Politics: Canada: Opportunism Awards go this time round to politicos Stronach, Layton, Martin

A blogger who I admire, Gideon Strauss, just published a comment on a Canadian parliamentary member who yesterday crossed the floor from sitting with the Tories composing the "official Opposition," to arrive in the ranks of the governing minority party, the Liberals. The member in question, whose finesse of opportunism, Gideon notes, not only brawt her into the Liberal ranks but also elevated her to the rank of Minister of the Crown in charge of the Human Resources and Skills Development porfolio. Minister Belinda Stronach is a rookie poltician and heiress to the Stronach fortune, built on her billionaire father's Magna Corporation.

One commentator on Gideon's note, David Koyzis, himself noted that in contrast to Stronach's opportunism, a member of the Liberals' now unofficial coalition partner, the New Democratic Party, had given us a counter-example to Stronach's blatant action. The NDP's former leader, Ed Broadbent had made an extra effort at civility, seeing how a Parliament member of another party was ill and would not be on hand for the actual vote on the Budget. Broadbent announced that he would not voite, thereby evening out both parties chances on passage of the Budget and the Layton Amendment thereto.

But, as I wrote in my own comment on Gideon's note today (of which this is an expanded re-write), that doesn't remove the opportunism of the current NDP leader, Jack Layton, who was going to do all he could to bring down the Liberal minority government by rejecting its Feb 5 budget, for which prior to recent developments the Tories and Bloc Québecois were both announcing support.

Meanwhile the Tories and especially the Bloc Q were chafing with outrage over the Adscam revelations which continued daily, and the situation gets worse for Martin daily as slowly the existence of a crime-tainted parallel funding operation working in the Lib's favour emerges with implications far beyond a scam of a handful of bureaucrats and advertizers united to deprive Quebeckers of a clean vote in referenda past. But that latter point is most intensely repulsive to people who want a separate self-determined Québec state with some form of sovereignty. Nor should we forget either that the scammers mentioned made their own fortunes in "le scandal des commandites" (Adscam). Back to the Feb 5 budget.

Layton who saw his moment of opportunity clearly, realized that, with an extremely close-shave vote-count looming, the government needed the NDP to keep the Libs in power. What should the NDP demand in return? Layton drew up a Spend-and-Buy budget for Martin with a price tage of $4.5 billion, in full contradiction of the Feb 5 Budget that had been placed on the agenda some months back and which the PM and his Finance Minister had championed up to that point in the Adscam crisis. Consequently, together the Layton-Martin coalition amended Feb 5, so that now the Tories and presumably the Bloquistes will vote for the unamended version in a first poll of Parliament, and then reject the Layton-dictated Spend-and-Buy second budget - which will be voted upon as an amendment to the first, changing the 2005 Budget's character utterly - which I tend to think will pass by a hair's breadth. Jack has to get credit for his crack at it!

Belinda's move is perhaps the most personally dramatic opportunist gambit of recent times in Parliament, but it is just one of several opportunist moves by members and leaders in Parliament at the moment. In regard to the larger picture, I think that, for sheer craft and leverage of otherwise dubious assets at the precise moment, Layton deserves credit for outmanoeuvering everyone else, aside perhaps from the Prime Minister himself.

In keeping the Libs in power, both the Martinites in the Liberal Party and Layton also get their combined chance to keep the third reading of the proposed legislation regarding yet another matter on track. and their expected favourable vote on course toward detraditionalizing the legal definition of marriage, which of course, the Bloc will also support. Of the three parties that will vote to detraditionalize, only the Bloc will have a fully free vote on this measure, while Martin insists the members of his large Cabinet must vote with the government or face severe party discipline; and, worst of the lot, the NDP is allowing no dissent of any of its members. I don't see Broadbent speaking out against this unprincipled stance of his authoritarian party on a matter which should be one of conscience and not one of party discipline, since it deals with the legal definitions and dispositions of matters of personal intimacy and the form of their recognition or non-recognition by the Canadian State (the Courts have already imposed detraditionalization in 5 jurisdictions, and the Supreme Court of Canada is stacked in favour of detraditionalization, but the latter wisely and again opportunistically sent the matter back to Parliament which had, in typically Liberal fashion, evaded the issue in a display of craven uxoriousness over many years).

That brings us then to Martin's opportunism amidst the continuing Adscam revelations and the new edge in that matter which oversahdows all else in this round of minority government, a matter that now exposes itself as frawt with forensic traces of a crime-edged parallel funding operation for the Liberal Party as a regular practice extending back to the pre-Martin Liberal governement of Jean Chrétien at least. On top of that, the date that Martin had selected for facing up to the Adscam revelations, was one that would result in months of delay. He strenuously campaigned for delaying until the current Adscam investigation is completed in December of this year. But, now it's clear also, there will be no final report from Judge Gomery's Commission in December 2005. It's clear now that Martin will get his breathing space into 2006, and who knows?, perhaps into a completed term of 5-years wheedling and misdeedling. At the moment, were there an election in a month's time, the Bloc stands to deprive the Liberals of any Parliamentary seats in Québec. Martin loses no chance to demonize the Bloc, since they are "separatists"; nor any chance to demonize the Tories, since they are "extremists from the West." He will have little ammo left to berate the NDP as "socialists" once they've kept his minority government in office, perhaps for a full term. Speak of Teflon .... Marteflon?

So, Martin comes off as Top Scorer. Layton is Most Valuable Player. And Her Wealthiness Stronach gets credit for her Personal Best, her crossing the floor of Parliament in a party-switch which may perhaps be the one distinguishing feature of her political career, unless she can actually clean up the Ministry of Human Resources and Skills Development before the Auditor General makes another damning sweep into its inner recesses as happened during the reign there of Jane Nixon, former PM Chrétien's fall girl in that case of Liberal scandal. - Yours, Owlb


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