Who helped Harper make history?

History is only days away, Canada. This Friday will mark the 900th day of the Harper government.

Though, as momentous as it may sound, 900 days is just another meaningless milestone for Conservative malcontents, as Harper’s headboard is already notched with these achievements:

August 18, 2006: Surpassed Joe Clark’s pathetic 186 day minority.
September 9, 2006: Became the longest Conservative minority government, surpassing Arthur Meighan’s 207 days in 1925.
June 27, 2007: Surpassed Paul Martin’s 498 day minority from 2004 to 2006.

But the real history came on June 29th of this year when the Conservative cabal became the second longest minority government in Canadian history, breaking the record set by the 1966 Pearson government which lasted 866 days.

The Harper Conservatives have been allowed to go from electoral fluke to being on track to become the longest minority government ever. In that time they have gutted Ottawa’s fiscal capacity, lengthened and deepened the war in Afghanistan, ended our role in Kyoto, and politicized the immigration system, to name a few. That all this happened in a context when the combined opposition could have stopped them but didn't will remembered as one of the greatest scandals perpetrated against the centre-left in Canada.

And who helped Harper make history?

It wasn’t the NDP. As Jack Layton said yesterday, “his party used every tool in the parliamentary kit last spring to put an end to the minority Conservative government,” and they did, voting 43 times to bring to Tories down.

So, it begs more than credulity for Liberals to say they have been anything more than obedient lap dogs to Stephen Harper’s machinations. And Canadians thought kicking the Liberals out of office would end their spate of scandals.