternative between either parties (sic) to be honest with you.

- Finally, Dan Gardner's take on Omar Khadr actually deserves attention for its much wider application:

People are tribal. There is Us and there is Them. Us is always a cut above Them. But when the Them in question is as truly vile as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, modest partiality can become overwhelming bias.

In a telling experiment, psychologists asked some Israeli Jews to judge a peace proposal put forward by Palestinians. They said they didn’t like it. Which was interesting because the proposal had actually been drafted by the Israeli government — and other Israeli Jews, who had been told it was an Israeli proposal, rated it much more highly.

If Russians had treated you and John the way Americans did, and if you and John had been involved with a terrorist group people had never heard of, everyone would agree that you had been horribly abused. Yes, they would say, terrorism is odious and must be fought. But nothing justifies brutality and torture, the removal of fundamental human rights, or the punishment of a child soldier as if he were an adult with a choice.

But Russians didn’t do this to you and you weren’t with some group we’d never heard of. It was Us who did this and you were with Them. So it was right. No matter what.

Deep thought

As a lawyer, I think if a challenge was brought to bear to Warren Kinsella's research on the privacy implications of the census, it would be found to be problematic.

On social status

Sure, the back-and-forth as to who (if anybody) besides Warren Kinsella is pushing a merger is still very much in progress. But there's surely one lesson we can take from the exchange so far: that Lib President Alfred Apps is the life of any party:

Over the past two weeks, I have listened to arguments in favour of some arrangement with the NDP from only two Liberals (sic) pundits (including Warren) and engaged in friendly banter with a couple of New Democrats over drinks (e.g. will you renounce socialism?).

If that doesn't send Apps and his hand-picked leader to the top of the list of political figures Canadians want to have a drink with, what can?

On new realities

This weekend, I noted that one of the more important choices facing the federal Libs is whether to paint themselves as all things to all people in pursuit of the remote prospect of a majority, or accept a smaller niche which will make it easier for a combined opposition effort to oust the Harper government. But wouldn't have expected even the most rabid of Lib partisans to be entirely willing to acknowledge that the latter is probably all the Libs can plan for in the foreseeable future:

Liberal Party strategist Warren Kinsella, one of the architects of the Chrétien majority victories of 1993, 1997, and 2000, said he's told members of the current Liberal leadership to forget about winning a majority.

"It may be those of us who were privileged to work for Chrétien worked for the last majority prime minister," he said. "I can see a situation where there will never again be a majority government for the rest of my life."
...
Mr. Kinsella said the entrenchment of the Bloc and the lack of enthusiasm that voters, and particularly young people, have for the two main parties means minority governments are "the way things are going to be."

Declared Mr. Kinsella: "There hasn't been a majority government in this country since 2003 and I've computed it and added it up and so has everybody else and I don't see how you get your way back to that."

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the recognition that a majority simply isn't in the cards anytime soon will lead the Libs to make any meaningful effort to work with the other opposition parties. And in the wake of the Harper precedent of a minority government acting like it has a majority, the Libs may well figure they can attempt the same rather than modifying their usual strategy of pretending that only two parties exist.

But at the very least, the seeming consensus that the Libs can't plausibly expect to win a majority anytime soon would figure to raise questions about how they interact with the elected MPs who will determine who forms the government of Canada in minority Parliaments to come. And if the Libs choose not to look for cooperative solutions to the problems with continued Con government, they may only open the door for another party to successfully take up that mantle.

On contrasts

I'm not entirely sure why Warren Kinsella is so proud of today's Question Period segment - particularly since it culminates in Brad Lavigne explaining reasonably why it's a good idea to reverse at least some of the Libs' historical assault on EI benefits while Kinsella tries to drown him out by mindlessly repeating "vote against it!". (Meanwhile, Tim Powers apparently gets lost in the phrase "enchanted forest".)

But if one wants to compare the substantive decision-making process of the NDP to the facade politics of the other two parties (which I'll do in more detail in a post to come), one could hardly ask for a better example. So I'll at least echo Kinsella so far as to suggest giving it a look.

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."

