Why It's A Minority Government

When politicians takes shots at one another, the national interest is often shot down by mistake; when they aim at the experts within the bureaucracy, however, the national interest is shot down by intent.  An example of the former is the use of flyers called “ten-percenters” that seek to undermine an opponent in their own riding.  The result of such partisanship is often a turning away from politics by its citizens.  The national interest continues on, but it lacks the vitality of earlier times.The Copenhagen climate talks are a clear example of the latter.  Not content with taking potshots at their foes across the aisle in the House, the Harper Conservatives have taken to undermining the credibility of those within its own bureaucracy.  It’s not an accident when this happens, but a deliberate attempt to undermine the national interest for the sake of raw political intent and power.In times of relative calm, citizens vote within a limited range and the politicians they elect legislate within a confined range as well.  That paradigm shifts drastically in times of crisis.  The federal government might attempt to articulate all is well with its place in the world, but the Copenhagen summit puts the lie to that.  Things are so serious that there are discussions of environmental disasters, emerging wars and the extinction of entire species, but still the Harper Conservatives feel they have the political tools to stay the course.  Canadians fear it’s more serious than that.And so do the opposition parties.  Last week, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff unveiled a large portion of the party’s policy on the environment by calling for a cap-and-trade system that was binding, with hard caps that would lead to absolute reductions.  He spoke of heavy investment in green energy jobs and alternative ideas for the production of more energy.  And then he got down to business by affirming that the Liberal platform would set targets for reduction based on 1990 levels and not the 2006 weak levels the government has taken to Copenhagen.Jack Layton’s NDP has said that they would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020, and hopefully 80% by 2050.  And, like Ignatieff, he took the harder course by basing the party’s objectives on 1990 levels.Only last week the province of Quebec, tired of waiting for Ottawa to get its act together, unveiled a robust plan for tackling climate change.  In many ways he followed Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe’s policy to aggressively attack the problem.  Duceppe has called for a 50% reduction in GHG reductions by 2050.  And he’s the third leader to challenge Stephen Harper’s largely political solution to a global crisis by regulating his policy to the 1990s levels.All three opposition leaders have decried the present government’s penchant for ruining the national interest by blaming or ignoring the experts in the bureaucracy.  These are the experienced professionals who have the expertise to deal with the crisis we are now facing.  But this has been the habit for the last four years.  Whether it’s shooting the bureaucrats from CIDA, or diplomats like Richard Colvin re: Afghanistan detainees, or recently ignoring the request from Canada’s top 500 climate change scientists to take Copenhagen seriously, the Harper government has undermined the very people who could pull us out of the muck.  But then that would mean they would recognize such things as crises, and this they aren’t prepared to do.There’s a reason the present government continues to have a glass ceiling concerning its polling numbers.  Canadians have trouble trusting their full vote to a party that ignores the experts, tears into its own diplomats, or who fires its own bureaucrats who disagree with them.  Something isn’t just rotten in Denmark; it’s here and Canadians can’t fully trust it.  At least the three opposition parties have undertaken serious steps to avert the crisis.  The Conservatives?  Let’s not worry and just be happy.