RIP Jack Layton

RIP to Jack Layton
Layton lost his battle with cancer. He was a great politician and was much more than just an elder statesman. I did not agree with all of his policies but every last one of his policies was well meaning. I liked his longstanding policies on gay rights, ribbons for the Montreal Massacre anniversary, and infrastructure funding for cities. He was renowned for being able to work well with Mel Lastman despite their ideological differences, which is in stark contrast to the current situation at Toronto City Hall in which the left-wingers are completely shut out of all policy making. That current situation is not good for a municipal government and it is great that Layton and Lastman could work well together.
Layton is known for having run for Mayor of Toronto in 1991. He only got 32.88% compared to 58% for June Rowlands. He ran a good campaign for mayor but likely suffered in the election due to the unpopularity of the year-old NDP provincial government.
Two times Layton made the decision to prop-up a minority government: in 2005 with Paul Martin’s minority government, and in 2009 with Stephen Harper’s minority government. I believe Layton made the right decision in both those cases to prop-up the government – neither the spring of 2005 nor the fall of 2009 were the right time in my view for a federal election. Both times Layton extracted significant concessions from the government: in 2005 for infrastructure spending and in 2009 for the unemployed who were out of work because of the recession. I loved his eternal optimism and his willingness to work with leaders of other parties, even Stephen Harper, who is not known for his negotiating skills.
I certainly didn’t agree with all his left-wing causes in municipal and federal politics, but some of his policies were good and we will all miss him. My thoughts are with his family and colleagues.

Coming Throne Speech

I can’t deal with whether the federal government will fall on the coming Throne Speech. That seems too far away right now. I want to focus on the provincial campaign. There will be a lot of Throne Speech optics later. If we’re lucky, someone will find away to keep this government in power for now – Liberals in Ontario cannot have two elections so close together. I want this Conservative government out of office just as much as the next Liberal, but a 2007 election is not the way to do it. Bringing down the government only creates an election that the Conservatives could easily win with a minority or majority. Not for decades upon decades has the Governor General asked an opposition party to form government without an election victory for said opposition party. That just doesn’t happen anymore. If we could bring down the government in hopes of Dion simply being appointed Prime Minister on the spot, I’d go for it. But Governors General just don’t appoint new Prime Ministers on the spot following the loss of confidence of a government anymore. So it just is not a doable option. That is why we need to keep this Conservative government in power in the year 2007 and explore our options next year. That’s all the dealing I’m going to do on this topic for now.

But as a closely related aside I want to mention that Harper has been bold enough to say he won’t hold a vote on extending the combat mission in Afghanistan unless he thinks the government can win that vote. The implication is he may hold it eventually, as the current deadline of February 2009 comes close. But he will not hold such an early vote because he thinks he can’t win it. I seem to read signals from the government that the government was hoping certain Liberals would again break ranks and support the extension past 2009 in the same way that certain Liberals voted for the extension to 2009. I expect the government to be disappointed if they are hoping for this. Dion has more or less united the Liberals on this issue. In the spring there was a Liberal motion to end the mission in 2009. Individual Liberals did not break ranks and I wouldn’t expect them to in a future vote. We are now quite united on this issue. When it comes down to it, there cannot be an extension of the Afghanistan mission within the context of this current parliament. Harper would still need a majority government to push through such an extension of the mission. And even then, it would go against the type of “all-party consensus” that Harper has been promising.

Harper's Limited Options on Afghanistan

If Stephen Harper wants Canada’s current Afghanistan counter-insurgency mission to be extended beyond the current February 2009 expiration date, he has only a few options of making such an attempt with this minority parliament. Firstly, he can call off the extension and end the current mission in February, 2009. Harper has promised a vote in parliament on all military missions, including a possible extension of this current anti-insurgency mission. The Liberals are now united in their support of ending that current mission at its present expiry date. With the anti-war NDP and anti-war Bloc also sure to vote against such an extension, extending the mission would fail in a vote in this current parliament. So if Harper really wants to extend the mission, he would have the following options left. He could do what he did last time, and say that in the event that the vote fails in parliament, the mission gets extended for one year rather than two. Harper’s second option is to go back on his word and extend the current mission without a parliamentary vote. Harper’s third and final option is to declare the vote on the extension of the Afghanistan mission to be a confidence vote and to then call an election when the vote fails. The problem with this strategy is that Harper may have trouble fighting a campaign that was triggered on the contentious and divisive issue of the Afghanistan mission extension at a time when polls show a majority of Canadians opposing the mission.