On encouraging cynicism

Is it just me, or is this a particularly dubious move even for the Liberals?

The federal government may delay its much-anticipated economic update until after Mr. Justice John Gomery's November sponsorship report so the Liberals can gauge whether they're in danger of being defeated and need to put pre-election goodies in the statement.

Government officials are debating whether to push back the statement until after the Gomery report to determine whether it might be used by the opposition to bring down the Liberals and force an election. If the report is critical of Prime Minister Paul Martin, or if polls show Canadians are upset with the findings, the government could use the statement as a mini-budget that could include items such as tax cuts and money for postsecondary tuition.

If the report is relatively mild, then the government would probably move the items to its traditional winter budget and use that as a campaign document...

A source said the government is also considering whether it should bring in the economic statement before Mr. Gomery's report, to ensure that it at least gets some publicity for the statement before the report dominates the news pages in November.

The reason the Cons in particular have looked bad over much of the last year is their insistence on elevating the Gomery inquiry far above every other pressing issue facing Canadians. But it looks like the Liberals are taking that to an even higher level: rather than merely ignoring other policies in favour of Gomery, they're tailoring policy to the results of the inquiry.

Politically, it may make some sense to have a ready means at hand to try to turn the tide if the inquiry is particularly damaging. But even there, I'd think that emphasizing the same policies in a campaign should have a relatively similar impact regardless of whether or not they've already been introduced before Parliament.

And from a good-government standpoint, the position is ludicrous. The question of whether a policy is worth implementing doesn't depend on the results of the inquiry. When even the Liberals acknowledge that they're defining the former based on the latter, the end result is to make government seem all the more self-absorbed and disconnected from reality.