Liberals To Continue Undermining Responsible Government

The Globe and Mail reports that the Liberals plan to ignore the upcoming confidence votes if it suits them:

The federal Liberals would consider ignoring a House of Commons defeat should they lose any of the several coming votes that are matters of confidence between now and the end of the spring session, Chief Government Whip Karen Redman says.

Although no final strategy has been decided, Ms. Redman said the government could respond to a defeat by bringing in a motion on whether the government has the confidence of Parliament to make sure MPs actually want an election.

This is even more arrogant than when they got away with ignoring the confidence motion a couple of weeks ago on the grounds that it was literally a procedural motion (though I’ve noted how, in the end, even that difference didn’t matter - it was a confidence motion in purpose).

This new strategy is even more arrogant because they’ve announced that they would ignore a confidence motion even though they’ve acknowledged that yes indeed it is a confidence motion.

Their reasoning? Not all MPs will be in the House at the time, which is their reasoning for citing the 1968 Lester B. Pearson precedent when he called another confidence motion 10 days after the original one that didn’t give him the answer he wanted. However, they can also look at the 1979 precedent of Joe Clark who accepted his government’s defeat despite the absence of 7 his MPs (though their presence wouldn’t have prevented him losing).

Even so, with the Liberals winning the bye-election in Labrador, it’s unlikely that the Liberals would even lose the upcoming confidence votes, especially since the NDP look like they’ll support them, at least until the end of this year.

In the meantime, say good-bye to your hard earned money while you say good-bye to the constitution.

UPDATE: Andrew Coyne provides a 5 point summary of why the 1968 Pearson example does not give today’s Liberals license to ignore confidence measures.

UPPERDATE: Civitatensis compares the Liberal straategy of ignoring confidence votes to the Quebec separatist strategy of ignoring “no” votes in referenda until they get a “yes” vote. Recall the wisdom of Stephen Harper’s dad (and Nietzsche): don’t let your battle with the monster turn you into a monster. Right now the Libranos make the separatists look pure wool. ;)

UPPITYDATE: According to Politics Watch, Prof. Andrew Heard, one of Canada’s leading experts on constitutional conventions, regards the Liberal strategy of ignoring confidence motions as totally illegitimate:

But Prof. Heard disagreed with such a practice and said as long as there was proper notice there is “absolutely no excuse” to ignore the results of a confidence vote.

“It’s an illogical contradiction to say that we will respond to defeats on matters of confidence to say we will have our own vote of confidence,” Prof. Heard said in a phone interview. “It doesn’t make sense.”

He reiterates his point made a couple of weeks ago that the original procedural motion was also a confidence motion:

However, Prof. Heard is not in an agreement with Prime Minister Paul Martin’s decision to ignore the May 10 passage of a Conservative motion recommending his government resign.

Martin waited nine days before having a vote on two budget bills that passed second reading by the narrowest of margins after he was able to have an opposition MP, Belinda Stronach, defect to his party.

“This is part of the problem,” Prof Heard said. “Constitutional conventions are based on precedents and he’s kind of pushed the envelope of what we’ve seen in the past. And he pushed it in a very large way by refusing to accept that first defeat on May 10 as an actual vote of confidence.

“In my own view it was a clear test of confidence. He was able to kind of bafflegab his way out of it and that is probably the more problematic precedent rather than the nine-day delay he had.”