Unbalanced Thoughts

For a couple of weeks last fall, a wonderful madness descended on Parliament Hill, and the country watched gobsmacked as the opposition threatened to bring down the newly elected Conservative government and replace it with a Liberal-NDP coalition propped up by the firm support of the Bloc Québécois. Was this constitutional? Was it democratic? Canadians seemed unsure. At the very least it was a sharp reversal of the general expectation, which was that with their strengthened minority the Tories had earned a substantial mandate to govern, especially given that they were facing a demoralized Liberal party led by a humiliated and soon-to-depart Stéphane Dion.

Problems began at the end of November, when Stephen Harper introduced a fiscal update that included three problematic elements. First, it was remarkably insouciant about what many people saw as an obvious, and...