On alternative explanations

In 2011, one of the turning points in Canada's federal election campaign (at least in determining which party would form the Official Opposition) came when voters learned about Michael Ignatieff's refusal to show up for work in the House of Commons.

One might have expected the Libs' next leader to avoid leaving himself open to the same criticism. One would have been wrong.

But tonight, we may have seen Justin Trudeau's answer to the same point in 2015:

"Of course I don't show up to Parliament. Why bother when my party can't remember what it's supposed to do there anyway?"

Compare and contrast

One party's response to a limited amount of Parliamentary resources:

“New Democrat MPs were responsible for 56 per cent of all private members’ motions, and 59 per cent of all private members’ bills. Compared to other parties, that’s four times as many motions and five times as many bills per MP. We work hard in committee, we are diligent about representing the interests of our constituents, and we are standing up to the Harper government,” said Layton.

Another party's take on a virtually identical situation:

Mr. MacEachern said he thinks the Liberals will need to decide what sort of opposition party they want to be. With fewer resources and reduced research funding, Mr. MacEachern said the Liberals will need to pick a "smaller, more realistic" number of policy areas; a number that better reflects their caucus' new size.

Might there be some connection to the fact that the former has managed to win more resources than the latter?

Kept on track

Impolitical rightly points out that the Harper Cons are well on their way to implementing every single odious policy that was rightly labeled as unacceptable overreach when included in Deficit Jim Flaherty's 2008 fiscal update. Now if only somebody hadn't proudly missed the opportunity to stop Harper in his tracks...

Stonewalled

Not that it should come as much surprise that the release of the first report (PDF) from the Afghan detainee document panel fits the pattern of delay and distraction from the Cons. But this declaration (italics added) looks to take the stonewalling to a new low:

Status of the Panel’s Review of Cabinet Confidentiality Claims

71. The government provided the Panel only recently with its claims of Cabinet confidences in relation to the documents provided by the government to date. The Panel’s intent has been to complete its review of the redactions based on these claims as expeditiously as possible.

The report isn't clear on how "recently" the Cons bothered to make one of their supposedly vital claims to confidentiality. But it's hard to see how their refusal to so much as present one of the main claims to be evaluated by the panel can be squared with the regular assurances from the Libs and Bloc that the process was humming along to be completed at any moment. And that delay, combined with the complete suppression of the legal advice which lies at the heart of the underlying issue, makes it all the more clear that the NDP was right not to put any faith in a panel process where the Cons never had any incentive to act reasonably.

Update: And in case there was any doubt, the Cons are treating their delay tactics as having permanently ruled out any evaluation of their claims of cabinet privilege. (At least, that's what their repeated message about the process being "over" would seem to want to emphasize.)

On destructive suggestions

Lest there be any doubt, one of the most important ways an opposition party can have influence in a majority Parliament is by choosing issues to highlight, thereby creating a perceived safe space for the governing party to act if it so chooses.

Which is to say that now might be a great time for the Libs to permanently dissociate themselves from Alf Apps - before Stephen Harper spots just the opening he'd need to elevate property interests to the status of constitutional rights.

On losing strategies

Sure, Greg is right to criticize the Libs for being willing to provoke a national unity crisis for political gain. But I'm not sure when that became reason for surprise: have we already forgotten that the party's main Quebec strategy during its stay in government from 1993 to 2006 involved picking fights with the Bloc in order to create the most polarized environment possible between sovereigntists and nationalists, then happily taking the smaller share of that split?

Which isn't to say there aren't a couple of difference this time out.

First, there's the fact that the Libs' strategy is one which has been emphatically repudiated by actual Quebec voters every time they've had the chance.

Provincially, it was the ADQ who first stunned the Libs and their stage adversaries in the PQ by suggesting that maybe that polarization didn't make for the best way of viewing politics. (And while the ADQ didn't end up having much else to offer, there's no particular indication that its later decline actually reflected any change from that inclination.)

Now, the NDP has swept the province federally with substantially the same message about looking beyond the tired old sovereignty battle, combined with an appeal to work together to achieve better results for Quebec and Canada alike.

Given that history, a party interested in learning from its mistakes might respond by looking for some way to fit into a new alignment in Quebec. But if the Libs insist on going back to the same well even after it's proven to have run dry, that only looks like all the more reason to treat them as utterly irrelevant.

