Jack and Gilles go up the Hill…
I can’t take credit for that pun, but I’ve unabashedly stolen it anyway.
The big news out of Ottawa—and it seems like there’s another item every five minutes all of the sudden—is that all three opposition parties are in talks to form a coalition and force Harper’s Conservatives out of power. The talks involve political giants of yesteryear such as former prime minister Jean Chrétien and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, and with today comes word that the NDP and Bloc Québécois were in coalition talks “a long time ago”.
It sounds more exciting than it actually is, mostly because chances are remote that such talks will succeed, and even more remote that they will result in a long-term victory against the Conservatives. Ignoring the curious prospect of a self-avowed separatist party holding the controlling stake in a coalition government, one has to wonder if the opposition parties—the Liberals in particular—haven’t erred in discounting the possibility of this plan backfiring.
What’s lost in all this is that the Conservatives still hold 143 seats in Ottawa. With the Tories able to count on the regular support of André Arthur and still ideologically aligned, if not politically affiliated, with Bill Casey, that leaves the Tories ten seats short of a parliamentary majority—nine, de facto, if Peter Milliken remains the speaker. And that means the opposition parties may be playing with fire here.
Because it’s hard to believe that there won’t be at least a handful of blue Liberals crossing the floor if this plan comes to fruition, just like plenty of red Tories went the other way when the Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance. Bottom line: if I’m Harper, and the Liberals ally with the New Democrats, I know exactly what I’m doing first: calling Alliance-turned-Liberal MP Keith Martin, and offering him the Veterans Affairs portfolio.