best of the season

Wishing everyone the best of the holiday season and all the best for 2009.

my letter to the papers on the coalition

Here's my letter to the Vancouver papers, the Sun and the Province:

Stephen Harper has brought the current parliamentary conundrum on himself. He was given a mandate to try to make a minority parliament work. Instead, he chose to govern as though he has a majority.

Last week’s horrendous economic statement included an attempt to cripple the opposition parties by removing their public financing, as well as a number of other far-right wing measures that showed no sign of conciliation at all with the opposition.

With this, Harper’s continual baiting of the opposition with confidence votes finally went too far, and like the small kids in the schoolyard standing up to the bully, the opposition decided to fight back. Harper no longer has the confidence of the house, and has no right to govern.

If he really cared about anything more than power, instead of proroguing parliament thus leaving it inactive during a time of economic crisis, he would have accepted his fate, and offered to cooperate with the coalition. He must go, and if I were a Tory, I’d want him gone as party leader as well.