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Monday Nov. 14, 2005 |
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Minority
governments are not a pit stop anymore
by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
In 1988, Canada was hosting the G7 Summit
in Toronto. The prime minister was Brian Mulroney. A few days before the
arrival of the delegations, I asked the Prime Minister¹s Office for a
pamphlet with details of the events and the list of the participants. I was
told that they couldn¹t send the papers to the printing because they didn¹t
have the names of the Italian delegation. They said it looked as if the
Italian government might fall again and would have different Italian
representatives participating than originally scheduled.
It was not a joke. Italy hadn¹t
had a single-party majority government since the early 1950s and always
resorted to the so-called coalitions to provide the country with political
leadership. It was very difficult and those coalitions were very shaky.
Italian politics soon became synonymous with sarcastic jokes about the
longevity of their executives.
On the other hand, in Canada,
minority governments were like the pit stops in a Formula One race: you need
them to adjust the strategy, tune-up the car, fill the gas tank and get back
to the real race. They were very important intervals that could determine
the outcome of the race itself, but they were always very short. Pierre
Trudeau had a good pit stop in 1974 and eventually won the Grand Prix. Joe
Clark lost in 1979 because he messed up with the gas tank ‹he forgot to pay
18 cents).
In both cases, we are talking
about a short-term experience.
In our winner-takes-all
electoral system, where the first one past the finish line is in the
driver¹s seat for four years, the rules were pretty well set. There might
have been many issues involved in an electoral campaign. But most of the
time it was pretty simple ‹when people were tired of being taxed, they
dumped the centre-left party, in this case the Liberals, opening the door to
the Conservatives. And when they were tired of seeing too many reductions in
social services, they were swinging back to the Liberals. In the United
States, it is the same with the Democrats and the Republicans taking turns
at the White House.
Things in Canada have changed
since 1993, when one of the elements of this political equation, the
Conservatives, disappeared, leaving the leadership of the country in the
hands of the Liberals.
The conservative votes went in
three directions: to the Progressive Conservative Party of Jean Charest, to
the Bloc Québécois of Lucien Bouchard and to the Reform Party of Preston
Manning. Two of them re-united recently, thanks to the efforts of Peter
MacKay and Stephen Harper. But they are still missing is the Quebec
component.
Until 2003, the Liberal Party
was the only remaining political organization with a national appeal. That¹s
why Jean Chrétien was able to win three back-to-back majority governments.
Unfortunately, for the Liberals, the internal struggle within the party, the
feud between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin has destroyed that edge. The
Liberal Party is on the verge of the destruction not because of the
sponsorship scandal, but because of the feud between Martin and Chrétien.
The sponsorship scandal is not the cause of the feud, but its consequences
definitely had a big impact on the leadership race. In fact, the fortunes of
Paul Martin¹s leadership campaign in Quebec increased only when Alfonso
Gagliano was taken out of commission.
In terms of money stolen or
political patronage characterizing federal politics, the sponsorship funds
are a drop in the sea. There are billions of dollars unaccounted for: The
boondoggle for the gun registry program, the billions thrown at the
aboriginals without actually helping the aboriginals, the contracts in the
Department of Defence and the sole-source contracting practice in the
ministry of Finance that went on even when Paul Martin was there. Spending
$70-million to find out how $100-million disappeared in a specific program
is hardly a way clean up the corruption in Ottawa.
Whatever the intentions were,
the fact of the matter is that the inquiry has done nothing, and because of
its limited mandate, could have done nothing to solve the problem of
patronage-corruption in Ottawa. But it has destroyed the credibility of the
Liberal Party in Quebec and, maybe, in the rest of the country. The end
result is that the feud, amputating the Liberal leg in Quebec, puts the
Conservatives and the Liberals on the same electoral footing: They can aim
for a minority government, but at least for another five years, Canada will
have no majority government. With that in mind, the skunk fight we are used
to seeing in the House should be part of the past political rhetoric: a more
civil and meaningful debate has to take place for the sake of the country. |
