Not surprisingly, the uproar over the Atlantic Accords is all the rage on Parliament Hill. I'm taking a day off but the BlackBerry has been humming nonetheless with news of this and that on this issue. Thought I'd put up a quick post for a couple of reasons. First, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he's ready to have the courts rule that his government's budget does not alter the Atlantic Accords. Someone ought to get a judge to rule quickly because, according to The Canadian Press, Nova Scotia Conservative MP Gerald Keddy is about ready to jump ship.
Meanwhile, my colleague Graham Richardson, hanging around the House of Commons foyer this afternoon, just ran into Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey — he's the one who did vote against his own government's budget and got kicked out of caucus for it. — who says that if Harper put it before the courts, the provinces would win.
And finally, there's this, from Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, the press secretary to the Prime Minister, who, in response to many press inquiries today, had the following distributed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery:
Nova Scotia is saying we are not respecting the Atlantic Accord. We say our Government is respecting the Accord.
This is an argument of fact.
While we would prefer to continue talks, we are not willing to leave the accusation out there.
Nova Scotia must either act on their accusations or drop them. We will wait and see what they will do.
As a reporter, my first followup on this would probably sound like this: “Mr. Harper, your Finance Minister, in a letter to the editor in some weekend papers, seemed pretty unequivocal: He said, “Our government is not in the process of making any side deals for a few extra votes.” So what do you mean when you say you would prefer to continue talks? What is there to talk about if your Finance Minister says there can be no “side deals”?