New Democrat finance critic impresses European audience ...

From today's Financial Post ...

On a bitterly cold night in Paris this week, a small group of current and former world leaders sat down in the the French prime minister's residence for supper with a hand-picked selection of Nobel laureates.

Seated in the opulent splendour of Matignon house alongside guests including Germany's Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, was a sole Canadian who had received a personal invitation from the host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

... who's that turning heads among the European political and business leaders as they strategize over the appropriate response to the global recession?

You guessed it, Jack Layton's finance critic, Thomas Mulcair.

If Mulcair and NDP ideas can impress and be welcomed by leaders of international finance abroad, maybe, just maybe it's about time detractors at home finally ejected their outmoded stereotypes about about the New Democrats.

Fix the economy, get rid of Harper

Over brie and Courvoisier this holiday season Conservatives have had plenty of time to figure out what they need to do to rehabilitate their party after the November 2008 Economic Statement debacle.

The obvious conclusion for all – save those few hopeless ideologues who still cling to the myth of Stephen Harper’s strategic mastery despite all evidence to the contrary – is that Harper himself must go.

Those needing further convincing that keeping Harper around will hurt more than the alternative consider this: On the very same day that economists are predicting we are now a toboggan run of job loses without even a set of black plastic handles to slow our descent, the only news out of Stephen Harper’s interview with Maclean's is that he’s still fixated on the political party allowances that landed him in the non-confidence penalty box in the first place.

In answer to the question have you “mishandled your relations with the opposition?” Harper incredibly tells Peter Whyte: “the government has decided to go [with] a freeze instead of an elimination. But make no mistake, the government believes that the elimination of these subsidies has to be done eventually, that that’s in the public interest.”

WHAT!!??

Harper is supposed to be saving a $1.2 trillion economy from collapse. He’s supposed to be managing a $250 billion federal budget. He’s supposed to be doing his part as a leader of a G-8 global economy to restore the confidence of investors and consumers. Instead he’s still obsessing over $20 million worth of political subsidies that are so gosh-darn important they merited ZERO mention in the Conservatives’ election platform. $20 million in political allowances that are dwarfed by the $95 million we are forced so spend on the Senate Harper said he wouldn’t appoint anyone to, but then did.

The issue here is not about political party allowances, nor should it be. The issue now is whether Stephen Harper possesses the self-discipline required of a Prime Minister in a minority government during a calamitous economic downturn. Based on Harper’s narcissistic obsession with partisanship in these times, the answer comes back resoundly “no”.

In a manner unseen since the disastrous bumbling of Stockwell Day at the head of the Alliance, Stephen Harper has climbed high, overplayed his hand, and crashed all the while using his party’s credibility on the economy, democracy and public accountability to break his fall.

Jack Layton and the coalition’s answer is simple: we have to fix the economy and get rid of Harper. You can’t have one without the other.

Harper must go. Even Conservatives must realize that his position is too compromised now.

Which leads to an interesting possibility: before the coalition has its first chance to get their hands on Harper, will more sober and statesmen-like Conservatives like Jim Prentice and Rob Nicholson step forward to call for the change in the leadership their party and our economy needs?

Serious times call for serious people

The coming days will forever cast the Conservatives’ November 2008 Economic and Fiscal Update as either the worst political miscalculation in Canadian politics in thirty years, or a forgettable contretemps.

The events unfolding right now recommend the former. By media accounts so far, Jack Layton moved with lightning speed yesterday reaching out to emissaries like Ed Broadbent to start the process of building what may be a historic change in government.

However, if the latter turns out to be the case, it will almost surely be because Stephen Harper summons his vaunted skills as a political chess player to once more deke-out his opponents. Yet one of the premier admirers of those skills is presently gob-smacked that the Economic Statement exposed Harper as politically rudderless:

Paul Wells' indictment is brutal:

“So, drawing his inspiration from Jo Moore, the Downing Street spin doctor who thought 9/11 would be a “very good day” to get some embarrassing news releases out, Harper decided an economic crisis would be an excellent cover to use for a little political kneecapping. What could be more clever? That’ll show them he’s a serious guy.

So the real outrage of yesterday’s economic “update” is not that it seeks to impose on most parliamentarians a change to funding rules that most of them would never ordinarily accept; it’s that it accomplishes nothing else. It’s that in the most dangerous economic times Canada has faced in 20 years if not far longer, this prime minister can’t wipe the smirk off his face and grow up a little."

It may be too late for Harper and his backroom chums to stash their toys and start behaving like the sober managers of a G8 economy.

Even if the Conservative brain-trust finally decode that they underestimated the importance of a real and dramatic stimulus to save jobs, and that this was no time for juvenile and petty changes to $27 million worth of political funding, it will almost certainly be too late.

The opposition parties, like a slumbering bear have woken in anger and are now aware of the shiny potential of the moment in front of them. What comes next for Layton and the other opposition MPs will be daunting, but they will have already shown more maturity in the face of a serious economic challenge than any of Harper’s playmates.

Oh, did you need that stimulus now?

It’s clearer now than ever that Jack Layton was entirely right not to support Harper's throne speech over the Conservatives asleep-at-the-switch response to the economic downturn.

The old adage about the mechanic’s car being in the worst state of repair rings true when you look at how poorly the federal government is meeting the challenge of reassuring markets and stimulating the economy with economist Stephen Harper at the helm.

That’s the reason Layton gave for voting against Harper’s throne speech: “The words in yesterday’s Throne Speech do not match the urgency or the depth of what is required to protect working families in this economy. Canadians were hoping for more from the Throne Speech. New Democrats were expecting more.”

Exactly. Where is the sense of urgency?

In the US, hundreds of billions have been announced in bail outs and stimulus – with another $600 billion today. The Labour government in the UK announced $39 billion in measures yesterday. Yet in Canada, the finance minister wakes from his mid afternoon nap to tell a business audience that they shouldn’t expect a dime in stimulus in Thursday’s economic statement!

As though to demonstrate that he may have retained something he read in the Report on Business that morning, Flaherty adds that he might be open to taking the bold step of moving the federal budget a few days earlier in the spring … you know, if things get bad. Because a 40 percent drop in stock market and predictions of unemployment at 7.5 percent aren’t signs of “bad” at all.

The question is where precisely is the presumed economic credibility of the Harper Conservatives right now? It’s no where to be seen. Heck, the Tories can’t even see where consumers are getting gouged. (see the fourth last paragraph in Wheery’s blog here)

Layton and the New Democrats appear the only ones in Ottawa who get the urgency for a plan to get us to the other side of this mess.