Will the Opposition Follow Through?

The Star's Chantal Hébert says it well today... the Opposition has been talking tough on the Environment file; question is, will they follow through by forcing an unwanted election?

Mr. Harper may have sucessfully painted the Opposition parties into a corner... by their own doing, no less. They have been talking tough on the Environment, demanding action. The Conservative government has now brought forward a plan, one that the Opposition says in unpalatable. Problem is, their only way of stopping it is by bringing down the House themselves through a Motion of Confidence. Chantal says,

"The question as of now is what, if anything, the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois are willing to do about it."

Mr. Harper has said all along that he didn't want an election. Now, with the Liberals backing down in the Senate over changes to the fixed election date bill, it may be game, set, match for the Opposition... how badly do they want to stop the government's plans to deal with Climate Change? Do they really want to go to the polls over Kyoto?

A couple more key quotes from the article:

"If Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe feel that the failure to move more decisively on climate change is grievous, if they are convinced that Harper is wrong when he argues that he cannot do more without doing irreparable harm to the economy, then they are free to move a non-confidence motion in the government at the first opportunity.

That places Dion in front of the starkest choice of his short tenure. The Liberal leader has staked his leadership on his environment credentials. But polls consistently show that his party would face long odds in an election this spring.

For its part, the NDP can no longer delude itself that it is engaged in a collaborative effort that gives it a chance to act as the environmental conscience of the government.

Yesterday, the Conservatives put more nails in the coffin of their Clean Air Act. It has clearly become redundant to their plans. The time spent at Layton's initiative fleshing out the act in committee has turned out to be a make-work project designed to tide the government over while it came up with a strategy to reduce its electoral exposure on climate change.

As for Duceppe, election fatigue in Quebec may mean that he is under no great pressure to seek a federal election but there is no way that his party could live down propping up the Conservatives on the climate change issue.

For months, the opposition has collectively wrapped itself in the various folds of the Kyoto protocol. Now the time has come to see whether the emperor had any clothes.

Like I said... could it be Game, Set, Match?

h/t to "Chucker Canuck"