Shulgan.com

Save Igor Kenk

Photo by Eric Parker

It's so easy to believe that Igor Kenk's an asshole. On Sunday, the accused bike thief was re-arrested after he visited one of the garages he once kept full of bikes. Confronted by the owners, Kenk became upset, picked up a pipe, swung it and then left. None of the reports suggest any blows were exchanged, but all the same police charged Kenk with three counts of assault and returned him to jail. Kenk appeared yesterday in court to hear whether a judge would grant him bail on the new charges. The judge declined. My friend, Rich Poplak, who was in the courtroom, said Kenk looked as though he'd been beaten up. Word was, Kenk got on the wrong end of somebody's fist in the Don Jail. Which also happens to be where Kenk will stay over the holidays. 

Great. Right? Dude deserves it. But what if he doesn't? What if he isn't the horrible person everyone seems so certain he must be? I had the chance to evaluate this for myself back in early September, when Kenk and I conducted a series of meetings. 

Kenk's side initiated, through my literary agent. He and his circle of friends had a notion that selling a book might generate enough cash to pay some legal fees, maybe even get Kenk on his feet again once this thing blew over. I was intrigued. Kenk has a bizarre, disjointed way of speaking that represented an enticing literary challenge. It would have been fascinating to attempt to recreate his voice on the page, in a manner that would have pulled a reader into his narrative. 

Ultimately, both sides agreed it wouldn't work out. I'm not sure what soured Kenk on me. What soured me on Kenk was his coterie. I didn't dislike any of them, individually. In fact, each one of them seemed pretty nice. In particular, Jeanie Chung, Kenk's romantic partner, comes off as a charming person and straight shooter. It's just, when you take all these Kenk associates together, they manifest this paralytic groupthink where the Prime Directive is Igor's well-being, and they so badly want to do no harm that they never actually do anything. The whole lot of them would have wanted to participate in the writing of any book about Igor. It wouldn't have worked.  

Regardless, the experience convinced me Igor isn't as bad as he's being depicted. In fact, his story is a lot more complex than most people assume. In no particular order:

1. His motivation was laudable. Well, not all of his motivation. Some of his motivation was greed. But another part of what motivated him was affection for bicycles. He spent more than a decade accumulating thousands of bikes because he genuinely loved everything about the mechanical devices: Pedals, brakes, handlebars, you name it. Like most of the people denigrating him, Kenk is a bike lover. He's an ace mechanic. And he's one of this city's most enthusiastic and vociferous advocates for bicycles as a form of transportation. The dude genuinely loves bikes. And no one who loves bikes can be completely bad. 

2. Kenk isn't actually a bike thief. He bought bikes from bike thieves, yes. Knowingly. Wittingly. But even police acknowledge that he didn't steal the vast majority of the bikes he accumulated over the years. (We'll get to the two bikes Kenk supposedly arranged to steal on the day of his bust in a second.) You might retort that I'm engaging in hair-splitting here. But I think the distinction is important. Kenk felt that people didn't deserve their bikes if they were stupid enough to leave them in places where idiot crackheads could steal them. Kenk was picky about his customers. When he could afford it, he limited his sales to people he felt deserved his bikes. Think of Kenk as the bicyclist's version of John Eibner, the controversial missionary who purchases child slaves in Africa so that he can set them free. Eibner is accused of doing more harm than good; in other words, some accuse his child slave redemption strategies of perpetuating child slavery. A similar phenomenon happened with Kenk. The fact that bike thieves knew Kenk would buy the bikes meant more bikes were stolen. Sure. But that doesn't mean Kenk was guilty of those thefts. 

3. What he's accused of doing doesn't make much sense. Police have a low-life witness who claims that Kenk ordered him to steal two bikes that had been locked up near Kenk's store in Trinity Bellwoods Park. But wait a second. Does a guy who owns nearly 2,400 bikes go around ordering people to steal more bikes? The bikes that Kenk owned were a pain in his ass. He had to pay rent to store them. They were a source of friction in his relationship with Jeanie. He didn't want any more bikes. Consider something else for a second: If you're a police officer who has received umpteen complaints over the years about this Kenk character, and you have the good fortune to happen upon an idiot who steals a couple of bikes near Kenk's store before your eyes—do you subtly suggest that Kenk is the mastermind behind these thefts? In other words: Could it be possible that Igor Kenk is being framed?

4. The bikes belong to Igor. There's been a lot of discussion over what to do with Igor's loot. But shouldn't we at least consider that the remaining bikes are Kenk's rightful property? Kenk was burned in the early '90s by police and consequently was diligent about recording information about the people who sold him the bicycles. As I understand it, the law requires anyone who purchases a used bike to display it for a certain time period. Which Kenk also did. And Kenk returned any bikes that people could prove had been stolen. So far as the law was concerned, Kenk did his duty. Let's return the bikes to Igor. 

