Coalition the only choice
In the days since the Governor General permitted Prime Minister Harper to close down Parliament, it’s become more clear than ever that only the Coalition of Liberals and NDP will restore majority democratic government in Canada.
Once again, Mr. Harper demonstrated today in his interview with the CBC’s Peter Mansbridge that he has no real understanding of the economic problems facing Canada and that he has no strategy to deal with them.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that while Mr. Harper has focused on how he can gain partisan advantage from the urgent economic situation Canada is facing, he’s been woefully inept at putting forward any meaningful program to deal with growing unemployment, the loss of foreign markets, the persistent credit crunch, or the need to protect Canadians at the bottom on the economic ladder.
From the day of his Economic Update, in which he sought to use the country’s dire economic situation as a scenario to gain partisan advantage, to his blantantly misleading denunciation of the Liberal-NDP Coalition as a sell-out to Quebec separtists, Mr. Harper has shown where his priorities lay.
In neither his speech to the country last Wednesday night, nor in his Masnbridge interview this afternoon, did Mr. Harper offer even an inkling of what he’s prepared to do. It’s as if he doesn’t recognize what’s happening in the world, or if he does, he hasn’t the slightest idea what to do about it.
About the only thing he has accomplished is to give the Parti Quebecois a boost in the Quebec election. By stirring up the spectre of a separitist veto over Coalition policies, saying he’d never agree to working with a party that wants to destroy Canada, he gave a great boost to the PQ in the provincial campaign.
The result: a narrow Liberal majority, with a PQ comeback giving them 51 seats, enough to hold Premier Jean Charest to a narrow majority with66 seats. The election restored the PQ to Official Opposition status, and gave them the credibility to mount a new drive for separation in the coming years.
What is it about these Conservatives? In 1911, Robert Borden defeated Wilfrid Laurier by making partners with Quebec nationalists. In the process, he set back the cause of free trade by 75 years.
In 1984, Brian Mulroney told Quebeckers that the Canadian Constitution wasn’t “worth the paper it was written on.” His fiddling with the Meech Lake and Charlottetown agreements so turned off Quebec that Mulroney’s Quebec deputy, Luc ien Bouchard, put together the Bloc Quebecois. Together, the BQ and the PQ came within a few thousand votes of winning the 1995 Quebec referendum.
Now it’s Mr. Harper who is driving Quebeckers into the arms of the separatists.
Given these facts, it is urgent that newly-affirmed Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff stand by the Liberal-NDP coalition crafted by his predecessor, Stephane Dion.
It’s the only way to defeat Mr. Harper when he faces the inevitable confidence vote after Parliament resumes on January 27th.
And if, instead of the Coalition being given a chance to govern, the country is forced into an election, it will take a united Liberal-NDP campaign to overcome vote-splitting by anti-government forces.
In that event, the choice is obvious. No Liberals should run against sitting NDP MPs, and the NDP should not run candidates against incumbent Liberals.
The result will be a solid Liberal-NDP majority that is not dependent on Bloc support. We’ll be able to get on with the business of protecting Canadians in the worst economic times since the 1930s.
