Canadians are waking up to the mind boggling possibility that may be going into a worst recession in a generation led by a government comprised of politicians who either want to break-up the country or turn it into a socialist worker’s paradise and led by a prime minster who had not more than weeks ago vowed to resign because his party had gotten trounced in an election no more than 2 months earlier. What the hell is going on at home?

To paraphrase Chris Nolan, I can’t help wondering if Canada is getting the government it deserves as opposed to the one it truly needs. In looking at the possible outcomes, they all seem to be lose-lose.

 

Handicapping the Coalition Government

A coalition government would be inherently unstable and leave the country essentially run by a 3 person committee with a lightweight serving as a figurehead prime minister. I don’t believe it will enact the right economic policies to get through this current economic crisis and leave the country in worst shape.

Worse is the uncertainty of having the separatist Bloc in the government. Despite whatever public commitments to the contrary they may make, it is simply to risky to let the Bloc in a government where they would have every opportunity to undermine the unity and territorial integrity of Canada.

If Stephan Dion were a stronger leader, I might say this ‘team of rivals’ approach could possibly fly by having the separatists in government as a sort of ‘keep your enemies closer’ type of strategy. However as it stands, I don’t have confidence this will work – and the recent debacle of the whole ‘tape incident’ and subsequent back-biting amongst the 3 leaders has done nothing to instill confidence in this government.

 

Assessing Stephen Harper – Good Manager, Bad Politician?

On the other hand, Stephen Harper has not helped his case since breaking his promise and calling an early election in a gamble to secure a majority.  This gamble almost succeeded until an election gaffe related to Quebec funding for the arts.  This cost him votes in Quebec and ultimately the majority in Canada.

And while he has actually been a reasonable manager of the country and its economy he has not been a very good politician – his heavily partisan approach to parliamentary politics has only put off the very people he needs in order to maintain the good standing of his minority government.  Backing the opposition parties into a corner by removing the vote subsidy was final straw.  Rather than dividing his opponents in order support his rule he has rather remarkably united them. That two of the main leaders of this potential liberal-socialist-seperatist coalition (Dion the Federalist and Duceppe the Seperatist) in a previous life were mortal enemies who battled quite literally for the very future of Canada speaks volumes to the degree of animosity Harper has engendered.  They really hate the guy.

From his speech last night, Harper seems intent on fighting to very end, asking for a suspension of Parliament (to avoid a no-confidence vote) and taking his arguments straight to the voters.  Unhelpfully, he has played up the divisive issues of the Separtists in Government and raised the spectre of protests and demonstrations in the street.  Should Harper decide to  go to war on this front, I can only think Canada is going to emerge from this episode with its unity severely frayed.  It would be interesting to see how voters will eventually react to this episode, which parties will be eventually punished at the polls, but in the end the whole country ends up a loser.

 

The Government Canada Needs?

A reasoned approach then would be to have Mr Harper step down for the sake of his country.  This could be positioned to signal to the opposition the end of the Conservative scorched earth partisanship and remove, argueably, the biggest animus for the opposition revolt.  Conservatives could hopefully then get back to the task of fixing the economy.   Economic stimulus, infrastructure building, streamlining regulations which keep the cost of doing business high, diversifying the economy beyond natural resource extraction and not frittering away money in auto bailouts – but instead acting judiciously after seeing what US government does.

This strategy is not without risks and probably a little too far removed from reality.  It assumes that the Conservatives would be able to find a suitable replacement leader which, given the outsized role Harper played in the current Conversative government, may be a cause for concern.  Peter Mackay, the former leader of the PC’s which eventually merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the current Conservative Party might be a viable alternative – but that’s mere speculation on the top of a hypothetical scenario.

Regardless of what happens, here’s hoping the politicians come to their senses and pull back from the brink of this political crisis so they can get to work helping the country pull back from the brink of this current economic one.