Finally, an explanation.

[c9]

I have been shaking my head in wonder at the behaviour of the federal government recently -- constantly attacking Ontario's recently-reelected-with-a-majority government, whining about their choices in the budget, etc -- and I really couldn't figure it out. Most blog posts seemed to indicate similar questions, usually along the lines of "What's Harper's game?"

Sadly, the game is just that he's a child, says Paul Wells. This makes a lot more sense than thinking he's out to govern Ontario by press conference, I think.

Comments

[iambic-cub.livejournal.com]

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=396713

The National Post has an interesting take on this. Ontario is one of those provinces that doesn't have oil reserves to keep it flying during the approaching recession. That is, assuming that this approaching U.S. recession takes Canada down, it is likely that Ontario is going to feel it worse than any other province.

People look to the federal government to make the right economic choices to avoid a recession. What Harper appears to be doing is preemptively shifting the blame to the Ontario government so that if Ontario's economy tanks along with the U.S. economy, Harper can point to the province, and pretend the the federal government did everything it could.

I wonder how many people in the Conservative party have come to realize just what a psychopath they have running things. I expect any day now for the party to send an R2 unit to Alberta with a holographic message: "Help us Preston Manning. You're our only hope." That's how bad I imagine things are.

[c9.livejournal.com]

It's so transparent, too. If Harper had his cabinet members walk into *any* other province to say these sort of things, they'd be run out of town and the papers (especially in Alberta) would tear him up! Of course, he clearly doesn't have the guts since the other provinces will get him his majority if he can manage to keep them.

Plus, he's a huge "provincial jurisdiction" person. If Chretien or Martin had pulled this stunt, he'd be threatening to sue the Liberal Party (oops, too late on that one) within hours.

*sigh* I'm glad we don't have enough serious problems for the Prime Minister to work on. Imagine if he was actually busy?