The Three Stooges

So guess who's governing Canada now? The Liberals? The Conservatives? The NDP? The Bloc? All of the above? Well, it seems to depend on the issue being dealt with and Adrienne Clarkson's mood, at least if the latest chess move by Parliament Hill's answer to The Three Stooges is to be taken at all seriously. You see, the boys that we elected as opposition MPs aren't at all happy with their lot in life. We obviously goofed, elected the wrong party, and while there was no mention of it during the campaign, apparently we want the opposition parties to run the country.

And being the dedicated, patriotic bunch that they are, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe have come up with a neat new plan to be the world's first duly elected governing opposition.

Now for those of you who missed the opening salvo from the Conservative/NDP/Bloc "co-opposition," as they like to call it, here's the plan. First off, they have a list of demands, which makes them sound more like amateur kidnappers than parliamentarians. These demands include greater representation on committees, creating new committees for a raft of issues from aboriginal affairs to information access, and votes on all opposition motions, international treaties, troop deployment and changes to marriage legislation.

And if the government doesn't want to kneel before these demands? Well, the "co-opposition" will just push them through anyway...they're a majority, after all.

Now, actions like these would normally constitute a lack of confidence in the government, triggering an election call and six weeks of mudslinging followed by another two-month vacation so newly elected MPs can spend Christmas in the Bahamas. But in a case of not only having your cake and eating it too but taking full control of the bakery to boot, Larry, Curly, and Moe want to be able to overrule the sitting government whenever they feel like it, without overturning it. They want the power of a majority government, even though they were never even remotely handed such a mandate from the voting public they seem so concerned about.

They want to quietly pull off the first coup d'etat in Canadian history and pass it off as parliamentary reform.

And while the thought of having Paul Martin ousted and thrown into a dungeon with absolutely no coffee to still his jitters sounds almost too delicious a prospect to pass up, it's not tasty enough to justify a full term of Stephen, Jack, and Gilles causing complete governmental deadlock while they sort out what little common ground they have.

Witness the spectacle of Jack Layton babbling on about how he wants the throne speech to detail plans for meeting Kyoto accord obligations while standing side-by-side with a man who would likely support an American invasion of Kyoto if it meant the accord would go away. Which, given that Layton's feelings about pacifism, American imperialism, and Canada's role in NATO are the polar opposites of Harper's, will make coming to that all-important opposition approval on troop deployment and international treaties next to impossible. And if Gilles Duceppe can keep his separatist breakfast down long enough to stomach pushing his leftist inclinations into this new triumvirate's set of "co-oppositional" doctrine, Stephen Harper just might say to hell with it and lynch his fellow henchmen.

And you can forget about any agreement on same-sex union, unless Conservative saber-rattling about marriage, gays, and pedophiles was just a ruse and all is now homosexual bliss in the land of Bibles and bull-riding.

So what originally was billed as a government and opposition that would work together to actually get things done and avoid an election is now looking to be a government staring down the barrel of an oppositional gun where no one can decide who will pull the trigger and nothing gets done. Most of the time will be spent debating the constitutional legitimacy of having the opposition repeatedly defeat the government yet claim that it's okay for them to keep sitting as a government, if nothing else so that the opposition has something to flog on the taxpayers' dime.

Just imagine what they would do if one of them actually got elected Prime Minister? Seems none of them are in a rush to find out.