Fail The coalition's not the question

When does an agreement to work together become a "reckless coalition," and when is it okay?

In 2004, Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper signed a letter with NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe. The letter said that, if the Liberal minority government was defeated, the Governor General should look to them to try to run the country.

Harper says that's different from what the Liberals, NDP and Bloc tried to do in 2008, when they ganged up on him to try to form a coalition and take over from the minority Conservatives.

That was just after the election that returned Harper to power with a minority government. His first move was to try to end public subsidies to political parties, and the opposition rebelled. Then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and Layton signed a coalition agreement that would have given Dion the top job and the NDP caucus six cabinet seats if the Conservatives lost a confidence vote. Duceppe agreed to support the proposed coalition government for 18 months.

Harper says he didn't move to seize power in 2004.

"I wasn't trying to bring the Martin government down," Harper said Sunday morning in Brampton. "The Conservative Party allowed Mr. Martin to form government."

That statement, however, raises a question.

If the Paul Martin government had lost the confidence of the House in 2004 and the Governor General didn't send them to an election, who would have been prime minister?

It would have been the man whose party had won the second-highest number of seats: Stephen Harper.

At the time, he was leader of the Official Opposition, just as Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was in the Parliament that just fell, and as Dion was in 2008. And if a minority government falls, the governor general may look to that leader to see if he or she can find enough support among the other parties to command a majority of the seats in the Commons. 

Duceppe and Layton agree. They say it was clear Harper would have been the one to become prime minister if Martin had fallen from power.

Whether they called themselves a coalition really is not the issue. Fact is, the winning prime minister would have been replaced by the one who finished second in the election.

Harper says a Liberal-NDP-Bloc arrangement is illegitimate and unprincipled because they would be trying to take power having just lost an election. He says that's the difference between 2004 and 2008.

In fact, in both cases, the opposition let the minority government function in the Commons before threatening defeat.

Harper is trying to frame the coalition issue as an attempt to subvert the will of voters. If that were the case, he would be as guilty as Stéphane Dion.