A majority lost, then found

And then we all went off to Hy’s. The last vote had been bought and paid for, the government had staved off defeat by the margin of heiress, and all of Ottawa, it seemed, was young and in love.

But me, I couldn’t get this song out of my head, the soundtrack to the day’s events. Do you know it? It goes like this:

"I don't think it's good if anybody lies, or if anybody is asked the question, 'Well is there a deal?' and you say, 'No.' Well you want that to be the truth.”

Well, you’d have to listen to it. It’s Paul Martin’s chief of staff, Tim Murphy, in a rare bootleg edition of what I gather is his signature tune. In this case, his duet partner is Gurmant Grewal, Member of Parliament -- a position of some honour in this country, I am told -- and Tim is explaining to him how Gurmant could abstain from voting against the government, and the government could sometime later make Gurmant a Senator or some such, but there wouldn’t be anything sordid or dirty or, you know, illegal about it, as there would be if there were “an explicit trade” of one for the other. That’s what Tim says elsewhere on the tape: it’s a “bad idea” to have “any kind of commitment that involves an explicit trade.” Rather, you want to arrange things in such a way that if somebody asks “is there a deal,” you could say no, and it would literally be true. Because “you want that to be the truth.” Because “I don’t think it’s good if anybody lies.”

A reminder: This is the chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada talking.

So: you want to be able to truthfully say there’s no deal. That would seem simple enough, if in fact there is no deal. So why would you need to spend eight minutes discussing how to say it? Why would you even need to discuss whether anybody should lie? ----- "That can be done on the basis, those members can do it on the basis, 'Well look, my riding doesn't want an election, doesn't want one now.'" ----- That tape will forever serve as the background music, the theme song if you will, for yesterday’s vote. A government that had lost its majority spent nine days pretending it had a majority in order that it might obtain a majority. It used powers of state to which it was no longer entitled for the sole end of establishing its claim to the powers of state. And it used those powers in the most tawdry possible ways.

There is no other way to interpret that tape. It is incriminating by virtue of its very ambiguity: it is deliberate ambiguity, calculated ambiguity, in the discussion of matters that should brook no ambiguity. ----- “If someone abstains in that environment who has exercised a decision based on principle, (it) still gives him the freedom to have some negotiating room on both sides. Then the freedom to have discussions is increased." ----- The Prime Minister’s people do not deny that Mr. Murphy met with Mr. Grewal, or that it is his voice on the tape. Their defence is that it was Mr. Grewal who first approached them, and not the reverse. Oh, and that there was no deal. But how does it matter who first approached whom, so long as the the two ended up in the same room? And if there was no deal, why so much artful talking around it? How long does it take to say “No”?

What’s clear, moreover, is that this was hardly an isolated event: Mr. Murphy speaks of similar discussions with several other Conservative MPs. And we know of one, in particular, with whom the discussions proved notably fruitful. Offering a cabinet post to Belinda Stronach to induce her to vote with the government would not ordinarily be illegal, though it is certainly unethical -- and arguably unconstitutional, given the government’s tenuous position in the House. But offering positions outside the House -- a Senate seat, a diplomatic posting -- as an inducement to someone to vote a certain way, or not vote a certain way, would plainly be against the law. At the least, it would be conduct unbecoming a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada. ---- "A person can say, 'Look, I obviously abstained and created some issues' and then they can say, 'I'm thinking hard about what the right thing for my riding and the contribution I would like to make.'" ---- All of which is only the squalid terminus of a weeks-long effort at self-preservation the likes of which this country has never seen: from rewriting the budget three times in the space of a fortnight, to tossing billions of dollars at every passing province, to refusing to seek the immediate confidence of the House after last week’s defeat, as precedent and convention require: the precedent and convention on which our constitution vitally depends.

The Liberals have caused incalculable damage in the course of this scorched-earth campaign: to the treasury, to constitutional government, to our political culture. And, as it happens, to their own political fortunes, in the longer run. Before all this began, the Prime Minister remained a sympathetic figure to much of the public: the worst people said of him was that he was not cut out for politics.

No one would say that now. In recent polls, upwards of 60% of the public have said they believe Mr. Martin knew more about the sponsorship scandal than he has let on, that he would lie for political gain, and so on. They may have won the day, but they have done so at the expense of severely tarnishing their “brand” -- that is, not just as Liberals, but as the Liberals who aren’t those other Liberals, whose reputation is beyond repair. They may come to regret this victory before long. ---- "In advance of that explicit discussions about Senate, not Senate, I don't think are very helpful and I don't think can be had in advance of an abstention tomorrow."

"You can easily say, if you don't like, you can stay home or stay back where you are or if you do like we can make an arrangement that allows you to move."

"It's much like Belinda where there is a third party who is independent of both sides. So you didn't approach. We didn't approach...."