1. A clear lead at last. As the Liberals have failed to sustain the Afghan detainee controversy as an issue so have they failed to sustain any lead over – or even a tie with – the Tories in a new national opinion poll.
Today’s EKOS numbers show that for the first time in months, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have a clear lead over Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals – 33.1 per cent compared to 28.9 per cent. It is outside the margin of error of the poll.
Indeed, the Afghan detainee issue that was so front-and-centre in the fall has fallen off as an issue despite Herculean attempts by the Liberals and NDP to keep it going. For the first time in more than a week yesterday, the opposition did not lead off Question Period with attacks on the issue.
The two leading parties had been in a statistical tie for weeks, indicating gridlock on the political front. But today there has been a slight shift, attributed by pollster Frank Graves to “Liberal weakness.”
The poll of 2,302 Canadians was conducted between March 10 and March 16. It has a margin of error or plus or minus two percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The NDP are at 15.7 per cent compared to 10.8 per cent for the Green Party and 9.2 per cent for the Bloc Quebecois.
Mr. Graves notes “this is the 12th consecutive poll where we haven’t seen either party crack 33 points.”
“I honestly can’t remember a period in Canadian political history where no one has been able to summon more than one in three Canadians to their cause for such a protracted period,” he told The Globe this morning.
Mr. Graves said he was recently reviewing polling data from the beginning of the decade and noted that the Liberals, who were governing with a majority, regularly saw support numbers “over 50 per cent.”
2. Prorogation revisited. Jack Layton compared Stephen Harper to a king who flouts the democratic system by locking the doors of Parliament and refuses to be accountable to Canadians.
And a Liberal MP compared the Tories to the flat fish called flounder for their flipping and flopping in offering various explanations as to why they prorogued.
All this – and more – was part of the debate in the House of Commons yesterday over an NDP motion to limit the Prime Minister’s prorogation powers.
First the NDP Leader: “Our Prime Minister is not a king and it is time he understood that,” Mr. Layton charged as he led off the debate on his motion. “It would appear that he does not get it. He has abused his powers and it must not happen again.”
The motion called for a resolution of the House of Commons in order for the Prime Minister to be able to prorogue Parliament for more than seven calendar days.
Opposition parties are still smarting from Mr. Harper’s decision in late December to shut down the House until after the Olympics this month. It was the second time in a year the Prime Minister used his prorogation power.
This time, the Prime Minister said it was to “recalibrate” his agenda but the opposition charged it was to avoid difficult questions over the transfer of detainees to likely torture in Afghan jails. The decision proved to be so unpopular the Conservatives saw their popularity drop 10 points in public opinion polls.
Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal MP Scott Simms was particularly pointed in his comments. “In Atlantic Canada there is a fish called a flounder. It is a flat fish. It has two eyes on one side. It swims along and whenever it sees trouble, it flips, rolls over and goes back in the other direction,” he said.
“We have a government floundering its way through excuse after excuse. … The Conservatives talked about the fact that they recalibrated. They came back to the House and what did they do? Change the national anthem. That is the best that they could do, change the national anthem and only 48 hours, like a flounder, went in the other direction.”
It was up to Government House Leader Jay Hill and his parliamentary secretary Tom Lukiwski to provide the defence. They turned the tables, noting that provincial NDP governments have made great use of prorogation in provincial legislatures.
Rather than prorogation being an affront to democracy, Mr. Lukiwski argued the real affront was the “attempt by the NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois in December 2008 to form a coalition government, an unholy alliance, when the voters quite clearly stated that they did not want to see an NDP government in power at any time.”
And Mr. Hill said prorogation is no big deal. He said it is “a normal part of the parliamentary process.”
“This government will not be distracted by the opposition’s fixation with partisan games, their attempts to gain political favour with Canadians by circulating myths about a longstanding parliamentary procedure.”
The motion narrowly passed by four votes last night – 139 to 135 – but it is unlikely to have much effect. It is up to the Governor-General on the advice of the Prime Minister to grant a prorogation request.
So, a lot of words and effort expended for little return.
