A noble compromise

With my summer electioneering plans now off, the Blue Jays really need to start playing some decent baseball again. Unless I can find a pick-up election somewhere.

All in all, while this week didn’t unfold the way I’d have played it, I think the Liberals and Conservatives have acted responsibly today, reaching a compromise that moves us closer to real employment insurance reform, ensures real transparency around financial reporting, and avoids the summer election Canadian want while ensuring there will be real election triggers in place for the fall.

Now, for those of you who want an election now, obviously no compromise was going to be acceptable, so it's all moot. We can't always have what we want, though.

And I’ll note that “election now” was a position held by NONE of the major political parties. That includes the BQ and the NDP. They both insist they don’t want an election, but they also weren’t willing to do anything cooperative or substantive to avoid one. So it fell to the grown-up parties to see if common-ground could be found, and if an election actually could be avoided.

The question, of course becomes can enough common ground be found to avoid an election. For those of you that say the “get” wasn’t big enough here, assuming you didn’t favour an election, I’m curious what you would have considered a sufficient get to avoid an election all parties agree they don’t want, bearing in mind it needs to be something both sides are likely to agree to.

Let’s delve into just what this agreement entails.

*A Pabst blue ribbon panel on EI. 3 Liberal appointees, 3 Conservatives. They’ll work through the summer and report by Sept. 28th.

In a minority government, any EI reform is going to require multiple parties to come together, each group giving something. Right now the Liberals want a 360 hour national standard, but only temporarily. The BQ and NDP want it permanently. The Conservatives have offered movement on self-employment.

Obviously, we’ll have to move from the 360 hour position to find consensus. And the Conservatives have already made a major move. In his presser today, Harper acknowledged the patchwork of differing regional standards has to go. That’s a significant concession from his past position of staunchly defending the system that has been achieved already by this Liberal initiated cooperative process.

The panel will take the summer to try to narrow the gap further, and will report to Parliament in September. If they reach a consensus both sides find acceptable, it can be passed with majority support in the House.

To those who say this is too long to way for meaningful EI reform, I ask you what’s the alternative you’d propose? A compromise can’t be achieved overnight on the back of a napkin, and an election would mean a reconstituted parliament couldn’t even begin to consider the issue until the fall, at which point (assuming no one got a majority) a consensus would STILL need to be negotiated.

This is the fastest way to meaningful EI reform. I’d also add that this Liberal process has pushed the Conservatives to speed-up plans (that maybe they never even had) to bring EI benefits to the self-employed, a significant reform as well.

*On the reporting front, we get an additional fiscal report card from the Conservatives that wasn’t scheduled before, and it will be due Sept. 28th.

The report is required to have the real, detailed information that was missing from the Duffy infomercial, specifically details on actual stimulus dollars spent, jobs created, and real, go-forward deficit projections with their plan to balance the budget.

*Finally, we have taken back control of the timing of opposition days, including a Liberal opposition day following the Sept. 28th reporting deadline for the fiscal report card and the EI panel. This is more of a significant get than it may appear to be.

Like the Martin Liberals did (to the Conservatives’ distaste) the Harper Conservatives have shown a habit of manipulating opposition days to avoid confidence votes. They pushed back the opposition days in this session to this week, so to preclude any possibility of an election other than late July/early August. And they had already signaled their clear intention to similarly manipulate the fall schedule.

Left unchecked, they could well have jury-rigged the fall schedule to avoid giving the opposition the possibility of voting them down before the 2010 Games, other than a possible Christmas election. Now, the Liberals have taken that hammer back, and, should we choose to use it, we’ll have the ability to force a fall election. Well, maybe early November e-day, but its still fall. And its definitely not Christmas, or next spring.

The aftermath

So there you go, that’s the get. Now, my feeling going into this thing last week was as follows: let’s stop doing anything to support this government. If the NDP or BQ want to make a deal, fine. I think they would (I still do). Frankly, my preferred timing would be the fall. But if pulling our support means a summer election, so be it.

Obviously, a different tact was taken: one of compromise, of trying to make parliament work. I think this desire from Ignatieff was genuine. It wasn’t gamesmanship. Will it play out better for the party in the long-term? Only time will tell.

We know what they’ll say in Ottawa. The media had already written the cooperative approach off before the agreement was announced. It’s not surprising. The same media pundits that said forcing a summer election would be madness will now decry the Liberals for not forcing a summer election.

The media, and politicos for that matter, as I wrote yesterday view these things through confrontational lenses. They like confrontation. Chest-thumping. You know what swinging. Bravado. They can only view cooperation as a ploy, a cynical strategy designed to gain position. Actual desire for an cooperative approach is alien to them. They also prefer writing confrontation stories, of picking winners and losers. It makes their jobs easier.

Then there’s the opposition parties, whose response has been predictable. They didn’t want an election either, but they’ll be upset at the Liberals for not giving them one. But you know, they’ve become increasingly irrelevant through this process. The NDP’s non-binding EI bill isn’t going to do anything for anyone, just like all the other non-binding feel-good motions they’ve passed. But it’s the Liberals that have brought us a process that can lead to actual EI reform that can actually be passed into law with majority support, while the NDP watches from the sidelines.

And out there in real Canada, they’ll be glad that at least some of those idiots up there in Ottawa are acting like grown-ups and trying to get things accomplished.

Meanwhile, since I really did want an election, all you people that didn't want an election should invite me to your cottages so I have something to do this summer.

UPDATE: Video from Ignatieff's statement on the compromise.

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