Now that a sudden and violent storm has passed through Canadian politics, people of all persuasions are trying to sort out what precisely happened, why the convulsion came, what damage was done and what lies ahead.
A Conservative government exists. It had won one confidence vote, but could not win another, and so used prorogation to flee Parliament. The Conservatives appear to have the upper hand in public opinion outside Quebec, but have lost ground in that province.
A Liberal opposition exists. It nominally leads a government-in-waiting coalition with the NDP, supported by the Bloc Québécois. But the Liberals, saddled with a politically inept leader, walked into a trap of their own making from which they do not know how to escape.
The political storm reflected badly on Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose decisions ignited it, but even worse on Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, whose impetuous reaction led the party astray.
Mr. Harper's decisions showed a secretive, ferociously partisan leader, centralizing everything in his own hands, willing to fight with every conceivable tool to save his political career. Mr. Dion's reaction showed a leader apparently so desperate to atone for the election result, the worst in Liberal history, that he grossly overplayed his party's weak hand.
The storm, as occasionally happens in the feverish, closed world of political Ottawa, showed parties misreading the intentions of their adversaries. Politicians of every stripe got so caught up in their own machinations and ambitions that they mistook appearing on political gab shows for genuine influence and talking to themselves as a substitute for consultation.
All parties will now struggle to influence public opinion before the resumption of Parliament on Jan. 26. In this struggle, the Conservatives enjoy most of the advantages: more party money, a bigger party membership, more MPs, the entire communications apparatus of the federal government, the ability to set the agenda, especially when Parliament is not in session.
In the next seven weeks, the Conservatives need to find their footing. Ever since the economic tsunami struck in late September, they have been unsteady in finding appropriate substantive or communications responses.
The Conservatives have been unsteady, in fairness, because economic events unfolded so swiftly, but also because an economic reality that demanded a more vigorous government response collided with their ideology and instincts. Remember during the election, when Mr. Harper remarked that the collapse of the stock market provided good buying opportunities. Remember his evident lack of empathy with those already hit by the tsunami. Remember his declaration that the government would never run a deficit.
Remember, too, his pitch became that his party was best positioned to guide the economy through the storm with an approach of low taxes, no deficits and modest spending increases. That strategy/ideology clashed with the reality that Canada will run deficits, that spending will increase with the deteriorating economy and that the strange insistence of using the words "technical recession" belies what everyone knows: Canada is in recession.
The economic statement epitomized this policy approach, and in so doing galvanized the opposition and produced a raspberry verdict from most of the nation's economists, who did not believe the document when it argued that Canada would or should run surpluses, and that cutting government spending was the right approach.
Worse, of course, was the Prime Minister's strategy of using the document as the vehicle for shafting the opposition parties and trade unions. At his insistence, the document contained the end of subsides for political parties and the right to strike for public-sector unions.
Mr. Harper obviously believed the Liberals, recently embarked on a leadership campaign, would not be able to resist these initiatives, with the happy result, he thought, of greatly weakening them through the loss of public subsidies.
He saw a weakness, and he leaped — right into trouble.
