So I was chatting with one of my acquaintances up on the Hill who observes the Parliamentary goings-on for a living, and I asked that person what they made of the Conservatives issuing a press release last evening on Bill C-3 (dealing with the new revised security certificates that the Supreme Court struck down last year), which more or less said the Liberals would be weak on Canadians public safety if they don’t pass the Conservatives version of that bill. I said it seemed a rather silly move by the PMO to make going after the Liberals when Harper was supposed to be meeting Dion today to try and persuade him to follow his stance on Afghanistan and the Manley Report; I didn’t think it would exactly ease chilly relations with that type of a release.
The response I got from this person was interesting: the opinion given back was that it was that person’s belief that Harper really doesn’t want Dion to agree with him - that he wants to be able to blame Dion and the Liberals for “forcing” him to end the combat mission in Afghanistan, and thus try to neutralize it as an election issue for him.
I said I found that interesting, because of Layton’s press conference yesterday and some NDP bloggers basically now saying to everyone who would listen that Dion was moving closer to Harper’s position (and Layton was being silly I opined, because everyone has predicted, including me, that Dion and the Liberals would never agree to pulling troops out immediately, and that’s been their position for a while).
The reply to that from the observer was equally interesting: In their opinion, Layton, like Harper is also playing politics with this issue; the NDP is following their policy of trying to destroy the Liberals in advance of the next election than in — well, pretty much anything else. The opinion ended with the observation that Layton probably would have been horrified if Dion *had* agreed with him.
Take it for what it’s worth, but as I said, it’s from an observer on the Hill… and it means Dion and the Liberals will have to tread very carefully. If the NDP want to end the combat portion of the mission, they will have to quit playing politics (if that is indeed what they’re up to) acknowledge that they and the Liberals have differences on when the combat portion ends, and then ask the Liberals to help defeat the Cons version of wanting to stay.
As for Harper, I don’t trust him more then I can throw him. Dion has made his position clear that the combat portion of this mission will end in 2009 if the Liberals have their way, so I don’t see what Harper will offer to Dion to get him to agree to an extension. If Harper comes out of his meeting with guns ablazing about how the Liberals and Dion are being inflexible or won’t support a Liberal-led panel recommendation, I suspect my observer friend’s opinions on this will be proven right.
Dion is going to take flak for this either way, so he may as well throw his lot in with Harper. If he gets into bed with Layton, the Tories will have a field day and the Ignatieff faction will freak out. Say what you will about the merits of each party’s position, but the Tories and the NDP have essentially turned this into a two-position issue: you’re either with the government, or with the NDP. Either for extending the mission, or ending it. Whatever the nuances Dion wants to try and insert - "ending" the combat part of the mission but "extending" the humanitarian part - is going to be framed by his opponents and the media as one or the other. It’s hard to see how Harper would benefit from Dion refusing to deal with him. If Harper endorsed the Manley report, and that report explicitly requires additional NATO assistance before the mission is extended, Dion’s intransigence is a moot point.
Politically speaking, how many votes are the Liberals going to lose if they side with the Tories? Anyone adamantly against the mission for whom it is the ballot box question, is already voting NDP. There is, however, the Ignatieff wing of the party to consider. And by backing the government - just as some Liberal Mps did in the first vote to extend the mission - they keep the peace in the party.
I think Harper and Dion are going to find some way to make a deal. It benefits them both and prevents a wildcard election where neither is likely to land a majority.