Stephen Harper Must Tell Madame Marois "Non"

A little history lesson:

The year was 1995. The place was Quebec. There was a referendum going on that would decide whether or not Quebec would seek to separate from the rest of Canada.

Jean Chretien was the Prime Minister of Canada. Lucien Bouchard was the Premier of Quebec. Chretien was reluctant to get involved in the referendum. And Bouchard took full advantage of that.

Mr Bouchard promised Quebeckers the moon: after separating from Canada Quebec would not accept its share of the national debt. Quebec would continue to use Canadian currency. Quebec would continue to benefit from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) without negotiating their way into it.

None of these things were possible. But Chretien made no forceful attempt to dispel Bouchard's delusions (some would say lies). And Quebec very nearly voted in favour of separating from Canada.

That was 1995, nearly 20 years ago. Now the year is 2014, and Quebec's is having an election. Quebec's current Premier, Pauline Marois, is making very similar promises to what Bouchard promised. Marois has insisted that a sovereign Quebec would continue to use Canadian currency, and would have a seat on the board of the Bank of Canada. She also suggests that Quebec would effectively have no borders with the rest of Canada.

It seems reasonable to suspect that Marois will also insist that not only would a sovereign Quebec not accept its share of the national debt, but won't give up the transfer payments that effectively fund its lavish lifestyle.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper must not repeat the mistakes of Jean Chretien. To all of this he must say "non."

Marois' suggestions are in now way acceptable or even possible. Given how her government chooses to manage the Quebec economy -- discouraging, if not outright refusing, economic development -- the rest of the world has a right to  its input on the desirability of doing business in Quebec. That pretty much requires a Quebec currency to fall like a stone against the Canadian dollar on international markets. With the Parti Quebecois in power, fall like a stone such a currency would. Guaranteed.

The idea of a sovereign Quebec without borders also flies in the face of the very concept of sovereignty. Having borders is a precursor of any semblance of sovereignty. Any 100-level political science student in Quebec presumably understands this, even if Madame Marois does not.

I understand that Prime Minister Harper is reluctant to get involved in the Quebec election. There is some good reason for this. But this is not an acceptable reason to remain silent and allow Marois to deceive the citizens of Quebec about what independence would mean for La Belle Province.

Ju me souviens, Mr Harper. Remember what happened in 1995. Do not repeat the mistakes of that year in 2014.

Desperation Cubed

Jean Chretien pulls "hidden agenda" meme up out of its grave

When Jean Chretien ascended to the office of Prime Minister after the 1993 federal election, Time Magazine hailed him as "yesterday's man".

It was, in every sense, a deeply cogent pronouncement. Chretien was a relic of a Canadian politics many considered to be long past, one that could only prevent the ascension of a new political regime by vilifying it. When Chretien was in office the target of relentless vilification was Preston Manning and the Reform Party. By the time Chretien was finally shuffled out the door by Paul Martin, it became clear that the politics envisioned by Manning and the Reform Party were very much the politics of Canada's future.

That future would never come with Manning at the helm. His predecessor, Stockwell Day, proved himself to be uniquely vulnerable to the character assassination tactics favoured by the Liberal Party. They were able to destroy Day's leadership prospects to a degree they previously could only fantasize about.

Then along came Stephen Harper. And while the fear-mongering could hold Harper off for a time -- for two years to be precise -- it couldn't destroy his Prime Ministerial hopes the way the Liberals had hoped.

Not that they didn't try. God, did they ever try. They forecasted the destruction of Canada as we knew it: the repeal of same-sex marriage, the end of abortion freedoms, even soldiers -- with guns -- in our cities. They called it Harper's hidden agenda. The only reason why no one else could find any evidence of Harper having such plans was because it was so, well, hidden.

On February 6, 2006, Harper became Prime Minister of Canada. And something remarkable happened: all the horrors the Liberals assured us were forthcoming never came. They never happened.

For a time, they assured us that they just hadn't happened yet because Harper only had a minority. The "hidden agenda" meme lived on in their imaginations, even though Canadians further rejected it in 2008, when they reelected Harper with a stronger minority government.

Fewer and fewer Canadians believed Harper had a hidden agenda. In 2011, they reelected his government again -- this time with a majority government.

Now, it seems, the shit has truly hit the fan. Now, Jean Chretien has come out of hiding to insist that Harper has a hidden agenda.

Of course, he didn't say as much to the Canadian public. He said it in a fundraising letter sent out to his Party's dwindling followers.

"Next may be a woman's right to choose, or gay marriage. Then might come capital punishment. And one by one, the values we cherish as Canadians will be gone," Chretien wrote. The Harper government has already walked away from the Kyoto Protocol Chretien's government signed then never implemented, and the long gun registry which they claim reduces gun violence, but actually does nothing. "Unless we are bold. Unless we seize the moment. Everything we built will start being chipped away."

It's all terribly yawn-inducing -- so dreadfully reeking of desperation that it's tempting to simply discount the Liberal Party altogether.

This is a party that has nothing new to offer. It had nothing new to offer when it offered Jean Chretien, and Canadians only accepted that because they thought he was better than Kim Campbell or Joe Clark, and less scary than Preston Manning or Stockwell Day.

By both counts, they were wrong. Chretien embarked on a directionless and self-indulgent romp through Canadian politics, demonstrating just how ill-suited he was to mold Canada's present, or plan for Canada's future.

Now, with the Liberal Party's desperate reach into the past in a desperate bid to ensure its future, they've shown that this quality isn't unique among Liberals to Chretien. Rather, it's pandemic among Liberals.

They're desperate to survive. Desperate to matter. Desperate for your attention.