Moral compasses swing with wind

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/04/2009 (6261 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Moral compass. Moral compass. Who’s got a moral compass?

Neither national party leader has the right to point fingers.

Last week, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff deliberately goaded the prime minister over rampant speculation of a growing rift within the governing Conservatives.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s business dealings with German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber are currently being examined by a public inquiry called by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the loud insistence of, among others, the Liberal party.

Harper’s determination to put as much daylight as possible between himself and Mulroney — and Mulroney’s growing anger at what he perceives as Harper’s persecution of him — are reopening all the old wounds and fissures between the former Progressive Conservative and Reform parties.

Ignatieff saw an opening and pounced. He announced he had sent Mulroney congratulations on his 70th birthday and then went on to praise him. "A lot of Canadians have a lot of respect for Mr. Mulroney’s strengths and you have to show some respect. It’s simple. And I believe that Mr. Harper is lacking respect towards Mr. Mulroney."

Ignatieff then added that while there is "controversy surrounding Mr. Mulroney," he is still a former prime minister. "I have respect for the institution and I have respect for the character of the person."

Perhaps realizing that his last phrase would astonish and anger many Liberals, Ignatieff immediately made a small course correction. "I disagree with the politics of Mr. Mulroney. I am from another political tribe, but I recognize that he had two majority governments."

Harper is the most combative, viscerally partisan prime minister in decades, if not in Canadian history. He hit back hard. His Conservatives value ethical government. The Liberals do not, he said.

"Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberal party, when the matter first broke, were practically demanding that I throw Mr. Mulroney in prison without a trial. Now they’re out there practically demanding that somehow they’re his best friends and they don’t agree with any of this.

"I think what Canadians will see is that when it comes to a very difficult issue of government conduct and government ethics, this government has behaved responsibly and the other leader has absolutely no moral compass when it comes to dealing with this kind of matter."

The Liberal leader brushed Harper’s comments aside. "This is nonsense from a prime minister who is clearly frustrated that his ill-conceived strategy to distance his party from Mulroney is receiving severe blowback within his caucus. We are completely in support of the inquiry."

The prime minister’s wobbly moral compass is by now well known to most Canadians: the willingness to drive wedges into every faultline in Canada’s social and political landscape; the bullying of Parliament through most of the Conservatives’ first term by shutting down committees and making virtually every issue a matter of confidence; the over-the-top sneers and smears in a two-year, non-stop deluge of attack ads against former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion; the demonization of provincial premiers who dared to differ; the determination to obliterate, not just defeat, political opponents.

But how stable is Ignatieff’s moral compass? The Liberal leader professes to be a socially conscious, mainstream Canadian liberal. But on almost every issue, he’s four-square behind Conservative policy. He agrees with the government on the mission in Afghanistan, the budget, GST increases, the future of the tarsands, auto bailouts and free trade. Like the Conservatives, he initially backed Canada’s involvement in the Iraq war. Worse, he’s all alone in his disturbingly ambivalent writings on torture.

"The impressively agile Liberal leader may have a moral compass, but it does tend to veer crazily," wrote Ottawa Citizen columnist Susan Riley last Saturday.

Ignatieff was the last Liberal MP to sign the petition to Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean supporting last December’s proposed Liberal-NDP coalition backed by the Bloc Quebecois. His reluctance led commentators to speculate he had no use for it and would repudiate it the moment he got the opportunity.

Instead, all through December and January, Ignatieff talked up the coalition, saying it was essential to hold the government’s feet to the fire and force it to help Canadians weather the deepening economic crisis.

"Coalition has been part of our traditions before, it can be part of our traditions again," he told Sun Media just a week before the federal budget. "It’s not a game. It provides Canadians with an alternative to an election, that’s what a coalition is for. Therefore, it’s a serious alternative."

Ignatieff’s two other coalition partners had to watch his post-budget news conference to learn he had abruptly thrown them overboard and instead, gone to bed with the Conservatives.

York University political scientist James Laxer, leader of the NDP’s former left-wing Waffle group, has written that "Ignatieff’s slippery view of the coalition could end by reminding people of what they like least about the Liberal party — its tendency toward opportunism at the expense of principle."

 

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg author and political writer.