Leaders' Debate: Deal Makers
Blame Each Other for Bad Deal-Making
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October 3,
2008 -
The English-language
debate between the leaders of the "major parties" replaced the theme of the French debate,
"cooperating
to make Parliament work for Canadians," with "trust me and put me into
power."
The fight was over the best way to pay the rich to make them
competitive on the global markets, either by tax cuts, job creation,
the Green Shift, etc.
Montreal, August 27,
2008: Quebec artists oppose Harper's cuts to the arts and culture as
attacks on freedom of expression.
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Once
again, it is Harper who set the tone. He claimed that his job as Prime
Minister is to be a good manager of the economy. As the manager of the
economy, he said, his job is to make sure to get maximum return for the
tax payers' money. He claimed his cuts to the arts and cultural
programs were in programs that were not functioning. With utter
cynicism, he claimed that the losses in manufacturing jobs and the
devastation they cause in people's lives are an adjustment that is
happening in an economy that is in transformation, and his job is to
manage the change.
 He equated putting
all the assets of society in the hands of the
monopolies as good management for all Canadians and warned that
changing the course, by handing power to the other parties, would
endanger Canada's stability. This is the same logic that he followed to
call a snap election, that the government had become dysfunctional
because of the deal making between the other parties which threatened
to take Canada away from sound management.
The other parties joined in and fought over their own variants on how
to pay the rich, either through the Green
Shift, or by financing the
manufacturers versus the oil monopolies.
As each one was
fighting to claim that it is through the electoral
fortune of their Party that the economy would be fixed, they expressed
their frustration over the failure of their deal-making to produce a
functional Parliament.
Liberal leader Stéphane Dion blamed NDP leader Jack Layton for
siding with Harper to defeat the Liberal government of Paul Martin at
the end of 2005. This deal, he said, killed the Kelowna Accord with the
First Nations, sabotaged the Liberal plans for childcare and is a main
cause for the deterioration of the economy ever since. He said that the
improvement of the economy is conditional on the electoral fortunes of
the Liberals.
Layton replied that it is Dion and the Liberals who sided with Harper
for 43 votes in the House of Commons rather than with the
other parties who were ready to defeat the Harper government. In a new
government, he said, the NDP could have made deals with the other
parties to implement policies that would have fixed the economy. He
said that if he is elected Prime Minister the economy will improve.
The leaders of all the business-parties expressed their frustration
over the fact that their deal-making within the cartel-party system is
not producing a functional government. But their only conclusion is to
keep
fighting to have their deals be the ones which receive the "mandate"
through the election.
 "Trust me and put me
in power" is not suitable
for our times. It only
leads to the subordination of the concerns, interests and struggles of
the people to the narrow aims of particular business-parties for power
and privilege for themselves. It will not produce a functional
Parliament because Parliament will remain mired in the competition for
power between financial and business interests from different regions
and sectors which seek to advance their own narrow interests at the
expense of the well-being of the people.
It is only through the work of democratic renewal that Parliament can
become a functional institution that sorts out the problems of the
economy in a way that benefits the people. Elections must bring the
people themselves to power and not the parties of the rich. Worker
politicians selected by their peers with whom they organize every day
in defense of their interests, will take their concerns and struggles
to Parliament and fight for a solution to the economic problems that
favours them.
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