The next Parliament

Editorial

Prime Minister Stephen Harper may be using the possibility of a coalition with the “separatists” and the “socialists” as a bogeyman against his Liberal opponents, but it is a simple fact that, in a minority situation, minor parties have leverage with the government. It may well be the Conservatives, when the next House of Commons convenes, who rely on the New Democrats or the Bloc Quebecois to pass its bills.

If the Conservatives win a majority, it is safe to say government policy will remain the same – only more so. With the freer hand Harper would have with a majority, he would no doubt press ahead with some of the policies that he was too savvy to introduce in a minority Parliament. There is probably a bit of a hidden agenda – this is not just a Conservative phenomenon; every party has some plans they do not acknowledge in an election campaign. Cutting arts funding, maybe, or detailing on specifically whose backs various spending cuts will be made. But if he is granted his coveted majority, Harper is almost certain to prove the Canadian adage that governance is a moderating force. Harper’s history – and that of his parties – has already demonstrated this phenomenon.

When Harper was first elected to Parliament in 1993, he was considered one of the ideologically purest of the ideological Reform party caucus. Now, seeking his third term as Conservative prime minister and his first majority, Harper promises no change to the Canadian consensus on equal marriage or abortion. These two lightning rods for controversy are the red meat driving a segment of his party. But Harper knows that the courts have spoken and Parliament’s hands are limited but, more importantly, these issues are ones that could turn his party’s perception among voters from the moderate, broad-based coalition he is trying to build back into a small tent of malcontents like the one with which he arrived in Ottawa.

But if the Conservatives fail to pick up the dozen seats they need for that majority, either Harper or Michael Ignatieff will have to rely on at least one of the two other parties to survive. And this, despite Harper’s warnings of a coalition, has not raised adequate discussion about the smaller parties’ policies. The Bloc Quebecois is easily assessed. It is a party whose only interest is securing more federal funds and attention for Quebec. It will sell itself to the highest bidder, as it demonstrated in the budget process that caused this election.

The New Democratic party is another case altogether. Releasing its campaign platform Sunday, the NDP recommitted itself to the same sort of old left policies European socialists abandoned more than a decade ago and added: “ ... we will work with partners for peace and justice in Israel and Palestine, within a framework of respect for United Nations resolutions and international law. This includes recognition of the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace in viable, independent states with negotiated and agreed-upon borders.”

These pleasant words are made moot by some NDPers’ demands for a right of return, which would create two Palestinian Arab states and render Jews again a minority everywhere in the world. This statement of apparent equanimity is also contradicted by party leader Jack Layton’s refusal a year ago to fire deputy leader Libby Davies, now running for near-certain re-election in the stronghold of Vancouver-East, for implying that “the occupation” began in 1948, a statement that negates the right of Israel to exist. Inside and outside Parliament, the NDP has been a welcoming home to the most one-sided, extreme anti-Israel individuals in the country. The need to appear moderate in election campaigns, despite whatever hidden agendas may exist, leads to ambiguous, peaceful-sounding statements like this one, though every indication from the party in Parliament (and when bloggers catch MPs like Davies in their element) screams radical anti-Zionism. Indeed, the federal NDP and four of its incumbent B.C. MPs remain endorsers of StopWar, the radical group that sponsored last year’s cross-Canada tour of George Galloway, the British extremist who sides with Hamas, Hezbollah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the perpetrators of genocide in Darfur. And, of course, the NDP’s domestic championing of women’s rights and gay rights gives way internationally to a moral relativism that seems happy enough to abandon Afghani women to the Taliban and gays in Gaza to execution.

In the end, whether Harper or Ignatieff wins the most seats in Parliament, but not half, they are going to have to deal with the Bloc and the NDP. It is precisely because the NDP does not put great stock in its foreign policy that a small band of nuts have been able to hijack it. Whoever forms the government after May 2 should be called on to promise that, whatever happens on the range of other issues, no New Democrat will get close to any position of influence over Canada’s foreign policy.

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