If at first you don’t succeed, abstain!

Since being named leader of the federal Liberal party in December 2006, Stéphane Dion has been claiming that Canadians don’t want an election.

It is ironic then, that Dion has spent the last year and a half arguing that Stephen Harper has been undermining Canadian values, destroying the environment, ruining our name on the world stage, and failing Canadians abroad. If any of that were true, wouldn’t Canadians want an election? Wouldn’t Canadians deserve an election?

Of course they would.

But this has nothing to do with what Canadians want. This is about what Stéphane Dion and the Liberal party want. If the above accusations were accurate, Canadians would be storming Parliament Hill and demanding Harper’s head.

In reality, Canadians are happy with the way the country is being run. This is why, despite several “controversial” bills being passed and the best efforts of the Liberals to demonize the Tories, Harper has consistently polled well ahead of Dion.

Now, after years of Liberals complaining about Harper’s “offensive” practices, “discriminatory” policies, and “bully” tactics, the Conservatives are about to do what the Liberals refuse to — give us all the chance to vote and have our say — and all the Liberals can do is bitch about the fact that Harper will be going back on his word! With a newfound respect for laws passed by this government, Liberals are blasting Harper for even thinking about calling an election.

In May 2007, the Harper government passed a motion to set fixed election dates every four years. It is written in our constitution that the majority of Parliament will always prevail, meaning that a confidence motion will always be able to topple a government, fixed election dates or not, and rightfully so. Given this fact, even someone with the intelligence of the average Liberal can surely conclude that a fixed election date plan will only be foolproof in a majority government situation, which this country hasn’t seen in over a decade.

Also included in the first clause of the act: “Nothing in this section affects the powers of the Governor-General, including the power to dissolve Parliament at the Governor-General's discretion.” Since the Governor-General acts on the advice of the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper can lawfully call an election at any time. Call this duplicitous if you want, but all the Liberal bloggers and the blowhards at the Toronto Star are completely full of it to label Harper’s election call unlawful.

When Harper passed the fixed election dates, he had no clue that he would be governing unopposed for four years. With all the rhetoric being spewed by the Liberals after Harper’s minority win, certainly it was logical to assume that the Liberals would jump at the first chance to take down the corrupt, secretive, pro-American government with a hidden agenda, right?

No; the Liberals have shied away from an election at every opportunity.

In October of last year, the Liberals abstained from a vote that ended Canada’s involvement in the useless Kyoto Accords, in order to avoid an election they would surely lose.

In February of this year, the Liberals claimed to be opposed to major clauses in the Tories’ crime bills, but abstained from voting once again.

When the NDP tried to stop the changes to the Canada Immigration Act in April, the Liberals claimed to support the NDP position but voted with the government in order to avoid an election.

The list goes on and on. The Liberals have abstained from no fewer than half a dozen votes over the past two years. They have also voted for bills that they oppose in order to avoid going to an election while the polls aren’t favourable towards them. The Liberals fully enabled the Conservatives to govern as if they had a majority.

They insist that Canadians disagree with everything Harper is doing, yet they refuse to stop him, and refuse to let us speak for ourselves at the polling booth. How stupid does Dion think we all are?

The Liberals are currently the Official Opposition. While Harper may be calling an election a year before a date he set, the Liberal party has failed at performing its most basic function — opposing the ruling party. Had they been doing their job, we would have had this election a year ago.

Soon enough, we will find out just how outraged Canadians are with the governing Tories. We will have the long-awaited election and, like just about everything else these days, it will be thanks to Stephen Harper, and no thanks at all to Stéphane Dion.

Stephen McCreary is a political studies student and the founder of the University of Manitoba Campus Conservatives.