The Secret Diary of Stephen Harper: Constitutional Convention of the Damned

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Constitutional Convention of the Damned

I am told by my experts down the hall that Her Excellency Mme. Jean cannot change her Prime Minister unless there are extraordinary circumstances. Only an election can do that.

Essentially she is obliged to act on my advice, for example if I ask for dissolution of the House. The exceptions are pretty limited - breakdown of the government, major crisis, me going insane, and so on.

But there are no extraordinary circumstances, except the coalition's new found lust for power, enabled by Gilles Duceppe, who has not officially joined the Coalition of the Damned™, committing only to vote for the budget and Speech from the Throne for 18 months.

Dion and Layton, with their 114 seats and 44% of the vote, claim their legitimacy rests on some kind of emergency. But the opposition has already debated and voted for our legislative program as set out in the throne speech. We now have the confidence of the House.

So, my friends, they are being too clever by half, even more so if they take this to the Supreme Court of Canada, which clearly they intend to do.

Pix: ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images

Talk Tough Like Mike

•“Look, this is America and you have to decide what kind of country you want. This is your country as much as it is mine.” - 2004
*"Look, if I lose, I'll just move back to Massachusetts." - to the Harvard Crimson newspaper - 2006
*“If you mess with me, I’ll mess with you until I’m done.”
• "You're looking at someone who turned down the chance to become Prime Minister of Canada, and I did so, in part, because I felt it would divide the country."
• “I don’t need any lessons in legitimacy from Harper.”
• “He knows where to find me.”
• "He's creating a parliamentary crisis and dividing the country."
• "It’s his budget, not mine."
• "It's up to Harper to make the right decision and up to me to decide if he made it."
• "We're putting the government on probation."
•"Mr. Harper, your time is up.”
*"This is a prime minister who a year ago was trying to make you embarrassed if you liked opera or classical music or the ballet or poetry. I mean, come on, let's get over this. You can like hockey, you can like classical music. Let's stop playing Canadian against Canadian and taste against taste."

The Susan Delacarte Stephen Harper Attack Thesaurus (Under Construction)