Another Canadian election that wasn’t

After all of the media hype Canadians avoided the fall of the Conservative government and the fourth federal election in the last five years. A fall election became a real possibility for about ten minutes after Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff announced a couple of weeks ago that he could no longer support the government.

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Iggy was saved from going the way of the dodo bird, not to mention Stéphane Dion and Paul Martin Jr. when Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe announced that his party would support the Ways and Means motion that was voted upon last Friday. The motion formally brought in the home renovation tax credit and that was all Duceppe needed to prop up the government. As he said, even Quebeckers like to renovate their homes at the partial expense of the feds. NDP leader Jack Layton later announced that he too would support the government motion. This was the guy that decided that his party would vote against the budget before he even read it; now he’s ready to keep the evil Stephen Harper in power. One of the reasons just might be that the NDP that usually polls in at least the high teens had dropped to 12 per cent recently. A further decline of a couple of points will result in more Canadians believing that Elvis is still alive than support the socialist party. By agreeing to support the Tories after it wasn’t necessary in order to avoid an election, Layton has showed just how irrelevant he and his party are. A recent poll showed that the Conservatives were five points ahead of the Liberals; a large spread considering they have been polling neck and neck pretty well since the Conservatives first formed the government in 2006. Why Ignatieff would want to go to the polls at this particular time makes absolutely no sense. It’s obvious that he’s in a hurry to become prime minister which is considered part and parcel of the job of Liberal leader. It was big news when Stéphane Dion made his exit without ever getting the top job. Had an election been called Ignatieff is no doubt the leader least likely prepared for one. He claims that the Liberals should be returned to power because “he can do better” which sounds good except that he never quite specified exactly what he would do, let alone what he would do better. The economy seems to be rebounding from “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” and in order to take Harper on Iggy will have to argue that the prime minister is wrong when he says that Canada has weathered the economic downturn better than other countries have. He will have to somehow try and convince Canadians that the economic problems that currently face the country are the fault of the Tories and disregard the fact that our financial position is stronger and our employment situation better than in Iggy’s adopted country, the United States. He will have to convince Canadians that Harper should be booted out of office for spending too much and causing the country to go into deficit again while promising to spend more money on everything from employment insurance to aboriginals. The only good thing about having an election now is the entertainment value that it would provide those who follow politics. The only ones who are likely to benefit from a fall election are Harper and the Conservatives provided, of course that they are not seen engineering an election that no one wants. What has happened since Ignatieff’s declaration that the Liberals will no longer support the government has shown the great disconnect between ordinary Canadians and the political and media elites. Media pundits and talking heads have talked about little else since Iggy’s decision to pull his party’s support of the government. The speculation might have had some interest had there been a real chance of going to the polls but that was never in the cards. Had Duceppe and the Bloc not agreed to support the government on the motion, the NDP would have. Stephen Harper will never be remembered as one of the country’s best loved prime ministers; but in view of the world economic condition, he looks pretty good. And Canadians have better things to worry about than whether or not we have an election in a month or two. But all this election talk is fun for the politicians and the media. Let the games continue; and they will in a couple of weeks when another threat to bring down the government materializes.

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