Parliament Hill was abuzz with rumours about Liberals crossing the floor to join the Conservatives yesterday – a mystery all the more intriguing because no one could track down the identity of the potential defectors.
Here’s a thought — maybe the apostate is Michael Ignatieff himself. How’s that for a plan so cunning, in the words of Blackadder, you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel? The Liberal leader pursues a scorched earth policy, reduces the party’s support to sub-Stephane Dion levels and then deserts his post for the Tories. Far-fetched admittedly but it’s the only account that adequately explains the leadership’s apparent infatuation for self-immolation.
Okay — not really. But the words “amateur hour” are being whispered by even the most senior members of Mr. Ignatieff’s shadow cabinet.
The latest gaffe defies rational explanation. Mr. Ignatieff nearly blew his own toes off last week in his spat with Denis Coderre, the former Quebec lieutenant who resigned after finding his authority undermined by his leader.
Mr. Ignatieff limped back from Quebec City on Sunday and you might have thought he’d try really, really hard to rally his party around the Liberal standard. Instead, he took aim at his other foot and let loose both barrels. An unprompted press release issued by Judy Sgro, the Liberal seniors critic, said the leader and the party would vote against a private members’ bill that proposes to shorten the residency period required before seniors can claim partial payment of old age security to three years from 10.
The bill’s merits, or lack of, need not concern us. The head-scratching aspect was that it was sponsored by a Liberal MP, Ruby Dhalla, and seconded by foreign affairs critic, Bob Rae. No one on the Hill can remember a party publicly nuking a private members’ bill brought forward by one of its own MPs.
[More]