Don’t for a moment imagine Stephen Harper in a yellow leather jumpsuit, but imagine the same result as the double feature films. The PM wants to kill the private member’s bill.

Props to Dan McTeague, who wrote a private members bill that put the Government’s budget out of their spending league. McTeague had his private member’s bill read for the third time this week and it received a whomping round of support from all three opposition parties. One might ask, how did the the Conservatives let this one slip through the voting cracks? Math, simple math. The Tories did not have the man power in the house the day of the last reading is really what it boils down to.

The real kicker from a policy and historical view is that this was a private members bill. Private member bills don’t usually see the much light of day and are about as in-depth as “The recognition that all kittens are cute” result. This bill was just the opposite, allowing families saving for their children’s educational futures to place up to $5,000.00 into a savings plan that closely resembles an RRSP. The cost to the government is estimated at $900 million dollars.

From a wonk’s point of view there are a number of routes that could see the government bury those noses in procedures and squash it because of oppositions not being able to play with taxes and the like. But why would you want to kill it? There is 900 million reasons the current government can think of we’re sure.

This government has made friends with a large portion of the Canadian taxpaying public buy slicing the GST twice, and personal income tax cuts. Killing this bill is not consistent with their public policy and would end up killing their own trust with Canadians. The focus here should be on where $900 million could be offset from to see the RESP bill through. If the government really gets hip-deep in the strategy for the situation they will find a pot of Liberal initiated programs ripe for the offsetting. Social programs beware, should the Tories wake up and smell the opportunity your fiscal days may be numbered (pun intended).

Social program spending versus good old tax cuts, sounds like an old Tory idea that may be given new legs for this situation specifically. The Wonk has done some preliminary number crunching and has found one direct match for the budget to remain in balance with cutting in mind. Need we say more?

Here’s a secret at The Political Wonk, when we have heard what there is to hear about stories in the media, our eyes glaze over. And the next thing you know we are playing paper doll dress up in Photoshop with an elected leader.

That time of eye glazing has come and gone, and, well, someone got dressed up because in the middle of our meditation we realized that Stephane Dion is not only holding back a country from a federal election, but he’s holding back a wonk’s required once-a-year migration to Ottawa for all things policy and procedure.

The federal Liberals have abstained from more than their share of confidence matters now but not before turning the verbal volume to 11 on the dial. It seems that either Dion doesn’t have the gut for the push or maybe it’s the fact that Harper can play him like four-armed drummer, beating out whatever result he wants. Hold on a second though, Harper hasn’t exactly been the best of the best when it comes to strategy lately (read: Chuck Cadman) seeming to fall and expose his weakness to Dion almost bi-weekly. Dion, get the guts.

The appeal to Stephane Dion here is to decide. Decide whether or not your team can take the Harperites down at the polls. Pull the trigger, any trigger, election or prop-up, any one will do, but please decide. The annual wonk migration is approaching, where a weeks worth of policy discussion, question period and senate debate watching occurs. Without a definate decision the migrating wonks will be displaced and potentially pay too much for a plane ticket that was just on sale.

So, Stephane for the sake of the nation and the wonk migration, please decide. Are you an opposition or not?

Breaking stories are for news junkies. Solid strategic action based on a event or situation is the wonk’s natural habitat.

Now that the Krista Erickson writes off-topic questions delivered by Liberal MP to former Conservative Prime Minister situation has tapered off, we here at the wonk thought it would be of community service value to offer the fallen CBC reporter some career rejuvenating strategies.

1. Political Career – Find a party friendly constituency (preferably NDP) and put forth your name as a candidate in the next federal election. Use the CBC situation as a opportunity to reflect on the status of women in the journalistic field and champion the more global women’s rights to equality to all fields of employment. Campaign yourself to a $150,000 a year job on Parliament Hill and take every opportunity to join committees that Pablo Rodriguez is also a member of, just to make him uncomfortable.
2. Pundit Career - Apply to the Green party as a writer/strategist before the next election. Appear in as many photo opportunities with Elizabeth May and have as many realistic challenges put forth by the party leader (with you as the public source) as possible. Take the credit for any of the party gains (those are implied) in the next election as the brains behind the strategy and spoken words. Distill any job offers after that (stay clear of the NDP in this case), take the new job or raise, put one to two more years in and write a book on the realism of Canadian politics. Again, distill all national newspaper columnist jobs and go forth, eventually ending up on the CBC’s At Issue panel taking Chantal Hebert’s seat.
3. Lobbyist Career – Take the short term knowledge you have of the players on parliament hill (while they are still in place) and solicit to any number of lobbying firms. Negotiate a $300-400K a year job, leave the public eye forever and work the shadows in the halls of the house. Note that this option can also be coupled as an after-step with options one or two.
4. Internal CBC Conquerer Career – Take the transfer to Toronto as an opportunity as opposed to a punishment. Have coffee with Wendy Mensley as much as possible and ask as many questions as you can. Come up with a fringe television show idea (fitted to the CBC) and then move your allince away from Wendy towards Peter Mansbridge (if you can stomach this). Talk about the television show idea as much as possible (or until he can’t take it any longer) to him. Launch the show with a level of success not seen since Strombo boarded the ship and begin negotiations with NBC as permanent host of Deal or No Deal: Canadian Edition. Wait for the show to fail terrifically and come back to the CBC with an (increased) implied amount of due respect. Start another fringe television show and wait for the call to become the next Governor General of Canada.
5. CTV Chief Middle-East Correspondent Career – Lay low for about six-months. Digest all you can about the middle east from a very high level perspective. Fly over to Dubai (make this your base for safety reasons) and begin doing hired-correspondent gigs for any network that will have you. Get yourself in the most dangerous of situations at every available chance while filing reports. Make certain that Peter MacKay’s girlfriend (at the time of this writing), Jana Juginovic (the Director of News Programming) get a copy of each report filed. Allow some time for the offer and make sure to do the emotional side of the story once in a while. We should note that this is the most risk in any of the career options we’ve outlined and that should be taken into consideration when discussion salary expectations.

