Three Strikes and You're In?

Conservative campaign director Doug Finley’s comments yesterday about still intending to help Stephen Harper get a majority even when he’s now in the Senate raised scarcely an eyebrow. Today, I was fortunate to help with a tour through the Senate Library – the most beautiful structure of all the Parliament buildings.  A library researcher I knew passed by and we exchanged greetings.  Commenting on Finley’s statement, she concluded that the supposedly objective workings of the Library of Parliament were about to go through a difficult season of hyper-partisanship.  These researchers are used to this stuff, but not to the degree they have witnessed in the last few years.Stephen Harper’s form of governing has been a blunt instrument, capable of bludgeoning anything standing in its way but creating a massive kind of dispiritedness right across the board in Parliament, in all its key dimensions.The functioning of the political side of the House of Commons has been losing its sense of accomplishment and professionalism for years now.  You just have to watch the sheer diatribe of Question Period to know what I mean.  But it’s gone farther, with a full-court press by the Conservatives to impede committee business meant to deal with key issues.  We’ve spoken of this before, but everyone in the place who has been there for any length of time will freely admit it has never sunk this low.  Blame whomever you wish, but the buck stops with the PM and his ability to set the tone of Parliament.  Mr. Harper has done so and that tone has turned us deaf to compromise.  The House no longer functions.  Strike One.A few posts ago I wrote about the dysfunction now spreading to the civil service side of Parliament – the professionals and career civil servants meant to guarantee the efficient delivery of services for every citizen, from passports to pensions.  Deputy ministers from this branch have quit in disgust, other executives have been fired and numerous others are mulling over their futures as the PM significantly expands the PMO while at the same time crippling the civil service itself.  Whoever holds the key to power in Ottawa is meant to uphold the fine tradition of this service which is so respected around the world.  It is now listing badly in stormy seas.  Strike Two.For all of the criticism waged against it, the Senate has provided a place for sober second thought in Parliamentary affairs.  It’s true to state that it has been filled with mostly Liberal members in the last two decades and that they often assisted whichever Liberal leader who was elected.  Yet there was a respected kind of bi-partisanship that was often apparent on various committees and their subsequent reports.  The members took their roles seriously and most often attempted to keep out of the limelight of the House of Commons itself.  No more.  Though Stephen Harper promised never to do it, he has now stacked the Senate with his supporters and is attempting to turn it into another blunt juggernaut.  The kind of respectfulness that characterized life between the Senate and the House itself is now a thing of the past, as senators like Finley, Duffy, etal unleash their scorched earth campaign.  Strike Three.I sound too partisan, I know, but what is driving me here is that now in every key institution of Parliament respect has gone into decline.  I’m angered at all of us, including myself, for letting it come to this.  The cancer has spread throughout the once-hallowed halls and is now inoperable.  All that is left now is the fatal prognosis.  All parties have contributed to this state, but it has been the government that has thrown compromise out the window and plowed ahead.  The littered debris of Parliament now lies in their wake.  The media knows it, the professionals know it, and the old-time parliamentarians know it.  Mr. Harper has now struck out for the third time and yet still plans for a majority.  Rather that we would all be lamenting for our Parliament and all it once represented.