Canada: A government that’s suddenly in chaos

It’s official: “Canada is an ungovernable gong show,” said Ian Robinson in The Calgary Sun. It all started a couple of weeks ago, when two key opposition parties, the Liberals and the New Democrats, joined in a coalition with their old enemy, the separatist Bloc Québécois, to try to bring down the minority Conservative government. The three parties were livid over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s lack of a plan for taming the worsening economic crisis. Harper responded to the opposition’s move by issuing an unprecedented appeal to the governor-general, Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Canada, to allow Harper to suspend Parliament before it could realign against him. The monarchy came through, so Harper will remain prime minister until Parliament returns on Jan. 26. At that point, the opposition could well renew its bid to unseat the Conservatives. “Until this thing resolves itself, all decent folk can do is sit back and try to enjoy the freak show as it unfolds.”

Canada is actually lucky that Harper found a way to prevent the coalition from taking power, said the Toronto National Post in an editorial. We came perilously close to being ruled by the Bloc Québécois as part of a coalition government. No matter how frustrated the opposition was, it should never have agreed to enter into a coalition with the Bloc, whose admitted goal is to “destroy the country” by breaking Quebec out of Canada. Yet the Liberal Party, led by the inept Stephane Dion, put gaining power ahead of the good of the country, agreeing to “all manner of bribes and blandishments for the separatists.”

Clearly, Dion blew his big chance, said Pat MacAdam in The Ottawa Sun. Both he and Harper last week made their cases to the people on prime-time television. Harper’s video was slick and predictable, like the man himself. Dion’s was a rambling, out-of-focus embarrassment delivered in a nearly incomprehensible French accent. He looked like a man who “couldn’t run a rat shoot in a dump,” much less take over as prime minister. “If the worst-case scenario comes to pass and Dion becomes prime minister, I shall withhold my income tax payments and would be happy to join/lead any other Canadians who wish to follow suit.”

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Harper is not much better, said the Toronto Globe and Mail. The reason the opposition parties triggered a parliamentary crisis in the first place was that Harper failed to create a stimulus package to revive Canada’s cratering economy. Instead, he used the global economic meltdown as an excuse to slash arts and education programs and to cut off public funding to political parties. The cynical ploy was “a transparent effort to reduce the competitiveness of the opposition parties.” He was playing politics when he should have been showing leadership. Even if Harper “somehow staves off immediate defeat” when Parliament resumes next year, he has lost the trust of the nation.