Harper must defend conservative policy, not play political games

Let me make one thing very clear right from the start – I do not approve of the federal Liberal and NDP parties’ attempt to topple Stephen Harper’s minority government and replace it with a coalition government of their own. But “coup d’état”? “Sedition”? A “subversion of democracy”? Now that Parliament has been prorogued and the crisis averted until at least the end of next month, can we all please, please take a deep breath and relax?

It seems to me that a little perspective is in order here, especially from my Conservative friends and colleagues.

On October 14 Conservative Party candidates were elected in 143 of 308 federal ridings making them the largest group in Parliament. Of these 143 successful candidates, however, only a handful received more than 50 percent of the locally cast votes. In most cases, voters clearly did not want to be represented by the Conservative Party candidate who was ultimately victorious.

The same can be said with respect to consolidated national results. Despite having captured 46.4 percent of the seats in the House of Commons, Conservative Party candidates received only 37.6 percent of the popular vote which means that 62.4 percent of voters, voted against the Conservatives. What’s more, although the Tory share of the popular vote increased slightly from the 36.3 percent they received in 2006, this was due mainly to the substantial drop in voter turn out, from 64.7 percent in 2006 to just 59.1 percent this year. In fact, the Conservatives received only 22.2 percent of the eligible vote this time around – 165,000 fewer votes than in 2006.

In contrast to this, the Liberals and NDP received a combined 44.4 percent of the popular vote in 2008 (26.2 percent and 18.2 percent respectively) but won only 114 or 36.7 percent of a possible 308 seats in Parliament, 77 (25 percent) going to the Liberals and 37 (12 percent) going to the NDP. The actual combined number of votes cast for NDP or Liberal candidates was just under 6,141,000, over 930,000 more votes than the Conservatives received.

What’s my point? Just this – while I support the Prime Minister and the Conservative government in the current crisis, I still think that it behooves them (and all conservatives) not to forget that, as the above numbers illustrate all too clearly, they did not receive a ringing endorsement from Canadians in the last federal election either. The only reason the Conservatives are in government today is the peculiarity of the Westminster System. It’s a little disingenuous for them to rely on the rules of parliamentary procedure to claim and defend their right to govern, then cry foul when opposition parties use the very same rules to try to form a parliamentary coalition with not only an equal constitutional right to govern, but perhaps an even stronger moral right based on the aggregate support they received in the recent election and the discrepancies between that support and the current seat distribution in the House of Commons.

It’s a fiction that the Governor-General can “appoint” Mr. Dion or anyone else prime minister. True, the Governor-General has the constitutional authority to decide whether or not to dissolve Parliament and order a new election if the Prime Minister asks, but she also has a constitutional obligation to be guided by the will of the people’s duly elected representatives in Parliament in exercising that authority. Governments and prime ministers serve at the pleasure of the House of Commons. It may be that the party with the largest number of elected MPs has the right to form a government, but that right begins and ends with the approval of the House of Commons. The prerogative of Members of Parliament to dismiss any government, or to construct any government with any combination of Members, is absolute.

It’s worth noting that coalition governments are actually the norm in most democratic countries around the world that do not use the Westminster System, and even among those that do, coalition governments are not unheard of. Ontario itself was governed by a Liberal-NDP coalition for two years beginning in 1985.

Perhaps the most famous "Westminster" coalition government was the one led by Winston Churchill during the Second World War.

Few people today realize that Churchill did not become prime minister in 1940 by leading the Conservative Party, of which he was a member, to victory in a general election. Churchill was not even the leader of the Conservative Party - which held a large majority of seats in Parliament at the time - when he was invited by King George VI to form a government. He was, however, the only Conservative whom the minority Labour and Liberal Parties would agree to serve under in an all-party coalition, and inasmuch as there was a strong feeling among MPs that such a coalition government was necessary in response to the deteriorating war situation, the Conservative leadership demurred. The rest is, as they say, history.

Of course, the political situation that gripped Britain in May of 1940 is vastly different from that of Canada in the waning days of 2008. None the less, the story illustrates how Parliament can adjust itself to the needs of the moment – if its leaders will only rise to the occasion by substituting the national interest for personal and party interest.

