I Hope You Were Paying Attention

Just in case you've been too preoccupied for the last month to watch the tragicomedy play out on Parliament Hill, let me get you caught up to speed. Canada has just lived through a period unprecedented in its history. For a whole month, our government ruled without consent, spent money that they had no authority to spend, and used every means possible to delay a confidence vote long enough for them to buy their way out of trouble. It was a display that made Paul Martin's recent promises to tackle the "democratic deficit" sound as convincing as Hosni Mubarak's.

Hark back to about a month ago. The 20th of April was supposed to be an "opposition day" in the House of Commons, a day where the opposition is allowed to introduce its own legislative proprosals. It was supposed to be, but it wasn't. In blatant defiance of our democratic system, the Liberal government, fearing that a non-confidence motion would be brought against it, decided to cancel "opposition day".

That the government was frightened enough by the prospect of a non-confidence vote to go as far as to prevent it from even being held indicates a clear fact. They thought they might lose. A Canadian government is only supposed to rule as long as it has the confidence of the House. The Liberal government strongly suspected that they lacked this confidence, yet they carried on governing anyway.

The cancellation of "opposition day" was the event that immediately brought the legitimacy of the government into question. The Liberals had no mandate to govern while the confidence of the House was in doubt and while no vote had yet been held to establish that they even had this confidence to begin with. The legal and moral authority of the government would only grow more dubious as the situation dragged on.

And drag on it did. Rather than try to establish their right to office, the Liberals decided to start the election campaign. In an extraordinary abuse of power, the Prime Minister made a rare live public address to propound his partisan position. Every day that then follwed brought new spending announcements designed to buy off the Canadian electorate. In the end, more than $20 billion in spending was announced. Add $4.6 billion to buy the NDP's support in an eventual budget showdown. By itself, using public money to buy votes is an unethical excersize. However, using public money to buy votes while simultaneously lacking the authority to disperse that money is even worse.

Meanwhile, the stifled opposition finally managed to find a back-handed way of expressing their lack of trust in the government. On Tuesday May 10th, the House passed -- by 153 votes to 150 -- a procedural motion calling on the government to resign. Strictly speaking, this was not a vote of confidence, but if the governments legitimacy was in question before, it was doubly so after the vote. The government urgently needed to hold a confidence vote. But it was not to be. The Liberals said that since the procedural motion was not an official confidence vote, nothing needed to be done.

Frustrated by the Prime Minister's stubbornness, the opposition turned up its protest. They completely shut down parliament for the rest of the week. Committees were boycotted and the House voted daily to adjourn by lunchtime. It was not even a question anymore. Parliament was utterly disfunctional. The confidence vote needed to be held immediately. But there was Liberal House leader Tony Valeri insisting that it was "business as usual".

Paul Martin finally promised to have the confidence vote held on Thursday May 19(today) in the form of a vote on the two budget bills. He cited a provincial election in British Columbia and the Queen's visit as reasons for the delay. In reality, he just needed some more time to buy some more support.

For Independent David Kilgour, the PM's pledge on Saturday May 14th for $170 million and up to 100 Canadian military personel for Sudan's Darfur region was not a high enough price for his support. (Though this is indeed a worthy cause, the timing of the announcement leads me to suspect that the pledge is intended more to save the Liberal government than it is to save the lives of Darfuris.) Then came this Tuesday's big surprise. For rich heiress Belinda Stronach, the price was a position as a cabinet minister. Forget the sponsorship scandal. There is a prime example of Liberal patronage for all to see. Nevermind that the government had no mandate for itself, let alone for it to hand out government positions.

And as we all just witnessed today, the government finally got the confidence of the House by the slimmest of margins. A tie of 152 votes each had to be broken by the House Speaker, who voted to continue the government. So, for now, it looks like the Liberals are out of the woods. But there will be an election (eventually). When the time comes to go to the polls don't forget about how we spent a month in Spring watching the Liberals avoid democracy at all costs, expending every public resource to keep themselves in power.