Fall Election?

The media speculation about a possible election is moving to warp speed. Personally, I think all indicators point to a fall election. I think most commentators, basing speculations on the moment to moment variations in polls and the “what happened ten minutes ago?” punditry are rather missing the point.

The question is not “do Canadians want an election?” (although those considerations are clearly relevant), the question is “does the government enjoy the confidence of the House?”

That may sound like a question out of PoliSci 101 instead of the usual approach of politics as sporting event, but it is the central question.

To get a handle on that question, we need to examine the lay of the land with some longer term perspective.

We could take the relatively brief historical window of politics in Canada since the creation of the Bloc Quebecois, the rise of Reform, then Alliance, and then the Alliance cannibalization of the Progressive Conservative Party. From that we could agree that Canadian politics is in a state of disequilibrium. Things are out of whack. The neo-con agenda of the Harperites is a far cry from the old PC party. The progressive element of Red Tories is somewhere in hiding.

It is this disequilibrium that has created the space in which the Greens are rising. (That and the NDP decision to move from conscience of the country to government – or Official Opposition – in waiting. When the self-appointed conscience of the nation decides to compromise in the interest of greater power, a niche opens for a party willing to be a conscience.) Enter the Greens.

Future historians may well focus on the more immediate past. This country has simply not come out the other side of the self-inflicted threat to Harper’s government of his November 08 economic statement.

After the October 14, 2008 vote, the common wisdom was that the Harper minority mandate was good for about two years. The fact that the government nearly fell within weeks was entirely due to the Prime Minister’s extraordinary miscalculation in the November economic update. In a hang-over to his famous “If we were going to be in a recession, we would be in a recession already” approach to economic melt-down, he contradicted his commitments of only days before at the APEC summit, and decided to pretend Canada’s books could remain in surplus for the next five years. No stimulus package. Zero reaction to the crisis. Larded on that miscalculation was the attempt to remove women’s pay equity to the civil service and to remove the campaign financing reforms of the Chretien years.

Hey presto! The Prime Minister converted a two year mandate into a seat of the pants effort to cling to power. To do so he only had to fan the flames of regionalism, attempt to turn the rest of Canada against voters in Quebec, and for the first time in the history of any nation in the Commonwealth, succeed in shutting down the House of Commons to avoid a confidence vote.

Harper survived by the skin of his teeth, but he has not since enjoyed anything that could be called the “confidence of the House.”

Ignatieff broke faith with his promise to the Liberal caucus (all MPs had signed a pledge to support the coalition, although Ignatieff’s name appears last) and the other opposition parties when he, as newly minted and anointed Liberal leader, decided to support the 2009 budget. But Mr. Ignattieff’s “support” was conditional. He said the government was “on probation.” What he meant by that was unclear, but it was certainly far short of confidence in the government.

We will be teetering on the edge of an election for this whole session of Parliament. Mr. Harper simply does not have the confidence of the House. Nor has he earned it. He has failed to engage the other parties in a common agenda to make government work. He is still playing games. The latest orgy of patronage appointments to the Senate does not help create a less partisan atmosphere. (Although appointing Gary Doer as our Ambassador to the US suggests he is capable of a more balanced and cooperative approach).

The current state of affairs is that Mr. Ignatieff has an Opposition Day scheduled for September 28. I think he will bring forward a motion of non-confidence. The on-going after-shocks of Mr. Harper’s bad judgement in November have not yet settled. Neither has the climate of political instability over the last decade or so.

I think the odds are as slim as one in ten that there will not be an election triggered by that vote. But if not then, soon. We cannot continue in this dysfunctional state of non-stop electioneering. Like a storm that is brewing, sometimes you need a heavy rain just to clear the air.