Why is it that everything Stephen Harper tries to do becomes the potential trigger for an election? If you listen to Conservative Party spin-doctors you’d likely be led to the belief that the Opposition is building an offensive to take down the Government. Reality check: Mr. Harper, your Government is already at the will of the Opposition. If and when Michael Ignatieff wants to force an election he will do so and he won’t be stopped.

If anything is clear, this moment in time is not right for an election. This past week the Government has been in a deadlock fight with the Liberals over a proposed $3-billion fast-tracked stimulus fund. Why the uproar? Harper’s plan for getting the fund working fast is to bypass the generally required approval procedures for such funding.

The idea has its heart in the right place: by taking these fast-tracking measures the money can be put to work as early as April, rather than having it stalled by Parliament until June or even July. Anything to get the economy moving as quickly as possible can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Mr. Ignatieff has decided to deny the approval for the funds unless Mr. Harper can provide the Opposition with sufficiently detailed outlines on exactly how and where the money will be spent. If the deadlock continues it could force an election. But nothing right now would seem to indicate Ignatieff being in favour of an election. His party, though significantly more popular than before he took leadership, is not in a position that would guarantee a win. On the other side of the same token, The Conservatives, if they were to win yet another minority government in the space of only four years, would face serious derision for being the cause of another costly election campaign that led only to the same results all over again.

Since Parliament resumed session in late January, Mr. Harper has been surprisingly compromising in an effort to appease the Liberals and govern as a minority. That is why to see and issue like this crop up seems juvenile. Would it be so hard for at least the slightest inclination toward compromise on the $3-billion fund? Perhaps offer a general outline to submit for approval so that the money will get out there fast, while also implementing a totally transparent approach to the spending?

President Obama has had the government set up a public website resource to view every penny of government stimulus spending. Similar transparency on the part of the Conservative Party might allay the Opposition. And even if it doesn’t, at least Mr. Harper will have shown the continued willingness to compromise in the name of a stable minority government.

Many believe that Ignatieff will force an election in June, after the first Conservative Government report on the effect the stimulus package. Why create concern that a needlessly close by election be moved to a nearer date, causing even more delay of Parliamentary action?

The Conservatives will surely back down from this point of contention and giving in to the Liberals’ demands. For this reason I don’t understand even the political motivation behind creating panic and anger among Canadians that another election might be approaching even sooner than we all thought.

Stephen Harper and the Conservatives may think they are taking the higher moral standing by sticking to his guns on this issue, but really they are hurting everyone. The Liberals don’t want an election right now, and neither do the Conservatives, for that matter. But most importantly the last thing Canadians want is yet more reason to feel disenfranchised by the Parliamentary system. Even the creating the fear that an election may be called gets Canadians enraged.

Let’s be real here. The Conservative Party has a minority mandate to govern, and to that end it is beneficial for Canada that they do what they can to work with the Opposition. In fact, it would likely play into their hands in a future election, to be able to say that they were willing to cross the floor and work with their political enemies to get stimulus passed and rescue the Canadian economy.

One thing is for certain: this type of asinine political grandstanding is unnecessary and it is up to the Prime Minister and his Party to put an end to it. Don’t threaten an election over billions in stimulus the great majority of Parliament and Canadians agree this country needs.

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Tags: elections, ignatieff, parliament, stephen harper

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Federal Election, Federal Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.