Politics: Only the Liberals are Shaky

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I wanted to substantially avoid Canadian politics for awhile since parliament is prorogued until late January, but there is a point that needs to be made. All this material about the "coalition" falling apart is not precisely correct--what is really falling apart is the Liberal Party itself. Sound familiar?

Like it or not, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois aren't likely to withdraw from their arrangements with respect to the coalition on their own volition. For the NDP, this is not just a chance to remove the Conservatives and Stephen Harper from power, but a chance to actually do some governing as part of the coalition. After being demonized as separatists (and falsely called part of the coalition) by the Conservatives, the Bloc has no interest in anything that could be construed as helping the Conservatives.

The only party that might pull out of the coalition is the Liberals, and that's what Liberal Member of Parliament Jim Karygiannis really meant when he said yesterday that he "cannot see it holding together" until the end of the year. The antecedent of "it" in his sentence was clearly supposed to be the coalition, but the coalition isn't changing unless the Liberals initiate it.

The problem, just as it was in the last election campaign, is that the Liberal party seems utterly incapable of rallying behind present leader Stéphane Dion. While I have long had difficulty understanding the internal rejection, it is clear that the Dion response to Harper's statement on Wednesday night--which some have dubbed the "Blair Witch Project" speech for its poor production values--didn't help Dion's standing. While the Prime Minister wasn't exactly impressive that night, Dion looked less polished than most high school student body presidents.

Furthermore, if the October election had a clear conclusion, it was that Dion had been rejected by Canadian voters. The Liberals were the only party to lose seats and their percentage of the vote was the lowest in the party's history. If anyone lacks a mandate to govern, it is Stéphane Dion, and that is the main substance of the argument that the coalition would be illegitimate which I happen to agree with. Change the leader of the coalition, especially to Michael Ignatieff, and suddenly a lot of people are much more comfortable about the idea.

When people like Jim Karygiannis say that the coalition will not last through the prorogation, what they are really saying is that Dion will not last as the coalition leader or as Liberal Party leader through the prorogation. It seems extremely likely that Dion will be replaced, and while that might open the door for the coalition to break up, that is not a foregone conclusion.

A Liberal leadership race is already underway, one that was supposed to finish in May. Instead, the Liberals will probably find a way to choose between Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Dominic LeBlanc as soon as possible. One assumes that LeBlanc, as the least known of the three, is unlikely to come out the winner. Between Rae and Ignatieff, there is a clear calculus. If Rae wins, there is the distinct possibility that more centrist MP's in the Liberal Party may cross the aisle and join the Conservative Party, giving the Conservatives a majority (this may happen anyway, but that's a topic for another day, and it is certainly more likely if Rae, a former NDP member, were to become leader). If Ignatieff were to become the leader, Rae supporters would have nowhere to go. For this reason, I expect Ignatieff to become Liberal Party leader, and thus the leader of the Coalition.

Ignatieff has seemed lukewarm about the coalition, particularly in light of negative poll numbers towards it, so it is possible that he might pull the plug on it, assuming the Conservatives are smart and present a reasonable budget in January (which I used to think was a given, but in light of the past few weeks, I wouldn't put anything past Harper). If the coalition does still exist and votes down the government, there is no way the Governor General will not call an election, considering that Prime Minister Harper will request it and one of the parties has a new leader. If the coalition folds and the Conservative government survives, then the next time the Conservatives overreach like they did in the Fiscal Update, the government will fall then and an election will be called.

The bottom line? I expect Michael Ignatieff will become the leader of the Liberal Party as soon as the party can figure out how to do it. Then, one way or another, there will be another election, and how that one turns out will have mostly to do with how the Conservatives and Stephen Harper behave between now and then.