Which is why I can’t help but deplore the language being used by many Conservative Party operatives, surrogates and supporters to describe the actions of the opposition parties in the current circumstances. Terms like “coup d’état” and “subversion of democracy” may weaken the legitimacy of any future Liberal-NDP coalition, but they undermine the reputation and credibility of our parliamentary institutions and procedures too. There are dangers in such a policy that exceed those inherent in the possibility that the country might be run by an inept coalition for a few months.

As for “sedition” – well, Mr. Harper’s government was only able to survive for more than 2 ½ years during the previous Parliament because it too had worked out a responsible modus vivendi with the BQ, as any prudent minority government would do. Remember the declaration that Quebec is a nation within Canada? By characterizing the Liberal-NDP willingness to cooperate with the BQ as incitement to treason – which is what sedition is, after all – Mr. Harper and his supporters are not just being insincere; they are engaging in their own brand of incitement. It may serve them well in the short term, but politics has a funny way of exacting revenge on those who practice it with such calculated cynicism. As the Prophet Hosea warned, “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

This is no small matter.

If the Harper government is to survive a vote on its budget late January or early February it will have to secure the cooperation of at least one of the opposition parties, or it will have to successfully pry away enough members of those parties to win. The sort of partisan gamesmanship that the Harper team has been engaged in makes that task more difficult without greater concessions on their part.

Nor does it help make the case for the Conservatives in the event that there is an election which, given the poisonous atmosphere pervading Parliament, now seems all but inevitable unless Mr. Harper capitulates and gives the opposition everything they want in a budget. Prorogation may have given the government a reprieve of almost two months before it must once again face the music in the House of Commons, but it has also given the Liberals time to sort out their own leadership issues and begin to explain why their economic plan is more favourable than the government plan. I suspect that this will be the question Canadians will have to decide if and when they go to the polls, not the prevention of a “coup d’état”. It’s an argument that the Conservatives can win too, but they have to make it to win it.

Which brings me to the final point I want to make on this whole sad affair.

I simply can’t let the occasion pass without reflecting on the strategic missteps and miscalculations that have brought us to where we are in the first place.

Forget the bruhaha regarding public funding for political parties, the genesis of this crisis rests in Mr. Harper's decision to ignore his own legislation and call an early election in September. Had he not done that he could have used the fall session of Parliament to highlight his government’s economic record. He could have used the Conservative Party convention in Winnipeg in November to lay out a sensible conservative platform in response to the international economic situation, rallying the Conservative faithful in the process. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would then have delivered his economic statement to Parliament as he did, maybe even a mini-budget.

Had Mr. Harper followed this program his government would unquestionably be facing a vote of confidence that it would lose, but there would be no possibility of being replaced by a coalition and the Liberals would be led by the gift that keeps on giving, Stephane Dion. Naturally, no-one can predict what the outcome of such an election would be, but it’s reasonable to assume it wouldn’t be worse for the Conservatives than they achieved on October 14. At least they would have been able to claim a mandate for staying the course on economic policy.

Regardless of how events unfold over the next several weeks and months, Conservatives must insist on a better performance from their party and its leadership. I have been warning for some time now that Mr. Harper is not being well served by the youth and inexperience he has surrounded himself with and imposed on his Cabinet colleagues. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great to see the emergence of a new generation of Conservative staff and activists who refuse to apologize for their political ideas and affiliation, but confrontation is not the only way, or in many cases even the best way, to get what you want in politics. That’s why it’s important to have a cadre of seasoned political professionals around as well, who can guide the growth and development of the next generation, and who aren’t afraid of speaking truth to power when necessary either.

Does Mr. Harper get that? I remain hopeful that he does, and that he will bring into his circle a few people who can help him shape a more measured and mature political strategy. The test will be the sort of language he and his colleagues use over the next several weeks as they try to frame the issues for an impending showdown. If they treat Canadians with respect by explaining the conservative approach to the deteriorating economic situation and why it's preferable to that of the other parties, they can win, not just the next election, but the argument as well, laying the foundation for years of sensible conservative policy across the board.

If, on the other hand, they insist that their mission is to stave off a pending “coup d’état” by the evil Liberals and NDP collaborating with the sinister forces of Quebec separatism – well in that case everyone should fasten their seatbelts and hold on tight because the whirlwind is coming and it won’t be pretty.