AT 49, Don Boudria has spent more than 60 percent of his adult life in and around elected politics.
He was low-level Parliament Hill employee as a teenager, spent three years in the Ontario Legislature as an MPP and for 15 years has been a federal Liberal MP for an Ottawa-area rural riding.
During those years, Boudria has learned a political trick or two.
Late last week, the Liberal government house leader set a neat trap for the less experienced Reform party. They quickly stumbled in.
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It started when Boudria rose in the House of Commons at noon last Friday to ask for unanimous consent to introduce back-to-work legislation ending the Public Service Alliance of Canada rotating strikes. He said it could be approved the same day.
Grain soon would be moving again, if only the Opposition co-operated.
Reform MPs, who had been demanding the government end the strike, say they were caught unawares.
“We were being asked to approve a pig in a poke,” one complained later. They also were being set up.
So the Reformers did what came naturally. They denied consent.
Snap, the sound of a trap closing.
In the lobby outside the Commons, Liberals lined up to denounce Reform for delaying legislation that would have helped their farmer constituents.
Reform MPs scoffed at reporter suggestions they were hurting the interests of farmers. They said they were caught off guard, should have been consulted and besides, back-to-work legislation is not the answer. They only would support a bill that called for final-offer arbitration.
It was a losing argument.
When those MPs headed back to their western ridings for the weekend, they faced angry constituents who heard weekend news reports that the Liberals wanted to end the PSAC strike and Reformers had said “no”. By Monday, they were back in Ottawa saying they had no intention of blocking the bill.
“The Liberals mishandled this whole file but for our constituents, the bottom line is to get the grain moving,” said a Reform official. “Friday was Liberal theatrics but they worked. We fell for it.”
The irony is that the legislation would have been delayed, with or without the Reform stand. Bloc QuŽbecois and New Democrat MPs oppose back-to-work legislation and would not have given unanimous consent.
The Liberals undoubtedly were ready to debate and pass legislation last week.
But they almost certainly knew it would not happen by unanimous consent on a Friday afternoon when many MPs already had left for the weekend.
So they ended up with the best of both worlds – looking like they wanted to get grain flowing again while making Reformers look bad in the eyes of their farmer constituents.
When Boudria strode out of the House Friday to face a bank of microphones, he looked sombre and tried to sound shocked. “I was sure in my mind the last people who would object would be Reform.”
Inside, the wiley veteran Liberal must have been whistling a tune about two birds and one stone.
