O.K, Mr. Murphy, but the title sounds better the way I wrote it.
The history books will write this one down as the Gomery Parliament, and the Gomery Parliament is down to its last breath.
Last night, the Conservatives and the Bloc humiliated the Martin government.
Mr. Martin and his allies, the NDP, were defeated 153 to 150.
Call it a technical defeat or a substantive defeat. It was a defeat.
...Now it's all tactics and all maneuver, but it's been that, all tactics and all maneuver from the beginning. In the shadow of and in counterpoint to the Gomery hearings, this Parliament could have been nothing else. The Gomery Parliament has never been a real Parliament, just the struggle for choosing the battleground at the next election. As such, it's been a patchwork of partisanship and improvisation from the moment of its installation, and its only substantial moment won't be the infinitely rewritten budget, the Kyoto bill or same-sex, or the multiple ad hoc deals with the provinces. Its one substantial moment will be the motion that brings it down and which party can claim the fractious credit for doing so.
The polls say Canadians don't want an election. Who does? But a Gomery Parliament is unsustainable, unworkable, and undignified. We may not want an election, but we need one.
