I still think that the election will return another harpercon minority. Regional factors, class interest, and the Bell Curve of intelligence, dictates that harper's hold on the West, reactionary moneyed interests, and stupid, ignorant people, will stand firm. [NOTE: I intend for those three labels to represent different groups of people. People from Alberta are no more stupid than people in Ontario or Nova Scotia.]
But if harper resigns after failing yet again to get a majority, or whether he tries to stay on, it won't matter. Unless Ignatieff wants to subject Canada and his own person, to still more (as yet) undetermined years of brinkmanship and abuse, the harpercon minority will be voted down at the first opportunity and Ignatieff and Layton will pay a visit to Rideau Hall.
Enough is enough. Both parties, but especially the Liberals, were more than accommodating to harper's bullying. He had his chance. He had numerous chances to behave properly in a minority situation and he failed to meet the standards required by democracy.
But when we form the government, should we become like the harpercons? Should we be contemptuous of the opposition (however contemptible the harpercons showed themselves to be)? Should we use a majority of seats in the House of Commons to push through anything we want? Should we use our majority to abuse the power we'll have over committees?
No.
We shouldn't become bullies. But we shouldn't be the cynical enablers. We should make sure that the Liberals don't behave like US Democrats, "looking forward, not backwards" and allowing past crimes to go unpunished and past anti-democratic excesses to become incorporated into Canadian politics as capitalism unravels.
One can be law-abiding, classy, and principled, without being a doormat. There are rules in place, there are avenues that can be taken, to make sure that the harpercons are punished for their sins. After we win, there must be investigations and then there must be criminal proceedings where warranted.
Who leaked the Colvin emails that were so important that not even Colvin himself or Parliament itself was allegedly unable to see them?
What happened to the investigation on child rape in Afghanistan that harper believed needed two years to complete?
Where is that handbook for harpercon committee chairs on how to obstruct committee business?
My point is that after we take power, we should step up our demands for accountability. We can play by the rules and still be absolutely ruthless in destroying the harpercon mentality and setting the precedent that blatantly undemocratic and blatantly criminal behaviour is not tolerated in this country.
And if former harpercon leaders imagine that the don't have to attend what they insult as "kangaroo courts" then lock the fuckers up.
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4 comments:
Good News, Bad News. I still have a couple of senior Tory backroom connections (going back to Stanfield era) who've proven quite reliable over the decades. I'm told that Harper won't survive another minority. Apparently knives are being honed and he'll either leave standing or like Julius Caesar.
Bad News is that if Steve doesn't win a minority, it's Iggyland. And that could mean finishing the transformation of the LPC to the Democratic Party of the North. Iggy didn't just come back from the States, I fear he brought the States with him. That's the only explanation I come up with for why he was so lame in opposing so many of Harper's excesses. They may share a lot of authoritarian, oligarchic tendencies.
About harper's being forced out, ... i suppose a couple of guys from the 1970s might know some stuff. lord knows that all it takes is for people to say "no" to the blubbery boob.
But given the distinct lack of talent on the harpercon benches, I wonder if they have the fortitude and the organization to do even that.
He's not going to give up the meal-ticket and free house that easily.
Regarding Ignatieff, ... that's the more sinister possibility. He's been attacked as an un-Canadian US-American carpet-bagger by a government dedicated to slavish submission to everything USian. If Ignatieff turns out to be obviously a US-American toady as well, it means that our whole political class is united in its desire to sell us down the river.
And the sad, sick thing is that most of the "progressive bloggers" will tie themselves up in knots making excuses for Ignatieff just like deluded progressive-Democrats rationalize Obama's betrayals.
We have to build the movement of people enraged enough by harper to make it impossible for the elites to try to get away with that.
"I fear he brought the States with him"
>sigh<
Must the Canadian left _always_ show this knee-jerk anti-Americanism? As if Ignatief couldn't be a plain bourgeois politician all by himself . . . .
Todd,
If I read you correctly, you're saying that Canadian capitalists can be as bad as US-American capitalists (worse in fact because the Americans have traditionally paid us more than our fellow Canucks), and that, therefore, the enemy is capitalism, not the Yanks.
But I think that there's an obvious danger to continentalism. US-Americans won't develop our industries as much. (The old "hewers of wood/drawers o' water" meme) and they'll drag us down to Rovian-Cheney levels of political-cultural debasement.
There is something to be resisted, and not just on some old Torontonian academic leftist's reinterpretation of George Grant.
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