Canadian checkmate

As the political drama continues to unfold across the Atlantic, I have found myself asking whether Dion’s harpooning of the Harper government is really about state funding or is in fact a score settling move?

I ask this, as the proposal to re-examine the state funding of political parties (which would have hit the Liberals especially hard and served as the touch paper for the Liberals constitutional coup against the Harper government), has now been withdrawn and yet the coalition building continues.

Undoubtedly the Liberals are not doing anything in violation of the constitution but they are placing political partisanship before the people and political ugliness before unity.

That is where we are. But let us skip forward and assume that neither side backs down. Either on December 8th 2008 or January 27th 2009, it seems likely that the Liberals will be asked to form the next government, by the Governor General, Michelle Jean.

I would certainly not want to be in Jean’s position. But she does have a precedent available to her from Australia. In the constitutional crisis of 1975, the then Governor General, John Kerr asked the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Fraser to take over the reins of the Whitlam government but with one caveat; he could make no no policy changes, no appointments, no dismissals and had to call an immediate federal election.

In the current heated environment that could well be the best option.