A ray of hope for our politics: Peggy Nash to return to Parliament

Some welcome news for all Canadians this morning at PunditsGuide.ca: former New Democrat MP Peggy Nash has announced she will be making her return to the House of Commons.

As the invaluable website reports:

“Nash announced this morning that she will run again in the next election and try to reclaim her Toronto seat of Parkdale – High Park from Liberal M.P. and former leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy, the Pundits' Guide can exclusively report.”

The accomplished and personable Nash narrowly lost her Toronto riding in the last election owing in part to the over-hyped campaign of the disappointing Gerard Kennedy. Sympathy from a dirty tricks campaign in the riding next door buoyed Liberal fortunes as well (Which reminds: cutting brake lines and vandalism are pretty serious charges. Whatever became of those charges? One can’t imagine they were just dropped after the campaign, now were they?)

Nash, who has made history as the first woman to negotiate across from the big three auto makers, will make a strong addition to a House of Commons that now perhaps more than ever is badly in need of strengthening.

Give your Hedz a shake.

Over on her "Hedz Sayz" Facebook page, Hedy Fry, the spelling-challenged Liberal MP has taken the unusual step of doing something. Unfortunately, her latest action since helping Gordon Campbell with his HST is to attack New Democrat Libby Davies who is on a hunger-strike against homelessness.

In assailing Davies, who is unquestionably one of the leading lights on homelessness in Canada, Fry makes the baffling suggestion that New Democrats are responsible for the absence of a national housing program.

Um, just one second, Hedz.

For the record – your record as a matter of fact - it was the Liberals who killed the National Housing Program that New Democrats built with Pierre Trudeau. Don't take this Horse’s words for it, read your own budget:

"Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation will phase out its remaining role in social housing except for housing on Indian reserves." - Source: Paul Martin, Minister of Finance, Budget in Brief, 6 March 1996, p. 11

But buried in Fry’s spleen venting is enduring evidence of how little the Liberal Party has changed since Canadians sent them packing four years ago. The demise of Paul Martin’s clumsy and amateurish Liberal government came not at the hands of the New Democrats, as Fry insists. It came from the ballots of millions of Canadians who finally said “enough” to Liberal arrogance and their culture of entitlement.

Four years on, and Liberals at the highest levels still haven’t clued into that simple fact. That kinda says it all.

Liberals respond to prorogation with the same old partisanship

The Ignatieff Liberals have once again poisoned the well of cooperation among opposition parties by putting their tired partisanship first.

The Conservatives never counted on a reaction like this. Weeks after Harper turned off the lights on the House of Commons, not only has the outcry and criticism continued – but it now appears to be snowballing. From Tim Hortons to call-in shows, Canadians – particularly small c-conservatives - are venting their disbelief with how indifferent Harper has become towards our national institutions. Today, a group of academics are weighing in with 200 of them slamming Harper’s heavy handed decision to silence parliament.

Now it’s the opposition’s turn. For their part, the Liberals have decided not to work with the New Democrats and Bloc, but instead have planned to gather in Ottawa to hold hearings with “experts” this month on what House Leader Ralph Goodale calls “an agenda that would guide a future Liberal government”.

It’s so typical that it barely needs mentioning, but yet another national crisis is upon us, and the Liberals have defaulted to deciding that this about them and their nostalgia for government - not the broader public interest. Why on earth would New Democrat or Bloc MPs want to participate in hearings to "guide a future Liberal government”?

But Liberals don't care about that. On their chess board, their entitlement beats every other piece. Just like they did in the coalition period a year ago, Ignatieff has seen the opportunity to work with other opposition parties, but is rejecting that to instead focus on himself and tinkering with his broken political machine.

They are missing the point that it's precisely this hyper-partisanship that has been killing our federal politics. It is this this hyper-partisanship that has gotten us to where we are. It was Harper's own partisanship that resulted in the Conservatives shuttering parliament in the first place. How does Ignatieff responding with even more partisanship help?

It doesn't, which is why more and more, the Liberals aren't the answer to Stephen Harper.

"A culture of cover-up": Prorogation backlash sticks to Harper

Process doesn’t matter.

That’s the conventional wisdom in the Conservative backrooms. The strategists who whisper earnestly into the ear of Stephen Harper believe that Canadians aren’t inclined to remember how we got from A to B, only that “the Conservative government is delivering on B.”

And that’s certainly the lens through which prorogation must have been viewed at the planning stages. The strategic braintrust in the PMO collectively concluded that closing down parliament for more than 60 days would be viewed as a yawner for most. The majority of Canadians could care less about parliamentary procedure, or Harper’s weak-as-dish-water reasoning for it.

