How the Coalition Came Back to Haunt Stephen Harper

More than four years later I can still remember how frightened Stephen Harper looked.

The Great Canadian Coalition was threatening to remove him from power. And the people were in the streets.

He was scared, he was desperate. But in the end he survived. The Governor General gave him what he wanted. He was able to kill the idea of a coalition by making it sound like a separatist plot to take over Canada.

But now all these years later, it has come back to haunt him.

Because this was certainly a fateful day.

December 22, 2008 — it’s a day that Prime Minister Stephen Harper might like to forget. It was on that day that Harper filled a whopping 18 Senate vacancies with partisan Conservative appointments.

The list of “distinguished Canadians” appointed by Harper to the Upper Chamber that day included senators Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin.

And as Aaron Wherry reminds us, it probably never would have happened if Harper hadn't been so scared and desperate to try to block the coalition.

“Our government will continue to push for a more democratic, accountable and effective Senate,” said the Prime Minister. “If Senate vacancies are to be filled, however, they should be filled by the government that Canadians elected rather than by a coalition that no one voted for.”

Only to end up getting clubbed like a seal by his own blunt instrument.

It’s possible that the coalition was less a cause of the appointments than an excuse to make them. And possibly Mr. Harper was going to have to appoint senators at some point anyway (he’d hinted at such a possibility in October 2008). But December 22, 2008 does now seem like the plot point of a bad political thriller.

Eaten alive by his own little very large monsters. 

Sen. Mike Duffy is staying in his secluded Prince Edward Island cottage as controversy surrounding improper expense claims continues to grow. Duffy did not answer the door at 10 Friendly Lane. Instead, a call from inside the Cavendish cottage summoned the RCMP to remove journalists from the property.

While the RCMP decides whether to protect them, or arrest them.

And the corrupt Con regime slowly implodes under the weight of sordid scandal.

Gosh. Suddenly things seem so bright. Almost like they did during those heady coalition days. When Harper was so scared.

And we were so alive...



For I will never forget the wonderful sight of all those progressives joining forces to fight the tyrant. Red, orange, green, young and old, in the streets together. How it inspired me.

How it made my spirits soar. How it made me feel like ANYTHING was possible.

Or how bitterly disappointed I was by the way it ended...



But I now I realize it really didn't eh?

I should have known that something good would come from something so noble.

And so it has. Isn't history amazing?

The tyrant has been fatefully wounded by a blast from the past.

He's twisting in the wind.

And the Great Canadian Coalition has come back to haunt him...



Click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.