With the summer now officially over and Parliament set to resume Oct. 16, Ottawa’s political climate is heating up amid speculation Canadians will be plunged into yet another federal election. In fact, the national media have already begun speculating on which day the government will fall.
Growing speculation of a fall vote began two weeks ago when Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe outlined five ‘non-negotiable’ conditions the minority Conservative government would have to meet in order to secure his party’s support. If the conditions are not met, Duceppe says his party is prepared to vote against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s throne speech.
With Duceppe’s demands expected to be rebuffed by Harper, it is all but certain the Bloc- Quebecois will vote against the government’s upcoming Oct. 16 speech from the throne. But how will the NDP and Liberals vote?
NDP leader Jack Layton says his party will wait to hear the throne speech, but Layton has gone on record recently saying he would not support the Tories. The NDP can also claim to have some momentum in light of the Sept. 17 by-election results in Quebec which saw the party win the Montreal-area riding of Outremont, a Liberal stronghold. With this in mind, it is expected Layton’s NDP will also vote to bring down the government this month.
This leaves the fate of an election with the Liberal party and its leader Stéphane Dion. Like Layton, Dion says he will wait to hear the throne speech before deciding how he and his party will vote. Yet there is another factor here that cannot be ignored:Dion’s leadership woes. The embattled Liberal leader endured a difficult summer where he received little attention from the national media. After losing the Quebec by-elections, Dion is now being openly attacked in the media by Quebec Liberals unhappy with his leadership.
But it gets worse. The Quebec wing of the federal Liberal party threatened to close earlier this month amid an internal party dispute between officials close to Dion in Ottawa and the Quebec wing of the party.
To add to that, Marc Garneau, a prominent Liberal and former Michael Ignatieff supporter, decided he would not run for the Liberals in the next election after Dion failed to ask him to run in a Quebec riding.
To make matters worse, this month, Dion confidant Jamie Carroll, who is also the Liberal party’s national director, was pressured to resign from his position over comments he made about hiring Quebeckers in the party’s Ottawa office.
With these developments unfolding in recent weeks, you can be sure Dion’s adviser’s will be urging him to do everything in his power to avoid a fall vote, for it is clear now is no time for the Liberals to face an election. In the coming weeks, you can expect to see prominent Liberals appear in the media arguing an election is not in the national interest at this point in time.
But since when do political leaders take the national interest into consideration when plotting election strategy? Duceppe and Layton will vote to bring down the government because they are confident they can hold their own in a federal election or possibly even gain seats for their respective parties. Dion knows all too well he and his party are in no shape to fight an election, so he will vote to keep the government alive. It is as simple as that.
On Harper’s part, the Prime Minister is well positioned to fight an election. The Conservative party is making strategic advances in Quebec and party coffers are full. Harper, however, has made it clear he wants to continue to govern. With this in mind, the Conservatives will attempt to further strengthen their polling numbers throughout the fall.
And so as the Oct. 16 throne speech nears, Canadians can rest assured the country will not be plunged into yet another unnecessary election that will end up costing taxpayers millions of dollars. For that, they can grudgingly thank Stéphane Dion.
For this time, what is in the Liberal party’s interest just so happens to also be in the national interest.