Andrew Coyne lambastes the coalition
I haven’t always agreed with Andrew Coyne, but here he’s bang on:
Faced with the unreasonable and extreme proposal that they raise funds in the same way as the Conservatives have been doing for years — by asking people for their money, rather than taking it from them — they really had no alternative but to seize power. What on earth were they supposed to do? Revamp their moribund fund-raising organizations? Find a message and a leader capable of motivating large numbers of Canadians to click the “donate” button on their websites? Get off their collective duffs? What were the Tories thinking?
No. No, the sensible, restrained, pragmatic thing to do when threatened with the loss of subsidy is to take down the government. The sober, reasonable, moderate thing to do in this time of economic uncertainty is to provoke a constitutional crisis — to cobble together a coalition without a prime minister or a program, propped up by a separatist party, and demand the governor general call upon it to form a new government, replacing the old one we just elected. It’s been six weeks, after all.
Thank God that Canada has such statesmen in this time of peril, willing to put partisanship aside in pursuit of high office. What a contrast to those hyper-partisan, power-mad Conservatives, with their insane demands that the parties make do on the millions in tax credits and reimbursements they receive outside the subsidy.
I know, I know…this coalition was in the works long before the whole subsidies thing came to light. And I know that the coalition has other reasons for being apart from that now-dead issue. Coyne knows that as well.
But that’s not the point. Public perception is the point, and in the public eye, this coalition will be forever tarnished as being the “Buck-ninety-five” coalition, the men and women willing to throw the country, its government, and its economy into turmoil over a thirty million dollar subsidies program that need not have existed in the first place: a political party should be self-sufficient, financially, without the need for government dollars to keep its coffers just full enough to wage an election campaign.
And indeed, the party currently in power can do just that: wage an election with donor dollars, not tax dollars. Which is as it should be.
The coalition’s emergence was perhaps poorly timed, and so is caught up in the mind’s eye with the proposal to cut that subsidy program. It will be remembered by and for that close association much more than for anything else. And when Canada’s next election comes around, the participants in the coalition will be tarred on that basis.
Right or wrong, that’s the optics of this mess. The coalition parties can only come away from this looking like petulant whingers, desperate to keep their hands in one more government cookie jar…even if doing so means taking control of the government for themselves.
One wonders: if Stephane Dion does supplant Stephen Harper as Prime Minister, will the Liberal Party of Canada’s depleted coffers suddenly and inexplicably become topped up? “Stranger” things have happened.
Anyhow, read all of Coyne’s article. It just gets better as the word count increases.