Those strategists seem to have miscalculated, as today's Angus Reid poll concludes.

The second prorogation in as many years isn’t the story. Instead, the story is that a majority of Canadians are growing into the perception that the Conservatives are being led by a uncompromising autocrat who routinely puts his political fortunes ahead of the country -- in the current example, engaging in a cover-up over what his government knew about detainee abuse in Afghanistan.

Much like the Liberals' "cluture of entitlement," a "culture of cover-up" is the kind of impression that can stick to a party.

Stephen Harper ends 2009 the same way he began it: on the run

Like most things that happen in Ottawa, this had been predicted.

The rumours of prorogation were rampant weeks ago. That’s when the New Democrats put out this release calling 2009 “Stephen Harper’s Year on the Run”. The clever release contains a few examples - like the PM skipping-out of questioning on detainee abuse to attend an apparently urgent photo-op with lacrosse players - that a lot of observers may have forgotten.

With only a total of 141 House sitting days, the first two sessions of Stephen Harper’s second parliament have been among the shortest in Canada’s history. Indeed, one has to go all the way back to Louis St. Laurent’s 1949 parliament to find two opening sessions of shorter duration.

But unlike St. Laurent, Harper is leading a minority parliament. And in this context, Harper has taken to overusing prorogation the same way sports teams are inclined to use up all of their time outs at the end of a losing period – to regroup and hopefully throw the winning team off their momentum.

The irony of course is that once upon a time, Stephen Harper was an avowed defender of the supremacy of parliament. He doted on every way in which the Liberals had weakened the ability of MPs to effectively represent their constituents. He loathed the concentration of power in the Chretien / Martin PMOs. When Chretien moved to prorogue in 2003, then opposition leader Harper blasted:

"What we are also learning once again is that the Liberals apparently want to prorogue the House … They want to run out of town, get out of town just one step ahead of the sheriff. Is the Liberal government committed to staying here as planned throughout the month of November so that it can be held accountable in the House for its actions?'' - Stephen Harper, Canwest News Service, 20 October 2003

But all of that was before 2006 -- before Harper found himself in the Prime Minister’s chair and transformed himself into a power - and prorogation – addict, just like the Liberal leaders he once loathed.

But as we end 2009, there is some good news. Yesterday, Nanos put out their year end leadership numbers which show a larger number of Canadians are turning to the New Democrats’ Jack Layton. Honest, approachable, and the one leader with experience to work across party lines to get results, 2009 has solidified Layton’s position as the anti-Harper.

Happy new year, Canadians.

The narcissism of small Liberal and Tory differences

This kind of thing has become sadly predictable. But, reassuringly, not so predictable that it doesn’t merit the criticism it is receiving.

In fairness, let’s first acknowledge that Canadian politics has always been home to its share of baseless and tasteless attacks. But let’s also accept that recent years have also witnessed a spike in both the number and viciousness of childish political attacks – particularly between the Liberal and Conservative teams.

Who can forget these rhetorical high-points? ...

Conservatives forced to remove image of bird defecating on Liberal leader

Conservatives accuse Liberal MP of bring “anti-Israel”

Liberal MP apologizes for calling Conservative MP “fat”

Liberal MP calls Conservative an “idiot" who should "go back to making tea"

Liberals demand apology for Prime Minister’s slur (Incredibly, Liberals made this their lead in question period for about a week, if memory serves)

So, why has debate between the Liberals and Conservatives become so poisonous that a photo of the PM being gunned down is deemed “okay” by the professional communications staff running the Liberal website?

Consider this: Speaking about student politics at the University of Toronto, the Old Bob Rae once famously opined that “the reason it was so acrimonious and so divisive is because the stakes were just so low.”

In other words, when what you are debating are matters of such small difference – bringing in the HST tomorrow or next week; appointing 17 Senators instead of 18; torture versus “torture-lite” – the tone of the debate becomes the only thing you actually control.

Unlike New Democrats who can put real differences on the table between them and Stephen Harper, Liberals find relief in the ad-hominem. It’s all they have left.

How to Write Liberal Party Policy

If imitation is the fondest form of flattery, then what is the higher virtue in flagrantly ripping-off someone else’s ideas?

That’s the question being asked about Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s pension reform package today.

The man who haas spent his more productive years chiding hapless undergrads for not properly citing Heidegger ‘s Identität und Differenz has today passed-off as his own a re-tread of the ideas New Democrats have been pushing for months -- if not years.

But rather than throwing Harvard’s plagiarism policy at him, New Dems are instead having a bit of fun at Ignatieff and his top staffer Peter Donolo …

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