The Bruce Report

In market-driven economies, such as ours, the rules of engagement in the political sphere are indistinguishable from those that govern the business world. The common denominator is money: grease, juice, leverage, lucre, the “big bamboo”. Like it or not, whether you butter your bread on the “root of all evil” or the “mammon from heaven” side, the currency of power is, and always shall be, the almighty dollar.

Layton’s power is, in a strange way, Martin’s money. The leader of the NDP has 19 warm bodies whose votes the federal Liberals desperately need if they have any chance of retaining their sinecure as Canada’s first minority government in 25 years. But, as any business man or woman will tell you, a deal only makes sense when it provides equal consideration to all sides sitting around the bargaining table. In this case, Layton’s consideration is vastly more “equal” than Martin’s.

Once the agreement is fully consummated, the Liberals and NDP will control, between them, 150 seats in the House of Commons, four less than needed to defeat the widely anticipated non-confidence vote to be brought by the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois. Martin is gambling on additional support from the three sitting Independents – MPs Chuck Cadman, Carolyn Parrish and David Kilgour – to put him overt the top. It’s a big gamble. Though Parrish has indicated she will support the government, Kilgour has not, and Cadman has changed his mind at least three times in the past week.

Layton, meanwhile, walks with nearly $5 billion in Liberal commitments to enrich funding for health, education, environmental and other social programs – a move that all but eviscerates Ralph Goodale’s February budget – simply for helping Martin render his tenuous grip on power a little less so. Interestingly, though it may be the most expensive political pay off in Canadian history (amounting to nearly $250 million per NDP vote), it is also shaping up to be one of the shakiest.

Less than a day after the announcement, the Prime Minister seemed to back-track regarding one of his most controversial commitments to Layton: an across-the-board roll-back of corporate tax cuts. In an interview with Canadian Press, Martin said, “We have pulled the large corporate tax cuts out of this budget to be pursued in a separate piece of legislation. And that separate piece of legislation we’ll introduce as soon as the Conservatives or somebody say they will support it. The corporate tax cuts remain intact.”

The cuts, perhaps; but Martin’s reputation as a shrewd, private-sector-trained deal-maker is rapidly unravelling.

“The budget [yard] sale continues,” gloated Conservative Party spokesman Geoff Norquay. “He’s either fooling around with Canadians again, or it [retaining the tax cuts] is an admission that they didn’t know how to count our dollars,” mused Brutus. . .uh. . .Jack Layton. “[Martin] is once again trying to please absolutely everybody with promises that he’s probably not going to be able to keep. . .It really strikes me as game playing.”

Well, of course it does, because that’s what politics is – a game that, in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “should never be played by children.”

Paul Martin is, of course, no child. But business leaders across the country are wondering how the old boardroom warrior – the former head of Canada Steamship Lines – lost his edge. “The government is rolling the dice with the economy and the Canadian standard of living,” said Perrin Beatty, CEO of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, yesterday.

Whether or not his government survives, the artlessness of the Prime Minister’s deal-making over these past few desperate days will surely haunt him for years to come.

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