Chantel Hebert reports on the upcoming spring election and the moribound Parliament:
It may not look that way from a distance, but the minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is moribund. While the Conservatives have not formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons, they can no longer muster enough opposition support to pass their agenda into law.
As a result, this Parliament is now basically killing time until another election. That does not mean the Prime Minister can't govern, at least up to a point. Harper can continue to make nominations; he can speak on behalf of Canada on the international stage; he can tour the country to unveil various policies as he did over the recent parliamentary break.
Except that every initiative he announced that week is unlikely to become law in the current Parliament. Neither is the bulk of the Conservative agenda.
The Star continues with Susan Delacourt:
OTTAWA—The script for the next election campaign was begun in earnest this week on Parliament Hill, and it's an angry one.
Though an election is likely months away, politicians seem to be spoiling for the battle.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have begun laying down the planks for their battle against the Liberal-dominated Senate.
The work of Parliament, meanwhile, is getting caught up in delay tactics and opposition efforts to gut Tory initiatives on everything from law and order to the environment.
The Conservative honeymoon is now officially over, it appears, and the ground is starting to be prepared for an election that could come early in 2007, after the Liberals have a new leader and the Tories have delivered another budget.
Conservatives are expected to blame Liberal senators for anything they aren't able to accomplish in their minority government. Yesterday, the Liberal Senate was under attack for holding up the Tories' clean-up-government bill, the legislation known as the accountability act.
A Senate committee has recommended a raft of changes to the massive bill, which means it has to go back to the Commons for more review, possibly weeks of it, before it becomes law.
Harper said yesterday: "The behaviour of the Liberal party is arrogant and anti-democratic. And that's really the problem: They haven't accepted the decision of the electorate."
In the Globe and Mail:
OTTAWA -- Canada's political parties began road-testing potential election attack and defence strategies yesterday in the wake of a legislative slowdown that has hit Parliament just nine months after the election of the Conservative minority government.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper painted the opposition as obstructing his party's legislative agenda, while the Liberals tried to portray the Prime Minister as weak and unable to force through his agenda. They leaned on the Tories to compromise on key legislation such as the Accountability Act, justice measures and new environmental rules.
At a news conference yesterday, Mr. Harper castigated the Liberal-dominated Senate for proposing amendments to the Accountability Act. "The behaviour of the Liberal Party is arrogant and anti-democratic," Mr. Harper told reporters after a meeting with Mexican president-elect Felipe Calderon. "That's really the problem. They haven't accepted the decision of the electorate."
The Tories hope to win a majority government by demonstrating that the Liberals won't allow the passage of legislation that Canadians want.
And this CP story in the Globe & Mail online:
Oakville, Ont. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper says opposition parties should stop dragging their feet on an accountability bill and stop trying to water down legislation the Conservatives introduced to get tough on crime.
Speaking to the Oakville Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Harper said Friday if the opposition parties don't like his government's measures, “they can force an election any time.”
“If the opposition disagrees with us, they should do it in the open, not in some committee meeting, not in the unelected senate, not by endlessly stalling a democratic vote,” he said.
Mr. Harper said the three opposition parties supported cracking down on crime during the election, yet are now back pedalling and stalling a bill, introduced in May, designed to do away with house arrest for serious crimes and impose mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes.
The spring election seems ineveitable and i would not bet against it, but in political time, the spring is so far in the future as to be science fiction.
