‘A Win-Win for the Conservatives’

The government might fall this week, but guess who's going to come out on top?

The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson laments that we appear to be on a collision course with “an election that Canadians don’t need.” There’s no basis for a vote this spring, he writes, because Parliament is no more dysfunctional than usual, there’s no political or economic crisis, no big scandal, nor a nationally important issue at stake. “Somebody’s been smoking something,” Simpson opines, “because each party has convinced itself that gains beckon in the election, which, of course, is mathematically impossible for all.”

In The Mark, Nick Van der Graaf says the only reason Canadians don’t want an election is because they haven’t been paying attention to Stephen Harper’s abuse of his office. The Conservatives are about to be found in contempt of Parliament, but nobody seems to care. “It seems that Canadians simply don’t have a sense of ownership of Parliament,” he writes. “And if the political system is alienating Canadians, then conversely the level of public disengagement is having a corrosive effect on Canadian politics. It is a feedback loop that can only end in disaster.”

“Although an election may not solve anything, it may address a crisis in federal politics,” suggests Dan Lett in the Winnipeg Free Press. “Namely that, our ears clogged with partisan howling, we have lost our capacity to debate public policy.” The Bev Oda affair is a case in point: Instead of debating which agencies deserve federal funding, we’re arguing about the silly way in which agencies are defunded. Lett hopes that after an election, we’ll get back to productive debate on things like health care, infrastructure spending, and immigration.

“One way or another, the week is lining up to be a win-win for the Conservatives,” writes the Toronto Star’s Chantal Hébert, noting that there’s still a slim chance the NDP will back the government and avoid an election. If that happens, several provincial elections slated for the fall will delay a federal vote until next spring, and if it doesn’t, a May election will be called and the Conservatives will likely win. Either way, we’re probably looking at a Conservative government for the foreseeable future.