Questions for Conservatives on their claims of instability

It is often very difficult to get the Conservative spinners, MPs and ministers off of their talking points (come to think of it, it's tough to get spinners and MPs of all political parties off their talking points but I digress …) but, if you happen to engage a Conservative in discussion about a potential federal election this fall, let me suggest a few questions for that Conservative who would argue that an election is a “stability” risk that threatens public safety, the economic recovery or any number of issues:

1. Canada held general elections in 1917, in 1940 and again in 1945. In both those years, Canadians were making incredible efforts and incredible sacrifices to fight world wars. We managed to win those wars — and hold general elections. You don't think the Canadian public nowadays can handle a general election and little old economic recovery at the same time?

2. Had Prime Minister Stephen Harper not broken his own fixed election date law, we would be in the midst of a campaign right now for an election to be held on Oct. 19. It's right there in the statute the Tories themselves wrote: “Each general election must be held on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following polling day for the last general election, with the first general election after this section comes into force being held on Monday, October 19, 2009.” So, [fill in name of Conservative person you're talking to here] are you in favour of your fixed election date or not? Surely you contemplated that fixing an election date might mean an election is held in the midst of a recession, a world war, or other times that might otherwise be considered inconvenient?

3. Speaking of breaking fixed elections dates: As the recession was beginning, last fall, the prime minister called an election – despite the absence of any confidence vote and despite a fairly clearly worded section in the Canada Elections Act fixing Oct. 19, 2009 as the date of the next election. After that election, the government tabled a fiscal update in November which exhorted Canadians to tighten their belts because of worsening economic times and did so by cutting off federal funding of all political parties and unilaterally undoing some civil servant wage hikes. When it was clear those two measures were not going to help Canada through a recession – and after an extraordinary series of political manoeuvres by your opponents and by the prime minister, your government tabled a budget in late January which did, as you now claim, do much to alleviate the worst of the recession. So: If that budget was the solution, what took you so long? Wasn't the election you called last year and that partisan economic update “destabilizing”?

If any of you get some decent answers to these questions, please don't keep them to yourself!