And indeed, the other major difference between this and past efforts to use sovereignty as a wedge issue is that this time, the Libs have been reduced to trying to fabricate an issue which is far removed from any substantive effect.

Of course they've had some help, as it's remarkable how quick the media has been to jump all over Jack Layton with future hypotheticals when it's Stephen Harper's definition of a valid referendum that will actually dictate what happens in the near future. But at some point, they're bound to notice that instead of being able to point to any principles or common vision as they try to define themselves and rebuild from electoral disaster, they apparently have nothing better to do than to try to foment divisions in a stronger opposition party. And while that may keep the Libs' hyperpartisans busy, it hardly figures to improve their perception in the general public.

On increased influence

Let's take a moment to challenge one of the more bizarre memes being pushed by Lib supporters to criticize the NDP for once again having the nerve to run a successful campaign - that being the theory that the NDP will somehow have less influence as the Official Opposition for the next for years than it did as the fourth party to date.

Keep in mind that Harper has seldom had any need to turn to the NDP for support even in a minority parliament, as both the Bloc and Libs regularly waved through budgets and confidence measures. And while the NDP managed to get some results (EI improvements in 2009 and a couple of budget baubles which weren't enough to justify supporting the Cons this year), the Cons have generally refused to even provide the perception of cooperation with any other party - making it particularly difficult to find common ground with the party most distant from it on the political spectrum.

So the NDP's ability to secure legislative gains with the balance of power has been severely limited due to both the Harper Cons' refusal to cooperate, and the fact that they've normally found willing supporters or accomplices without even having to pay attention to the NDP's position.

Meanwhile, the political scene with a Lib official opposition has been dominated by day-to-day scandalmongering rather than any real challenge to the Cons on values. Indeed, as pointed out during the campaign, the Libs have utterly neglected health care despite the fact that it's regularly at the top of voters' concerns. And that's to say nothing of their failure to raise awareness of poverty, First Nations issues, the environment (post-Dion) and other areas where the Cons have failed miserably.

Naturally, the NDP has tried to pick up the slack. But its questions later on in question period have mostly been ignored since they haven't reflected the preferred storyline of a clash between the two leading parties in Parliament.

Now, the NDP will get to set the agenda every day at the point when the media is paying the most attention. And so, we can expect the Cons to face far closer scrutiny - in the House of Commons and beyond - in the areas where their values are most obviously out of touch with Canadians.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether they'll actually change course as a result. But at the very least, an NDP official opposition can raise far more awareness of the gap between the Cons and the country they govern than the Libs ever bothered to do. And it's hard to see how that can be a negative outcome in the long run.

On party interests

Scott Reid is probably right in describing what he thinks the Libs' strategy is driving at as our election campaign draws to a close. But let's take a step back and ask what it says about the party's desperation:

The least conventional ballot question in Canadian history is taking shape: Do you care about the Liberal party's future?
...
Harper and Layton may discover that many others dislike the idea of overlooking an institution that offers a reliably sensible and centrist option.

They may learn that Canadians are none too eager to reduce future national debates to twin poles of extreme opinion.

They may find that in the quiet of the ballot box, there are many voters who decide they value the Liberal party and will vote to preserve its ability to positively influence their future. Just as it has their past.

Leaving aside Reid's own personal stake in the Libs, let's turn the question around.

If, in an election where there was a close race between the Libs and Cons for government, the NDP had ever ended a campaign by declaring that voters should ignore policy, principle, leadership and strategy alike, and vote simply based on a desire to preserve their party's brand...

How well would that have gone over as a direct appeal?

And perhaps more importantly, how savagely would it have been shredded by a Lib party declaring that it proved the NDP wasn't interested in stopping a mutual opponent?

In effect, Reid's analysis looks to be the next stage of the Libs' culture of entitlement. Having failed in their effort to dictate that nobody else could stop the Harper Cons, they're now asking that voters put on hold every real consideration at play in the current election campaign - every prospect of replacing the Harper Cons with a better government - solely for the benefit of a party which has shown it can't win support on the merits.

Now, one might point to cases where a relatively similar message has fallen flat (anybody else hearing an echo of Ujjal Dosanjh's plea to at least allow for some B.C. opposition in 2001?). But Reid's pitch looks to be even less justifiable, since he's trying to make the case in an election whose outcome is actually in doubt.

