-- Download The Liberal Party: The Other Half of Harper's Majority as PDF --

As much as this photo just plays into Stephen Harper’s quest for a majority government, it also truthfully reflects the tone of the Liberals: don’t vote, don’t act, choose to do nothing and let the Harper government have a functional majority.

But as Jack Layton spoke to the BC NDP convention tonight, the tone of the federal NDP as the unofficial, yet effective opposition continued to ring.

In reference to Dion et al and their penchant for abstention “for the good of Canada,” they are providing a de facto majority government for Harper. Their internal incoherence and lack of effective support of Dion makes the Liberal Party afraid to force an election despite Harper’s poison pills.

At the same time they abrogate their responsibility as “official opposition” as the party with the second largest number of seats.

Since the Bloc voted for Harper’s budget last spring, we can’t really call them much of an opposition.

That leaves the NDP actually opposing Harper’s anti-social tax cuts in an era of surplus.

And when do we start docking the pay of MPs who abstain in a vote?

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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun

Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

Latest posts by Stephen Elliott-Buckley (see all)

• Goodbye, Politics, Re-Spun! Hello, WePivot.net! - October 21, 2016
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