IT IS a figurative image close enough to reality to be at least a credible metaphor.
A weak prime minister Paul Martin is cowering in the corner, contemplating the fetal position and pleading for just another 10 months of government in the face of Conservative threats to bring his minority government down. Just nine more months and he’ll call an election.
“Just tell me what you need to allow me to keep leading.” Whimper whimper.
Towering over him, holding the whip hand, is neophyte NDP leader Jack Layton, a Toronto politician reveling in the dominatrix position and trying to extract as much as he can.
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More money for federal intrusions into provincial jurisdictions like student tuition and social housing, thunders Layton. More money for foreign aid, he adds.
OK, says Martin. “The budget will be changed for you but it can’t be changed for anyone else who wants the Atlantic Accord hived off or the gas tax to the cities made a separate vote.
“Beyond the reasonable changes you want, Jack, the budget is a seamless document that speaks for itself. And since we don’t want to lose our right to govern, the budget will not be brought to a vote any time soon since a loss would be an end to my 16-month tenure at 24 Sussex that I once boldly predicted would last a decade.
“Besides all that, a budget vote in the House of Commons only sends it to committee where it can languish for weeks or months, then back to the Commons and then off to the Senate.
“In other words Jack, you’ve given me a blank cheque to support me until the budget is approved, which likely will not happen until we reach the period when I want an election next winter. Thanks, Jack.”
Minority governments can be productive but are not always pretty.
Interestingly for rural Canada, Layton did not make agricultural policy one of his demands, one of the issues that “Canadians want dealt with.”
Conservative leader Stephen Harper was quick to jump on the point in a speech last week to farmers in southwestern Ontario.
The lack of agricultural concerns in the NDP leader’s wish list was an “absolute disgrace,” said Harper.
That’s a bit harsh but it does illustrate a point.
In a recent issue of the political magazine Policy Options, former national NDP secretary Robin Sears analyzed the decline of the NDP federally during the past 25 years as a process of the party losing touch with individual agendas and the changing values of average Canadians.
Instead of offering creative and optimistic solutions to voters, the party has become a bastion of “self-absorbed, high-pitched whiners,” he argued.
Another part of the “25 years later” analysis is that in the 1980 election when the Liberals reclaimed majority government power, the NDP won 14 prairie seats, most of them rural.
In 1984, with the largest Progressive Conservative majority sweep in history, the NDP won nine seats in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, most of them rural.
In 2004, the NDP won four seats in Manitoba, three in Winnipeg, one in the north and none agricultural.
Layton’s priorities as he faced a weak and pleading prime minister surely are part of the reason.