In the end we know Pablo Rodriguez should confess his role in the delivery of the questions that Krista Erickson has taken the wrap for, but we aren’t holding our breath. We hope to see Krista in one of the careers mentioned above or a new selection of her own soon and off the pages of Frank even sooner.

Good luck Krista.

Confidence motions always stir the chance of an election. That chance is always a bit more magnified in a minority government as well. Welcome to the next two or three weeks of political jib-jab in the Canadian media.

We have both elements in place for some prime election speculation. The current minority has a budget (read: confidence motion) right around the corner. Party administration has gone into full on election mode, striking up more and new polling to be done and getting MPs in the mindset of shaking hands and taking names.

The interesting part of this situation is that we are about to decide, as a nation, if the country’s representatives have the confidence required to sustain parliament and a big part of that decision comes from a very narrowly focused group, the Bloc Québécois.

Now don’t get us wrong, we think that Gilles Duceppe has had some of the more memorable moments in interviews and on the floor of the house. He says what he thinks for the most part and other than a federal to provincial leap that failed last year, he has lived the good political life. What we find strange here is that the party with one province only in mind can lead the charge taking the nation to the polls.

Vote rich Quebec will be the focus of the next election. It holds the future for not only the Bloc Québécois, but the measurement of the Conservative’s storied progress in the province. These two factors will be pitted against each other consistently going back and forth. In the last election the Conservative lead a stunning victory over the Bloc (and Liberals), however the Bloc have since replaced the fire-tipped previous provincial leader André Boisclair and soared up more support since the whipping they took.

The barometer of the nation is clearly Quebec for the start and the end of any election. Some say a better barometer is one who has a 24/7 watch on the first barometer. Chantal Hebert is famous for her contributions to the CBC’s At Issue and as an expert on the ‘feelings’ of Quebec. Her perspective on a particular political party enjoying success in Quebec is that the federal Conservatives are closely aligned with the ADQ. And the ADQ has suffered some substantial losses in the last while, while allowing the PQ (or Bloc equivalent) to gather momentum. The boils down to a gain from the Bloc in the next election in Quebec.

Not all agree with her forecasts however. Jack Layton’s NDP were victorious in Outremont, the fabled Liberal riding the province in a by-election in 2007. Ask Jack and he’ll tell you, he’s the king of Kensington, if Kensington is somewhere in Quebec.

All this and still no solid picture has been painted here. That’s because Quebec is a fluid factor in any election calculations. Wind factor and wine availability play large rolls too. Each leader has a strategy to align themselves and the promise with Quebec, but even with all that strategy at $225 dollars an hour, the liquid opinion of the distinct province is a craps shoot.

In the end the party that takes Quebec, will be the real winner of the next election if not in seats, in momentum.

Stephane Dion is really taking the ‘going green’ statement seriously. He commented while in Afghanistan about Canada’s ever changing role in the region, “If they (Pakistani leaders} are incapable of doing it themselves, it is something that we could envision with NATO forces; how to help Pakistan help us bring peace to Afghanistan.”

Dion is speaking about the torrents of terrorists flowing through the border region of the two countries. However in noting, what must be a very apparent problem for it to show up on a Liberal radar,  he indicates NATO should go a step further and walk into Pakistan if they can’t stop the problem.

Perhaps Dion’s aides didn’t properly go through the background of the area, political and otherwise, before they touched down. Pakistan isn’t exactly where every country wants to be in terms of stability. Offering to bring NATO troops in to hunt terrorists is like adding a table spoon of hot sauce to a steaming cup of tea, nothing is going to cool down.

Pakistan has since replied, chalking Dion’s comments up to ‘irrational’ in a very diplomatic fashion.

There’s no word on deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s condition after hearing the comments made by Mr. Dion. We’re sure he’s due to make a full recovery as Liberal leader shortly.