If there's any saving grace for the Libs, it's that enough Canadians may have tuned them out that the message isn't certain to reach all of the voters who may yet vote Lib out of habit. But if "save the furniture" is now the Libs' public appeal rather than merely their internal rallying cry, then there's reason to think there are plenty more votes for the NDP to win as the campaign reaches an end.

Scrambling

Call it a crazy hunch, but I'm guessing this is another rather bad sign for the Libs:

When the campaign began last month, the Liberals had prepared a strategy to roll out their ads in four phases – the first was to introduce Mr. Ignatieff, the rookie leader, to Canadians; the second phase was to promote the platform. The party launched a couple of attack ads in the third phase. Phase four was to be aimed at trying to get out the vote – it seems now, however, the Liberals have abandoned that plan as they drive toward May 2.

Which is telling in a couple of ways.

First, there's the fact that the Libs - who have bragged for ages about how they're so much better organized with Michael Ignatieff and Peter Donolo in charge than under previous structures - have officially reached the point of having to throw out the playbook they'd developed before the campaign. Instead, they're truly "making it up as they go along" for lack of any plan to deal with how the campaign has developed.

But perhaps more interestingly, it makes clear that the Libs don't see a get-out-the-vote message as a winner for them anymore - highlighting the fact that to the extent anybody new is going to be drawn into the election campaign, it's the NDP that figures to benefit.

Just

It's been obvious for over two years that much of the election campaign we're now seeing would be spent discussing the Cons' attempts to fearmonger about the prospect of a coalition government. And I've pointed out before that the Libs' strategy - ranging from failing to defend the idea to outright ruling it out - is self-defeating in numerous ways: it abandons an opportunity to campaign from a lead position, suppresses any hope that a change of government is in sight, and allows Stephen Harper and his party to skate around what should be some damning history.

Now, we're seeing the absolute worst-case result for the Libs from their ill-fated choice - one that even I didn't see coming. But thankfully, it's actually the one that serves the interests of progressive Canadians the best.

The main explanation as to why the Libs weren't prepared to defend the idea of a coalition is that it would have provided progressive voters with a license to support the NDP as well or instead - resulting in the Libs failing to gain seats relative to the NDP even as both parties won enough to replace the Cons. And that was seen as unacceptable based on the Libs' usual position that they'd prefer to suppress the NDP and cling to their status as a default alternative rather than working on replacing Harper.

But a campaign focused on a widespread push in favour a coalition would have had some other consequences as well.

In particular, the Libs would have been able to point to the terms of the 2008 coalition agreement as a precedent for future discussion. That in turn would have led to pressure on Jack Layton and the NDP as to whether or not they'd be prepared to accept a Lib-led government. And based on the NDP's interest in seeing a change in government, the likely response would have ended up harnessing Layton's trust and popularity for a cause which would have seen the Liberals as the senior partner in a coalition.

But the Libs weren't interested in an alignment which would have allowed the NDP to join them in making gains. So instead, they foreclosed on any possibility that the NDP could serve as a junior coalition partner in the hope of snuffing the NDP out entirely - ensuring that the NDP would instead be evaluated in direct competition with the Libs.

Which hasn't exactly gone according to plan.

Not that the actual outcome should be too much of a surprise. After all, one could hardly expect that the NDP would answer the Libs' attacks by rolling over and playing dead - even if the strength of the NDP's response might go beyond what the Libs anticipated. And the combination of Jack Layton's personal popularity and a growing swell of NDP support in Quebec has been readily visible for years.

But the Libs once again counted on inertia to drive voters back into their camp if Harper was within reach of a majority - apparently without anticipating that the NDP might be able to build up enough strength to challenge them at levels where a majority isn't in sight.

And now, there's not much left in the Libs' arsenal for the balance of the campaign. They most certainly don't figure to gain any ground on the NDP from a policy platform which mostly reads as a pale imitation of NDP proposals, nor a health-care focus which ignores the fact that the NDP is more trusted on the issue. And even if the Cons do have another surge into majority territory left, it's going to be difficult for the Libs to argue that the NDP can't do at least as much to stem the tide.

