Day 2: Return to the Coalition Crisis

We've known it was coming for two years. As expected, Stephen Harper jumped out of the gate trying to make this election all about the coalition.

Initially, the opposition parties played along. Jack Layton made it perfectly clear the NDP was for sale or rent. Gilles Duceppe prattled on about his 2004 deal with Stephen Harper - yes, it makes Harper look like a hypocrite, but it keeps people talking about coalitions, so I don't think Steve minds too much.

For his part, Michael Ignatieff dodged the question, talking about red doors and blue doors. One reporter shouted out "if you don't answer this now, we'll ask you every day this campaign!". Stephen Harper must have been grinning from ear to ear.

Left with no option, Ignatieff issued a statement yesterday categorically ruling a coalition out. So the real question is whether this lances the boil, or if Iggy will have to carry the coalition gorilla on his back for the entire campaign?

Not surprisingly, Harper refuses to take no for an answer, so we're going to keep hearing about the coalition boogeyman in stump speeches and Tory attack ads. I suspect some people will believe what they hear - the coalition is still fresh in the public's mind and, as Tom Flanagan says, it doesn't have to be true, it just has to sound plausible. Still, the media can't very well ask Ignatieff about it every day and, if they do, he has an easy answer. The issues of the first few days rarely become the issues of the campaign when they're dealt with properly. How many times was Harper asked about same sex marriage in the 2005 election after he gave a clear answer on day 1?

Like Harper in 2005, Ignatieff now needs to take control of the narrative - talking about coalitions doesn't do him any good, even if it's about Harper experimenting in a hotel room with the socialists and separatists with it in his youth.

Hopefully, Ignatieff's clear answer to the coalition question will let him move on.

Moment of the Decade: #2 The Coalition

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the first two weeks of January, I'm counting down the top 10 vote getters. Tomorrow, I reveal the complete voting results and the number one moment of the decade.




If nothing else, it made Canadians pay attention to politics.

Over the past year, people had complained about how dull our politics were – the Americans had just gone through a thrilling election whereas you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who could tell you anything memorable about our election that had happened around the same time. There’d been something about sweater vests and puffins, but nothing had really happened, and nothing had really changed.

Then, for a fortnight in December, everyone paid attention. And I mean everyone. That Christmas, friends and family who couldn’t name their local MP didn’t want to talk to me about anything except the coalition. And they all had an opinion. Someone had committed an affront to democracy – just who had committed what affront depended on who you asked. Those dastardly Liberals were going to use the separatists to steal an election! That bully Stephen Harper was using an economic crisis to play petty politics!

In one of my favourite political memories, I bundled up on a cold Toronto Saturday and visited a pair of competing rallies, both accusing opposites side of subverting democracy. At one rally, the coalition was described as “the saddest moment in the history of Canada” and a “coup”. At the other, Jack Layton talked about how Stephen Harper had “taken away your right to vote”.




Looking back, it’s actually easy to see how it all happened. The Liberals were weak and Harper went for the jugular. The opposition fought back with the only weapon they had. So Harper backed down. But this was the only chance Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton would ever have at power so they kept punching. So Harper used the only weapon he had and prorogued. Then Michael Ignatieff saw an opportunity to skip the unpleasantness of a leadership race and he took it.

It was wild, it was exciting, but even with emotions higher than they’d ever been, it really wasn’t anything more than a bunch of politicians behaving completely rationally, like basic game theory would expect them to. One by one, they saw an opportunity for power and they took it. Even though we faulted them at the time, can you really blame politicians for doing what politicians do?

Looking Back

Brian Topp, an NDP negotiator during the coalition talks last year, has a 6-part series on the Globe's political portal showing a behind-the-scenes look at how the coalition coalesced last year. The first two posts are up (here and here) and make for a fascinating read. Some interesting tid-bits so far:

-From Topp's accounts, the NDP were the key driving force behind the coalition, having broached the idea with the Liberals several times before - the Dippers had a coalition proposal ready to give Dion on election night, had the results warranted it.

-The Liberals appeared receptive to the idea, but internal manoeuvring over who got to be PM seems to have been an early stumbling block.

-Topp himself admits he seriously underestimated the power of the "deal with the separatists" argument.

What I'll really be interested in is the next post in Topp's series, since my view was always that that coalition was a good threat, but the plug should have been pulled once Harper backed down on the voter subsidy issue over the weekend.

Well, that's that, right?

Ignatieff vows never to form coalition

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff vowed Friday that his party would never enter into a governing coalition and said he could make Parliament work without such a deal.

"In January, we did not support a coalition, and we do not support a coalition today or tomorrow," Ignatieff told reporters in Ottawa.

So I guess we can put this whole thing to bed, right? Right?

You know, I'm starting to think Harper may have played his cards a little early in this one. There's only so many ways to write "Harper raises coalition ghost, Ignatieff denies it" before the story starts to get a bit stale.