On Sunday I met a Canadian who spends much of her time in Bangkok and who spoke a bit about the political tension sin that country. I wonder how she feels about the political tensions in the Great White North where the minority Conservative government seems likely to be pushed into opposition by a combination of all other parties. What is interesting when you read that Reuters artilcel (or this BBC one) is how they spend so much time talking about the unprecedentedness of the move blah blah blah that you have to wade through a lot of crud before you get to the reasons why the opposition parties have decided to do this. In the Reuter's one you actually see the Patterico "Power of the Jump"™ in action on line because you have get to page two before the "unofficial" reason is mentioned. Here's Reuters on the official reason:
The opposition says Harper is not doing enough to tackle the financial crisis.
[...]
The parties promised a major stimulus package as well as help for the struggling auto industry.
And then after the jump there's the "unofficial" one.
The three opposition parties are also angry that Harper last week tried to eliminate public financing for political parties, a move that would hit them particularly hard.
The BBC doesn't have the "Power of the Jump" trick available so it merely puts all the reasons at the bottom and lets Reuters take the blame for the "unofficial" one, as if it is gossip:
The opposition parties say they were spurred to action by the failure of the government to deal with the financial crisis and boost the country's economy, and that they are set to introduce a stimulus package.
"Given the critical situation facing our fellow citizens and the refusal and inability of the Harper government to deal with this critical situation, the opposition parties have decided that it was now time to take action," Mr Dion said.
The opposition parties were also angered by Mr Harper's attempt to eliminate public financing of political parties, a move that would hit them hard, Reuters reports.
Is it just me who thinks that actually the real reason why the three parties decided to band together so suddenly is the fact that Harper threatened to take their government gravy train away?
Actually that's what we call a rhetorical question. Ezra Levant notes in as point 3 (of 18) in his post on the subject and I'm not going to bother searching the rest of the Conservative Canadian blogosphere beyong this google news search because it's obvious.
Unless someone else has named it something else I propose the following to be called Harper's Law
Never get between a politician and his source of funding
I sincerely hope Canadians will find ways to protest this outrageous decision and that they find a way to actually implement this cutting of funds. I'm not optimistic about the latter because even a anumber of Concervative MPs seemed to like the idea of sucking at the government teat.
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