According to the Parliamentary calendar, we have between six and eight weeks of sitting days until the break and if I were a betting man, I would say closer to the six than the eight.
In my spectacularly ill-informed and humble opinion, I think it will be an interesting stretch. The stage is set for a level of strategy, gamesmanship, and intrigue that should warm the hearts of political junkies everywhere.
Let’s begin with the individual parties and their options and objectives.
The Liberals are in a very difficult place. Their leadership is in a state of flux and they are getting the squeeze from their cousins on the left. While it is true that the next election is a long way off, the wisdom of waiting another year to pick a leader escapes me entirely. If the recent NDP actions on the time allocated for the response to the budget are any indication, the Liberals will continue to be marginalized as a party, contributing to an increase in individualism by the caucus members. Suffice it to say that this will seriously impair their ability to impact events.
Conversely, the NDP has a number of options that come with significant implications. Their new ads attempt, in my view rather effectively, to position them as the only alternative to the current government. Their challenge is to backfill the strategy with an actual “government-in-waiting” policy suite and there lies the political pothole. The far left exists as both a party and a movement, and as long as you simply scream from soapboxes, the distinction is irrelevant.
When the political arm decides to make a serious run at grabbing the levers of power, and makes no mistake about the fact that it is poised to do that, there is a necessary level of discipline and centralized control that will be quite unsettling to the folks who feel that the only flaw in the “holding-hands-and-singing-Kumbaya” strategy was simply numbers and volume.
Politics is a blood sport, and it will test the fundamental makeup of the party as it works through a process of deciding the size of the new tent and the depth of its commitment to core beliefs. I have no doubt that Tom Mulcair, he will always be Thomas to me, knows what needs to be done to position the party for success but the key will be in knowing how to get the party there without imploding.
Finally, the government also has some balls to keep their eyes on. The legislative agenda is, and I will be charitable here, light. However, the House will not be without debate fodder. We have robocalls, ethical issues, procurement problems, media altercations, and public sector downsizing in a public sector town.
In fact, from the perspective of the government the only good thing about this abundance of Question Period riches is that the opposition parties may decide to attack them all and therefore fail to reach any effective or sustained level. Any one of these issues could leave a mark, but in an aggregate and unfocused bundle, they run the risk of bouncing off.
So the upcoming stretch will see the opposition attack and the government defend. It sounds like a perfectly normal state of Parliamentary affairs, except that it isn’t. If you overlay the potential of party realignment and an increasingly informed and empowered electorate, the prospects for sudden shifts in power have raised the ante for all the players.
On the left, we have credible voices calling for some sort of NDP/Liberal merger. The problem I see is one of timing. Mulcair was just elected leader and may want a clear run under the NDP banner. Any talk of cooperation will include demands for impossible concessions.
The Tories face the reverse problem. The unregistered, shotgun, and heterosexual marriage between the Reform and the Progressive Conservatives is beginning to show some serious signs of wear. The rise of the Wildrose Party in Alberta is the clearest signal yet that all is not well in the marital bed. Unless the government concedes to address some of the long-standing socially conservative issues—which they have indicated they will not—there is a constituency within that party that has a history of taking their bat and ball and going home. When you factor in that the Tories hold government without Quebec and have no credible chance of improving their prospects in that province in the short-term, their situation is a tad bit precarious.
Suffice it to say that there are various tipping points approaching. The Parliamentary Precinct has become a hall of mirrors where every action potentially serves multiple objectives and every objective has the unintended potential to run counter to the overall strategy.
So what does it mean, in terms of the upcoming session? It means that after a stretch where platform commitments made policy the predominant focus and, before what I believe will be a late summer prorogation, and a fall Throne Speech, we will be treated, or subjected, to a session where politics will eclipse policy. Expect the unexpected, zigging will be the new zagging, outrage will become contagious, perspective will be jettisoned form the lexicon and doing the right thing will become entirely situational.
But hey, what did you expect when they called it politics!
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: JOE JORDAN
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