The
“minestrone” coalition between federalists, separatists, fiscally
prudent liberals and big spender socialists makes sense for one
reason: opposition parties had the right to react to a senseless
provocation from the Conservative government.
But
two wrongs don’t make one right. In fact, this nee-jerk reaction
settles the score between the conservatives and the opposition and
it might appease the power hungry ambitions of some, but it happens
at the expenses of economic stability, international credibility
and, ultimately, Canadians. The only one that might gain, in the
short term, from this madness, is Québec. The support from the
separatist will not come cheap. Gilles Duceppe is not interested in
being part of the Canadian government but only in Canadian dollars
going in one direction, and Ontario will pay the most. I’m glad the
governor general agreed to send everybody home for a cooling down
period, hoping that Harper will use it to act more as prime minister
and less as leader of the Conservative Party, and the Liberals to
cool down their ambitions to be back in power until they elect a
real leader.
What’s
happened in the last two days goes against our institutions and our
traditions, but it’s not an incident; it’s the consequence of two
decades of steady political demise.
It
started when Brian Mulroney planted the seeds of separatism in
government, and the Liberals destroyed what was one of the pillars
of their strength: the dogmatic respect for the leader when they
back-knifed John Turner.
In
the 90’s, the poisoned environment evolved into the fight between
Joe Clark and Preston Manning and, in the Liberal ranks, between
Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. It was in this context that we risked
the unity of the country in 1995, when the two major political
Canadian institutions, the Conservative and the Liberal Party
undermined their political and moral abilities to govern this
country.
They
engaged in internal feuds while sabotaging the adversary’s political
ability to create a functional democratic system with good
government and effective opposition.
Chrétien
boasts about giving the Liberals three back-to-back majorities.
Mathematics says he is right, but history might be less generous. He
accomplished his records rushing Canadians to the polls with the
only goal of destroying the opposition. Conservative leaders were
painted as “unCanadian”, nasty, insensitive, and
anti-Québec.
Then
we had the sponsorship scandal used by the Conservatives to get even
with the Liberals. They were all painted arrogant and corrupt. At
that point the debate on real issues was gone.
Canadians
were tired of all of this. That’s why they rebuked the Liberals and
Stephane Dion in the last election and gave Stephen Harper another
chance, but only with a minority government. After October
14th things looked better and we believed that the prime
minister got the message.
Unfortunately
something happened last week and it appears that Prime Minister
Harper has had difficulties to rise above the poisoned political
partisanship. In the economic statement, Flaherty tried to do to the
Liberals what Chrétien did to the Conservatives: destroy them.
That’s unacceptable.
So
here we are. The poisoned environment has generated the conditions
for this unthinkable minestrone government put together by the
partisanship of the Conservatives and the power hungry opposition
led by a leader that was unceremoniously rejected by Canadians on
October 14th. In fact, voters did not reject the
Liberals, they voted against Dion who, against their will, tried to
become the next prime minister of Canada after, with one stroke of a
pen, moved away from the Canada of Pierre Trudeau and Wilfrid
Laurier.
Once
again, Canada risks to be led by leaders counting on mathematics and
backroom deals, not on the strength of honest ideas and love for the
country.
Governor
General is giving all of them another chance. It’s hard, if not
impossible, to put the leavings back into the horse, but let’s at
least try to not splash it all over our faces.
