SHIFTING THE ONUS IN PARLIAMENT
A “confidence vote” will be held within the next few days in the House of Commons.
This is one of those periodic tests in our Parliamentary system to determine whether an incumbent minority government can continue. The Harper regime will survive because Jack Layton and the NDP will prop them up.
It’s important to review how this came about.
Last December, the Conservatives had to be drug kicking-and-screaming to admit that Canada was in a severe recession, hundreds of thousands of jobs were in jeopardy, and a package of economic stimulus measures was urgently required.
In January, they belatedly tabled what they called a stimulus budget.
We could have defeated them right then. That’s what both the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois voted to do. But the Liberal Official Opposition said “no”. The responsible course was to give the government a chance to implement their plan.
That plan was far from perfect, but it was already six months late and some help for hard-pressed Canadians was better than none at all. So the government was allowed to continue – with the NDP bragging that they voted 79 times to bring them down.
Through the spring and summer, Liberals tracked the Harper government’s performance very carefully. By the end of August, it was clear that Conservative management of such issues as the economy, preparations for the H1N1 flu, and Canada’s supply of medical isotopes for treating cancer was both incompetent and dishonest.
So we withdrew our support. We had given Mr. Harper the benefit of the doubt. But in return, he delivered 480,000 lost jobs, no help for the most vulnerable, an infrastructure scheme riddled with partisanship, the biggest deficit in Canadian history (which began BEFORE the recession), and a $13 billion payroll tax increase.
This, apparently, is what the NDP now stands for.
-30-
|
