Informant indicated the family had spent several decades cementing control in parts of the country, particularly in Ontario and Atlantic regions, through judicious system of rewards and punishments, enforced by a network of local captains. Top lieutenants, known as "political ministers," are engaged in massive extortion racket, collecting more than $190-billion every year from citizens and businesses in return for "protection" from a range of calamities -- unemployment, old age, managerial incompetence etc. -- an operation known as "the Canadian way." Though operation now netting in excess of $9-billion a year, consigliere Ralph (Stoneface) Goodale has put out word the shakedown will continue unabated. (A second operation, restricted largely to the province of Quebec, in which businesses that made "contributions" are alleged to have received lucrative contracts, has been shuttered until a government investigation blows over.)

Informant described elaborate induction ceremony by means of which ordinary footsoldiers in Party are made into Members, sometimes known as "strange bedfellas." Process begins with the "nomination," in which known associates of the prospective Member sweep the neighbourhood, intimidating friends, neighbours and local businesses into making "contributions," purchasing "membership cards" and other conspicuous acts of loyalty. Heavy pressure is exerted to attend "nomination meeting," where associates vouch for Member's dependability in the service of the Party. Process is repeated a second time (see "elections"), though this is considered largely a formality.

Members, once "elected," form a tight-knit fraternity, though factions are also present within each family. Unswerving devotion to the family, and more particularly the head of the family, is instilled through such humiliating rituals as Question Period, in which Members are required to prove their loyalty by competing in public displays of obsequiousness. Informant said Members soon learn that it is only by sticking together with Members of the same family that they can assure their safety. The penalty for disloyalty is swift and certain.

Informant speculated that Parrish may have thought she was immune from usual punishments owing to the high profile she maintains in the neighbourhood, by means of which she survived a previous shootout with rival bedfella Steve Mahoney. Informant said her fate was sealed by Wednesday, however, as indicated by Big Pauly's use of the "bear hug of death," a familiar sign that an errant Member is about to be whacked. "That was the moment," informant opined, "that she shoulda known she was toast, you should pardon the expression. She had violated the unwritten law, on account of what she done. Did. And, like they say, what is did cannot be undid."

Informant argued Martin had no choice but to "take her out, you should pardon the expression," to show he was in control. But informant may in fact be motivated by opposite concern: that Big Pauly is in danger of losing his grip on the party, just as the party is losing its grip on the country. To maintain the regime of fear on which control of the family depends in turn depends on maintaining an impression of the family's own invincibility.

Yet years of intra-gang warfare has taken its toll: along with Chretien, the casualties include the likes of John (Bug Eyes) Manley, Sheila Copps (now reduced to writing a newspaper column), and Alfonso (I Knew Nothing) Gagliano, alleged in recent news reports to have been a prominent Liberal. A rival family, led by Stephen (The Belgian) Harper, already in control of much of the West, is now cutting itself in for an increasing share of the family's Ontario business, and may have legs on the East Coast.

In addition, informant said Martin's willingness to cut deals with local capos, known as "The Premiers," has alienated many in the family, who see these as a betrayal of the family's most sacred traditions. By acting decisively in the matter of Parrish, Big Pauly may hope to show that he is not, as some dare whisper, a ditherer, but rather has that ruthlessness and insatiable desire for power that is the family's most sacred tradition of all.

For the promise the federation accuses the Liberals of breaking, the promise Dalton McGuinty made to them in writing, is not the promise not to raise taxes. It is the promise not to raise taxes without the consent of the public, by means of a referendum. By itself this commitment might be seen as either praiseworthy or foolish, depending on your point of view. But the point is he made it.

Or no, that's not the point. The point, rather, is that what Mr. McGuinty promised was no more and no less than what was already the law. Known as the Taxpayer Protection Act, the law had been on the books since 1999, having passed by a vote of 76-9 in the Ontario legislature, with the Liberals in support. The Liberal leader's promise amounted to a pledge that, as premier of the province, he would obey the law. That is the promise he broke.

Had the issue merely been about raising taxes, or breaking promises, the government would not now be in court. If Mr. McGuinty considered it necessary to raise taxes, notwithstanding his explicit and repeated promises to the contrary, there was nothing stopping him. All he was required to do by law was to obtain the consent of those who would be paying these higher taxes. All he had to do was ask.

And, chances are, he would have won. Oh sure, people like me would have argued against it. We would have pointed out that the province has no shortage of revenues, that in fact real per capita revenues are at record levels, that it was the Conservatives' failure to control spending that had put the province in its present fix. But who listens to us? In all likelihood, people would have swallowed the premier's line that the tax was "for health."

More important, they would have been delighted to have been asked for their money, to have been consulted on the tax's necessity, rather than simply ordered to cough up. The precedent set, the statute would have been as entrenched in expectation as it was in law. Perhaps it is too much to expect Mr. McGuinty to have campaigned for higher taxes before the election. But there is no reason he could not have done so afterwards.

Yet he did not do so. He simply raised taxes. Whether, in so doing, he literally broke the law is for the court to decide: it depends on whether the government's hasty legislation exempting the new tax from the referendum requirement is seen as an amendment to the Taxpayer Protection Act or an evisceration of it. But it's clear he did not abide by it, or the principle it embodied.

I say all this for the benefit of the National Post editorial board, which yesterday denounced the taxpayers' suit as an assault on democracy, an attempt to substitute the courts' rule for the voters'. Understand: to the Post it doesn't matter whether the government broke the law. In fact, the paper is quite certain it did. But "while it is the law of the province, and no law should be violated with impunity, breaking it is not quite on a legal or ethical par with violating provincial or federal laws against fraud, influence peddling or embezzlement."

It is a fascinating ethical system the Post is constructing. Governments may break some laws, but not others. Defrauding the public, when practiced by politicians, is not the same as other sorts of fraud. And while "no law should be violated with impunity," the penalty for violating this law is... what?

Defeat at the next election, the Post starchily advises. To do otherwise is to "take power out of the hands of voters." But how are voters empowered if they cannot trust a word the candidates say? And how is democracy served if the obligation of public officials to obey the law is treated, not as a given, the minimum qualification for elected office, but as just another subject for debate, another "issue" to be weighed against the others?