The Liberals' empty chamber

When you have eliminated the impossible, the noted political scientist Sherlock Holmes observed, whatever remains must be the truth. Very well. It is impossible that the opposition parties will allow the Liberals to remain in office until February. Therefore, there will be an election before then. Which means that, sometime in the next few weeks, Parliament will vote to bring the government down. Will, because it must.

I don’t say the opposition will do this willingly. Indeed, the prospect of a winter election plainly frightens the pants off them. But there is no alternative. If the Liberals survive long enough to bring down a budget full of tax cuts and spending goodies, the opposition will have missed whatever window the Gomery inquiry opened for them. With each passing day, the memory of Liberal corruption will recede a little further. So it can’t happen.

In theory, the opposition does have one other alternative: the one floated by Jack Layton, of a motion demanding the government resign and call an election -- only not now, but eight weeks from now, in January. Call it a slow-motion of non-confidence: In the name of God, go -- but first, stay. You have lost the moral authority to govern, but you have our authority to govern regardless. We may have no confidence in you, but we have even less in ourselves.

This constitutional absurdity -- make the Liberals chaste, but not yet -- though it may allow Mr. Layton to paper over the divisions within his own party, can have no practical effect, even if it is adopted. The government will ignore it, as it has every right to do, and as one must suppose the opposition would have anticipated. So... then what? Unless the opposition has something in mind for an encore, Parliament will simply rise in December, not to return until February 6. Just in time for the budget.

So it will have to be followed by a non-confidence vote. It’s possible this was the opposition’s plan all along: make a show of your reluctance to bring down the government, emphasize that the timing of the election is not up to you, then stick the knife in. Or it’s possible they’ve just been making it up as they go along. But if the Liberals are allowed to thumb their noses at the Layton motion without consequence, then not only will the opposition have been exposed as sissies, but the election will take place on the government’s timing, not theirs. And since that can’t happen, it won’t.

I know it seems improbable, with Liberal support apparently rebounding to its usual seven- or eight-point margin over the Conservatives. But there is never a perfect time for an election, in government or out; there is only a choice between imperfect alternatives. And the alternative to a winter election, for the opposition, is a spring election. Post-Gomery or post-budget: which would you choose?

It is not as if the Grits’ position is unassailable. The Liberals have limped to victory through three elections, not out of any great surge in popular enthusiasm for their cause, but by throwing everything they could think of at their opponents. But the efficacy of these accusations has diminished, even as the demerits against their own name have accumulated. Simply put, they are running out of bullets.

For many years the Grits enjoyed the luxury of a divided opposition. That, obviously, is no longer the case. More to the point, they are themselves no longer contributing to that division. It was, more than anything else, the Grits’ ability to appeal to fiscally conservative voters, especially in Ontario, that knocked the keystone out of the Conservative coalition. That was the lasting electoral legacy of the 1995 budget. But we are ten years later, and spending is rocketing skyward once again. Fiscal conservatives no longer find them so appealing.

Nor are the other ingredients of Liberal victory still present. The Gomery inquiry has not only confirmed the party’s venality and corruption: it has erased any claim the Liberals might make to being the party of national unity. Even after it had long ago ceased to be the dominant party in Quebec, it could still play the Quebec card in the rest of Canada. No more: if Gomery were not enough to make sure of that, Jean Lapierre is.

What about smearing their opponents? For two elections in succession, the Liberals have been given the same gift by the opposition: a new party, with a new leader, the better to exploit voters’ fears of the unknown. They will not have that opportunity this time.

That leaves health care: the old standby, the last bullet in the Liberal chamber. But even that risks blowing up in their face. The $41-billion giveaway at last fall’s first ministers’ conference, the Chaoulli decision, the growing defiance of federal dictates by the provinces, led by Quebec: all have combined to make a mockery of Liberal claims to be the “defenders of medicare.” For the Prime Minister to try that pose yet again would look more than usually pathetic.

Divided, broke, and stained indelibly by Judge Gomery’s findings: the Grits are in serious trouble. Their last hope is to hang on until the budget. The opposition will not be so foolish as to give them that reprieve.