Indeed, the Libs' best hope may yet be to flip-flop on their willingness to consider a coalition once again. But it seems more likely that they'll keep on bashing the strategic-voting drum as rhythmic accompaniment for their march to oblivion - and they can't be said to have earned anything but their just deserts in the process.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- There doesn't seem to be much doubt that the Cons' main focus during the election campaign has been on strictly restricting access to the people they're looking to have elected to office. And the latest addition to the list deemed unfit for interaction with their Con betters is...an advocate for homeless veterans.

- But that doesn't mean anybody has taken a break from working to suppress the facts about Afghanistan, both through continued fights against the Military Police Complaints Commission, and through the detainee document suppression tribunal. (And there, the Libs are apparently just now starting to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, the Harper Cons might not be acting in good faith - only a year after the NDP recognized the same.)

- Rick Mercer deservedly slams Mike Duffy for serving as the Cons' point man in attacking Jack Layton's health:

Jack Layton didn’t reveal personal information about his health because the gallery wanted to know, he did it because, earlier that day, Conservatives had fanned out across the country and were practising the dark arts. The whisper campaign about Jack’s health they had been carrying on in the shadows was stepped up a notch.

Conservative Sen. Mike Duffy, who can perhaps kindly be described as the most amoral partisan hack to ever draw a breath, went on radio in Nova Scotia, a province of potential growth for the NDP, and in a hushed tone usually reserved for a palliative care unit told the radio audience that he personally saw Jack on the Hill and “up close it doesn’t look good, Jack doesn’t look good… he is a valiant man for carrying on.”

It takes a certain kind of man to gleefully trade on a man’s battle with cancer, and Mike Duffy is that man. It is why Stephen Harper appointed him to the chamber of sober second thought.

- Finally, Alice tweets that the NDP is on the verge of reaching the threshold of 40% female candidates, becoming the first Canadian party to do so in a general election. Of course there's plenty more left to both to balance the numbers within the party and to work on the number of women elected - but it's without a doubt a plus to be headed in the right direction.

Same old story, non-cooperation edition

The Cons' budget was rightly shot down after arriving alongside this cynical sales pitch:

When Jim Flaherty stands up in the House of Commons, he is expected to unveil a financial plan that has taken a number of expensive ideas from the wish lists of other federal leaders, particularly the NDP’s Jack Layton.
...
Mr. Harper enjoys his job too much to risk losing it. The NDP leader will have to decide whether he has won enough little victories to justify propping up the Conservatives.

Fortunately, the NDP was smart enough not to buy the spin. And the Cons' play-acting at having any interest in listening to anybody outside their own party was exposed as entirely empty when the NDP's efforts to improve the budget were met with a flat refusal.

So Canadians are getting the chance to decide whether or not they want more Harper-style politics, where a smug, self-righteous government pretends that other parties should be satisfied with a pale imitation of their policy priorities.

Now, we'll have to hope that voters are similarly intelligent in dealing with the Libs' equally callous attempt to paint mentions of a couple of lifted platform planks as a substitute for meaningful cooperation:

The whole document is framed as an appeal to those who might be tempted to support other parties too -- take a look at the Green-friendly and NDP-friendly policies within it. Last year, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said that his answer to all the coalition talk would be the reply: "Liberals *are* the coalition." This platform is his attempt to cast the party in that light, and should probably be measured that way.

But the takeaway isn't so much that the Libs are offering a meaningful form of cooperation, as that they're trying to put a slightly less adversarial face on the same lack of willingness to actually work with other parties. And so anybody looking for a real change - rather than another Harper government dressed in red - will need to look elsewhere.

Missing the target

Yes, it's significant that Canadians don't believe Michael Ignatieff when he says he wouldn't pursue a coalition. But there's an even more important flaw in the Libs' choice to rule out any sustained cooperative efforts:

(A) significant majority of Liberal, NDP and BQ voters support the idea of a coalition government in which MPs from those parties are participants.

Leger found that, among those who identify themselves as Liberal supporters, two-thirds "approved" of a Liberal-NDP-BQ coalition. It was the same with the NDP, with two-thirds of that party's supporters giving such a coalition the thumbs up.

In other words, by ruling out a coalition, Ignatieff is delivering a slap in the face both to his base and to the centre-left voters he's trying to attract from the NDP and Bloc. And all based on nothing more than the utterly unfounded hope that the Cons might switch messages from one which Stephen Harper has obviously chosen as his preferred line of attack.

