Angry in the Great White North

Apparently there will be no election before the fall, at the earliest:

Jack Layton says he won't force a confidence vote in the House of Commons in the final weeks of the current Parliamentary session, but he is prepared to face the electorate should the Liberals choose to bring down the Conservative government.

Layton reiterated Sunday that his goals for the next few weeks include getting an NDP EI reform bill passed and changing the Canada Pension Plan before MPs go to their home ridings for the summer.

The party's EI reform bill will be tabled in the House on June 10.

Layton said rather than try to bring down the government over the issue, he is willing to accept amendments to the legislation from the other parties.

What Jack Layton has done is to give the Conservatives their way out.  The NDP tables the bill.  The Conservatives offer an amendment or two (no doubt already agreed to, in advance, between the Conservatives and the NDP).  The Liberals offer their own amendments.  Votes are taken.  With NDP support, Conservative amendments pass.  Liberal amendments are rejected.  No election.

The NDP manages to square the circle.  The Conservative government survives, but without the NDP directly supporting the Conservatives.  Indeed, the NDP can point to an EI reform bill as an example of how effective the NDP is, compared to the Liberals.

Of course, the NDP doesn't want an election.  There are two likely outcomes of an election at this time: (1) a minority Conservative government and a much weakened NDP or (2) a minority Liberal government and a much weakened NDP.

I'm sure you see the problem for the NDP.

The Conservatives are not interested in an election either.  Though they could still beat the Liberals, it's no sure thing, and no matter how it turned out, it would leave both the victor and the vanquished bloodied.

For the Conservatives, it is best to put things off, for a lot of good reasons:

• More time spent governing reminds people of a key difference between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff -- Stephen Harper has proven he can govern under difficult circumstances, while Michael Ignatieff has proven only that he can host TV shows, write some books, and complain a lot.
• The summer will be a great time to pick up the pace on having cabinet ministers fill an otherwise slow news cycle with funding announcements tied to the stimulus package.
• Without Parliament in session, Michael Ignatieff fades into the background as Stephen Harper commands the stage.
• If all goes to plan and according to predictions, the economic will start pulling out of the dive (and indeed, it seems that this has already begun), with the credit going to the government.
• Polls in Quebec can't get any worse for the Conservatives, which means they could get better with time (and time heals all wounds).
• Michael Ignatieff's honeymoon with the press will seem tired and forced if it continues, which means it won't continue.
• Events in the rest of the world will need to be dealt with, and more time spent doing that means more opportunities for Stephen Harper to show leadership.
• More Conservative ads will run and will have time to define to Michael Ignatieff, and if by the end of the summer it becomes clear that Liberals were just bluffing about striking back at the ads, the Liberals will look weak and feeble.
• Vancouver Olympics!
• The coalition will increasingly seem like a wasted opportunity as time goes by.

That last point is important.  Key factions with the Liberal Party looked to be gearing up for a summer election.  If the Conservatives and the NDP have outmanoeuvred the Liberals and have successfully put off an election, essentially indefinitely (the next unavoidable opportunity would be a 2010 spring budget), then those Liberal factions, and all Liberals in general, will recognize that the best chance to unseat the Conservative government in an election might have just passed them by.

If the NDP does indeed spoil Liberal plans, then Liberals will wonder, with reason, whether Michael Ignatieff was right to spurn the NDP and so infuriate Jack Layton when Ignatieff tossed the coalition aside on January 28.

Is Michael Ignatieff just another Stephane Dion?  Playing it safe?  Keeping the Liberals comfortably in opposition?

Who would whisper damaging questions like these?  I wonder...

Remember Bob Rae?  He was that guy who wanted to roll the dice with the coalition.  It might have turned out badly for the Liberals, but then it might not have.  But at least the Liberals would have been governing.

Some Liberals might be thinking that having Michael Ignatieff take over the Liberal Party was a mistake, like Stephane Dion.  That would be two mistakes in a row.  Do you really believe these Liberals will be as patient with Ignatieff as they were with Dion?

And so the knives are sharpened...just in case.

The Other Take: The other way of looking at this is that Jack Layton is still out to get the Conservatives:

Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs plan to unite this week behind a New Democratic Party bill aimed at increasing pressure on the government to standardize employment insurance eligibility across Canada.

The bill would set a single national EI eligibility rule of 360 hours of work - a long-standing NDP proposal that Michael Ignatieff adopted after he was confirmed as Liberal leader last month and has cited as a potential summer election trigger.

So is it really the NDP, the Liberals, and the Bloc Quebecois against the Conservatives?  Not really:

Bill sponsor Carol Hughes, an Ontario NDP MP, is scathing in her take on the Liberals and EI.

"The difference between my bill and what the Liberals have been flapping their little gums about is basically they're looking for a temporary measure and we have been advocating this for over 10 years," Hughes said in an interview.

"It's the Liberals who basically devastated the EI. It's the Liberals that actually gutted that EI fund. Now we find ourselves where people actually need this money and they're told it's not there. And they've paid into it. It's an insurance fund."

She cited the fact it was a Liberal government which instituted the existing eligibility rules based on regional unemployment rates and who "stole" an accumulated EI fund surplus of $57 billion to pay down the general budgetary deficit when they were in power.

The NDP is saving its scorn for the Liberals, and abandoning its past position of taking down the Conservatives no matter what the excuse.  These points are hugely significant.  What if the Conservatives offered an amendment accepting a nationwide standard (or a dramatically simplified eligibility regime), but set at a level significantly higher than 360 hours?   At a level that would prevent, say, summer students from collecting EI as they return to school after a single summer's work?  How about at a level that is higher than the eligibility level in some areas, and lower than others, meaning little net change in cost to the fund?

The NDP gets a permanent change but compromise on the eligibility level.  The Conservatives and the NDP are seen as the architects of the EI change, while the Liberals are marginalized.  EI is neutralized as an election trigger.

And the Liberals are left with Michael Ignatieff as their unelected leader.