Self-serving

Having obviously recognized that Canadians aren't about to buy the argument that a summer of committee meetings with Pierre Poilievre makes for a substantial achievement, the Libs are apparently test-driving another excuse for their continued capitulation to the Harper Cons. But while this one from Warren Kinsella tries to sound positive on the surface, it may be even less plausible than the rest of the Libs' rationalizations for rolling over:

(W)hen Harper's Reformatories whipped up a crisis at the end of last year, my leader had lots of people—including some in the Liberal Party—urging him to push Harper out and lead a coalition government. Ignatieff certainly could have done that.

But that just isn't how Ignatieff wanted to win. On reflection, he and other Liberals determined that wasn't what Canadians wanted, either. We Liberals want to win, for sure—but we want (sic) win the right way.

Right now, the Liberal Party is either ahead or highly competitive in the opinion polls. We've got a great team and we are ready for an election. And, once again, Ignatieff heard from a lot of people—including Liberals—who wanted to defeat the government at the end of June, and have an election just a few months after the last one.

Once again, Ignatieff and Liberals thought about that. And Ignatieff decided, once again, that wasn't how he wanted to win.

Now, it's ridiculous enough for the Libs to be putting on a holier-than-thou front - particularly about election brinksmanship given that the only substantive demand they've ever made of the Cons is for a constant stream of confidence votes. But consider for a moment what message they're actually sending with quotes like these.

The Libs don't seem to dispute that the Cons' policies are both falling short of meeting the needs of a recession-wracked country, and burying Canada's future under a mountain of debt. And at the most extreme, the Libs have sent the message that Canadians will be starving over the course of the summer due to the negligence of the Harper government.

Faced with that starting point, one would expect the reaction to be one of outrage - combined with a desire to get back on the right track as soon as possible. Which could include either demanding real change from the government now in power, or seeking to persuade Canadians that they can do better.

But the Libs' line is that they can't be expected to pursue either of those possibilities. Instead, they're more concerned with winning by some nebulous "right way" than with actually improving the lives of Canadians. And if the Cons manage to do more harm even while the majority of Parliament claims to disapprove of their policies because the Libs are too busy pondering exactly which path to power they think will best serve their own egos...well, that's just tough luck.

Of course, it's highly doubtful that Kinsella or anybody else actually believes this latest bit of rhetoric any more than the Libs' previously-abandoned posturing. But the fact that the Libs think for a second that Canada could be more concerned with the Libs' sense of self-righteousness than with its own problems would seem to send a strong signal that the arrogance and sense of entitlement which got the Libs booted from office in the first place have returned with a vengeance. And that should offer reason for voters whose priorities are focused more on real-life outcomes than the Libs' place in the history books to turn their support elsewhere.

Careless words

Sure, this makes the Cons' inexplicable attempt to play opposition to an imagined Warren Kinsella imperial presidency look even more insane. But think of the costs of Kinsella going public with Chuck Strahl's letter: now, no federal department is going to be allowed to so much as write a friendly note to a departing consultant without the PMO's approval.

An unintended insight

Promise? Prediction? Prophecy? One way or another, Warren Kinsella may be more right than he wants to be in describing what's to come for Deceivin' Stephen:

(Harper's) little press conference outside Rideau Hall on that snowy day in December was an act, nothing more. His pledges to work with others to find a way out of this terrible upheaval was the purest of bullshit.

For that, it will not be the Liberal Party that punishes him.

Of course, Kinsella adds, "It'll be Canadians". But I'd expect that anybody with his political background would recognize that the work of opposition parties tends to mean an awful lot in determining which issues filter down into the public consciousness such as to result in a government being punished.

In that vein, it was always doubtful that the Libs would be the ones to benefit from public dissatisfaction with a leader who they've worked so hard to keep in power. But there's all the less reason to think that Canadians who want to see Harper held accountable for his failings will reward a party which doesn't see itself as part of the solution.

Which means that when Canadians indeed decide to give Harper the thrashing he so rightly deserves, the Libs may end up taking a back seat to the party which has both recognized the emptiness of Harper's act all along, and done everything in its power to make sure he doesn't escape the consequences of his government's actions.