Needless to say, Ignatieff's stance isn't about to produce the intended result. But that still leaves the question of whether his party's own voters will realize that Ignatieff isn't listening to their desire for cooperation to replace the Harper government - and turn their support to the party that shares the view.

Sunday Morning Links

Assorted material for your weekend reading.

- Francis Woolley posts on the need for people to be able to delay gratification in their own long-term interests. But while I agree with his observations generally, I'd think that a huge part of a potential solution is missing.

After all, if the temptation of short-term personal spending (traceable in substantial part to rational advertising choices by businesses) is causing significant social risk, then shouldn't it be expected that we'd be best off addressing the imbalance between that temptation and any countermessages at a social level? And doesn't that necessarily involve a closer look at the quantity and type of advertising that would normally be experienced by citizens, rather than falling into the trap of hoping that individual education and training will be enough to inoculate against a substantially unlimited bombardment of messages?

- Thomas Walkom sums up how the combination of weak opposition and an ever-more-arrogant government has led to both terms of the Harper Cons' stay in power failing to reflect the will of voters:

For all of its imperfections (and they are many), the only thing close to a democratic national body in Canada is the House of Commons.

To be contemptuous of its members is to disdain those who elected them. Canadians get precious few chances to determine what their leaders do. When voters elected a minority government in 2008, they were signalling that they didn’t trust Stephen Harper’s Conservatives (or indeed any other party) to run the nation’s business single-handed.

Instead, they wanted the opposition parties to check government — to act as watchdogs, moderate its ideological excesses and keep it in line.

But throughout the life of this now-dead Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to accept the voters’ verdict. His decision to operate as if he controlled a majority of Commons seats may have been good short-term politics. But it contradicted both the spirit and reality of the very limited mandate voters had given him.

- Meanwhile, the Libs may be shocked to learn today that the Cons aren't about to let a denial that Michael Ignatieff wants to form a coalition stop them from repeating the term at every opportunity - now secure in the knowledge that the Libs won't say a word to defend the possibility. Needless to say, nobody could have predicted.

- Finally, a few links from the start of an NDP campaign which looks to be nicely planned to appeal to voters who want a change from the Harper Cons and recognize that the Libs aren't interested in providing it. First, there's the launch message:

“I am asking Canadians to join me to defeat Stephen Harper,” Mr. Layton said to wild applause. “This time, it’s not enough to keep Stephen Harper from his majority. This time, we have to replace him.”

Which leads to this from the campaign's Edmonton rally:

"Your health care here in Edmonton is as bad as it's ever been. You've got cutbacks, you've got long waits in the emergency room, you've got doctors being intimidated for defending the patients, and you don't hear a peep about it from Stephen Harper and his Conservatives," said Layton, who promised more family doctors, improved home care and affordable prescription drugs.

And that in turn gives rise to the strategy noted by David Climenhaga and others of highlighting health care as an issue and asking who Canadians trust to negotiate a new agreement with the provinces.

Overachieving

I wasn't sure Michael Ignatieff would manage to kill the message that replacing the Harper government is a goal worth pursuing (even if it means cooperating across party lines) before the election campaign even started. But apparently he's managed the feat.

Mind you, that does leave a rather obvious response for Canadians who think that a government which was rightly brought down for its contempt of Parliament shouldn't be able to cling to power by continuing to push the same message that the majority of votes in the House of Commons counts for nothing. And if enough voters turn their support to the party who agrees, then the Libs may have no choice but to change their tune either during the campaign or after.

Compare and contrast

A Lib who gets it:

People don't give a tinker's damn if Harper is rotten to his political opponents. They care if he's rotten to them. And so far, the Liberals have not convincingly made the case that Harper's contempt of Parliament translates into a threat that resonates personally with the public.

And one who doesn't (emphasis added):

In response, (Michael Ignatieff) accused the Tories of twisting the facts and acting outside the bounds of decency. “Their attack on me is a disgrace. They’ve attacked my patriotism. They’ve attacked my commitment to the country. And now they’re attacking my family.”

On hope gaps

I'll agree with Scott Payne that there are some important differences between the current Canadian political scene and that which existed at the time of the 2006 election. But I don't entirely agree with his take on the most important distinction.

