Raise the Hammer

It pains me to defend Michael Ignatieff and I will not be voting for him but the idea that Ignatieff has been "disingenuous and dishonest" on the subject of minority government is absurd. Mr. Ignatieff has simply described how the system works. He has been roundly criticized by the punditocracy for failing to devise some clever evasion and thus opening himself up to charges of opportunism like the ones levelled against him by Shemaptolla. Never, never, describe the process of sausage making, say the pundits and don't address hypotheticals if you can possibly avoid it. Ignatieff’s sin here appears to be his tiresome insistence on talking about the way the system works instead of providing spin.

No one, including Mr. Harper, can say what they will do in a minority situation the day after the election. Mr. Harper sounds as though he is staking out a firm position but the truth is he can't really tell us what he would do. He confidently predicts what the other parties would do faced with a Harper plurality, but he doesn't really know that either and neither do the other parties know. It all depends on the relative positions of the parties after the vote. How significant is the seat margin between party number one and party number two and between party number two and party number three? Which parties are on an upswing and which on a downswing? Who is most ready to go back to the polls and who is least ready? Which party or parties are headed toward a change of leadership? Does public opinion point to one option or another?

The Conservative strategy in this election began with the theme of the opposition conspiracy to unseat the Conservatives and collaborate in the new parliament to replace them with a coalition. According to this theory, the contempt of parliament charges were a made-up pretext for the government's defeat. This strategy may or may not prove effective. It's hard to say now what kind of seat distribution will result on May 2nd.

If the Conservatives do not win a majority their position in the House may be outwardly similar to their position in the last Parliament but it will make a difference whether they have a larger or smaller plurality and which party leads the opposition. It could also make a difference if the Liberals and NDP (in whatever order) together hold enough seats to form an effective majority in Parliament without the Bloc. (Ekos projected this might happen but others predict that splits will produce a Conservative majority.)

The range of possible outcomes is complicated enough that no party and no leader can know what circumstances they may face after the election and how they might respond. This is why it is really the Conservative spin that can be described as disingenous and dishonest. Everyone has to make uncomfortable choices in a minority situation but they can't know what choices face them until they get there.

The media gave Mr. Harper a grace period on the "coalition" issue and didn't challenge his assertions very strongly early on but a lot of the electorate seem to have decided that it is a phony issue. Whether or not Ned Franks is in the bag for the Liberals, his assertion that Mr. Harper has been talking "constitutional nonsense" is on the mark.

Mr. Harper contends that the opposition parties have a prior disposition towards a coalition but they have strong reasons to avoid coalition, alliance or formal collaboration. The trap in which the Liberal-Democrats in Britain find themselves today illustrates the dangers of coalition for a junior partner while the Liberal-NDP accord in Ontario worked out badly for the Peterson government in the end.

We live in a country with strong regional and ideological divisions. Without a political realignment and so long as Quebec remains a wild-card we will face the possibility of minority government. This election did not happen when it did because of actions of the opposition or the government alone. It happened because all parties feared the consequences of backing down now at the constitutional impasse of the contempt finding. If the only issue on the table had been the budget it’s not clear there would have been an election. Either way, both the government and the opposition had ways to avert the no confidence judgement. You could argue that the Liberals had the strongest reason for forcing an election but not based upon their poll results. The Conservatives had been advertising as though in pre-campaign mode. They would argue they were preparing for the the inevitable but they weren't necessarily looking to avoid an election, either.