Payne gives the Cons credit for presenting far more of an alternative than they actually seem to have done at the time:

Have the Opposition parties just not found the right issue yet? Perhaps, but the sponsorship scandal wasn’t the only factor that lead to the 2006 eradication of the Liberals thirteen year hold on government. The other ingredient to that fateful turn of political events was the existence of a clear and viable alternative.

By 2006, Stephen Harper and his newly united Conservative Party of Canada had spent three years defining and disseminating a compelling counter-narrative to the then moribund Liberal legacy. It was an alternative that gave Canadians, tiered of the Liberals and angry over their corruption, somewhere to go in the face of a scandal that couldn’t be spun out of existence.

Indeed, it is that that very narrative that is now being used to tarnish this government. Integrity, transparency, accountability, openness: these were the catch words of a new government that caught the political wind of an exasperated electorate and gave disaffected voters a place to land.

It wasn’t enough that Canadians circa 2006 wanted to vote against the Liberals, they needed something to vote for instead. The Conservative alternative gave them that option and created the political dynamics in which we now find ourselves.

Now, it's well worth noting that there were doubts at the time as to whether the Cons were indeed offering much of an alternative to vote for. While they'd spent years criticizing the Libs, they didn't unveil much by way of policy of their own until the campaign, and then they were seen as doing so fairly amateurishly and without any of their own proposals serving as huge drivers of votes. So if anything, 2006 looks to serve as an example of a change in government propelled mostly by a "throw the bums out" sentiment rather than any particularly widespread support for an alternative.

But it's worth distinguishing between the message which convinced the general public to shift votes out of disgust, and the one which managed to help motivate the Cons' own supporters into putting everything they had into the campaign. And as I've noted before, that looks to be the main point of distinction between the Cons then and a Lib party which has spent years running away from any prospect of changing governments: no amount of outrage against a sitting government is going to accomplish much if it isn't paired with a reasonable hope of replacing it.

That's where the Libs' strategy of downplaying any talk of a coalition does the most damage, as it ensures that supporters of all opposition parties see little light at the end of the tunnel. And if we're indeed headed to a campaign in the near future, it may already be too late for the Libs to correct their course to motivate their own base in the interest of foreseeable change.

Groundhog Day

So much for the speculation about signs the Libs might be ready to try to defend a position against the Cons; apparently, Michael Ignatieff is still afraid of his own shadow. Six more months of Harper government, here we come.

On showing up

The gap between Canada's federal parties in terms of basic issues like attendance and proposed legislation has been pointed out plenty of times before. But the Globe and Mail's latest analysis shows that one trend in particular only looks to be getting stronger with time:

The Liberals, perhaps still uncomfortable in the role of opposition, have the worst voting attendance record – accounting for 43 of the 50 MPs who missed the most votes in the past two years. They also had a high number of dissenters.

The Conservatives, determined to hang on to power, exerted the firmest grip over their members, not only making sure few members miss votes but also keeping most backbenchers silent and not tolerating much voting against the grain.

The NDP and the Bloc Québécois both scored high in attendance. The NDP also had the most free-minded backbench, with more than two-thirds of its caucus dissenting at least once from the majority party line.

So what's particularly striking about the Libs' attendance record? Keep in mind that the party currently holds only 25% of the seats in the House of Commons - yet based on the Globe's analysis, it boasts 86% of the worst attendance records among MPs.

That means that well over half of the Libs' caucus stands out compared to other MPs for sheer failure to participate in votes in the House. And even better, it means that despite the gap in overall seats between the parties, the NDP and Libs are effectively even in the number of MPs among the top 258 in attendance - with the Libs leading by only a count of 34-33.

And all this while the Libs' previous excuses for poor attendance records (particularly the '06 leadership race) are obviously no longer operative.

Mind you, it's true enough (as Aaron Wherry notes) that better attendance alone likely won't fix all of the problems currently ailing Canada's parliamentary system. But it surely can't help matters if MPs themselves send the message that they can't be bothered to show up. And the Libs are by far the worst offenders when it comes to devaluing the work of Parliament on that front.

[Edit: Corrected math in party standings.]

Baby steps

There's still a long way to go from speculation to action - and the Libs are notorious for finding a way to chicken out. But having regularly criticized the Libs for failing to make a case that any of the Cons' abuses should result in any consequences, I'll at least note that it's for the best that they're considering making a case to bring down the Harper government rather than ending every criticism of the Cons with nothing more than "so, um, yeah!"