5. (Lastly) Igor is getting a bad rap. Those bail terms he had before he was arrested, for example. They are ridiculous. Bernard Madoff, who stole $50 billion from dozens of charities, has bail terms that are less stringent than Kenk's were. We allow murderers and rapists to get out on bail and yet Kenk now is such a danger to society that he must be kept in jail over Christmas? Give me a break. Let the poor guy out.

Finally, there's the issue that is at the centre of this whole business. Is this guy the scumbag that people say he is? My fellow Queen's alum, Joey deVilla, recently referred to Kenk as a human colostomy bag. Is that true? Who knows? I only interviewed him for something like six hours. He may have been a complete asshole before he was arrested. But last time I checked, being an asshole isn't against the law. During my interviews with Kenk, he was guilty of taking himself too seriously. He was certainly guilty of rambling on endlessly, mostly about his belief that we're approaching apocalyptic end times. So: Boring, yes, insane, possibly. But I actually think Toronto would be a richer place if we had more characters like Kenk walking the streets. Let's give the guy a break. At least let him out over the holidays.

Oh, Christmas Tree

I'm not complaining, oh, heck, maybe I'm complaining, but one of the things about going straight edge is that it complicates celebrations. Before it was pretty simple -- when something really good happened I'd mark the occasion by going out and, you know, drinking my face off. How the heck do you celebrate when you don't drink anymore? Well, we did it by having burritoes and root beer from Big Fat Burrito (Friday night) and then going and getting our Christmas tree (on Saturday morning). 

So, Friday. While we ate burritoes -- wait a second is that how you really spell burritoes? Maybe it should be burritos. Yeah that looks better. OK, while we ate burritos we also executed a rousing round of put-the-camera-on-timer-mode which was accompanied by hoping-you-don't-look-too-ridiculous-when-the-thing-finally-takes-the-pic. Next morning we headed out to Milton to finally get our Christmas tree. This is easily the latest we've ever bought one. Probably because we've been away for a couple of weekends. 

 

We arrived at the tree farm with the intention of getting a perfect and fragrant balsam fir. Natalie and Myron went ahead and I lugged the stroller up the hill. The ground was uneven. It was icy. And all these other families were looking at me as I pulled Penny and the stroller higher. I pushed and I pulled the stroller for maybe a minute before I decided what I was doing was ridiculous. The closest tree, er, the first tree closest to the parking lot, was this sad and gnarled little evergreen. We didn't know what kind it was, it had this gaping absence of greenery on one side, but it was close, so that's the one we took. 

After I took the above picture I was like, what a second, what are you doing standing around taking pictures while your wife is struggling to get the saw through the tree trunk? Shulgan, get in there! Actually the saws made it pretty easy to get the tree down. Once we lugged the trunk down the hill there were some impressive machines they put the trees through—one that shook all the loose needles off the trunk and then one to bail up the branches so you could transport it in the car.

Myron seemed worried about the above machine -- I think he worried the tree was uncomfortable all bundled up like that. 

Then for some apple cider. That went over a lot better than the tree machine. 

Once we got the tree home and up in the family room it turned out to look, if not perfect, at least suitable. It has its faults, it's aware of them, but it stands there with a kind of scrappy pride, kind of like the family that bought it. 

You would think that the role of lumberjack would have tired out Myron but the next morning he woke up at 5:30 a.m. which meant that I lugged him downstairs, turned on the television and then went back to sleep while he watched Big Comfy Couch (terrible) and Little Bear (awesome). At some point Natalie came down and set Penny down alongside us. Myron took care of her while Natalie was in the kitchen brewing the coffee. I love Myron's expression in this pic -- it sums up what's become his general attitude toward his sister, which is this overall air of paternal concern. He seems to be thinking, yeah, she's a pain in the butt, but she's my sister and I'll take care of her.  

 

OK, finally a pic that's a few days older, from the Christmas Brunch we attended with my parents when we were back home, where the kids saw Santa for the first time this year. Well, I guess that was Penny's first time ever. Huh. Anyway the brunch had this no-jeans policy which, geez, before the event I was complaining to Natalie about who the heck ever dresses up on the weekend anymore, I totally resented having to wear a dress shirt on a weekend but then actually once I saw both kids in their Christmas outfits and Natalie and I all spiffed up I was proud of my family and glad that we had dressed up for it. Anyway, here's the pic with the grandparents.  

A Message For My Sister, Julie

The BC Book Prize

Last week I was in my basement office talking on the home phone with my kid's Montessori teacher when a 604 number called my cell phone. Several things came to mind: I found out a month ago that I was on the longlist for the BC Book Prize, the biggest cash prize for Canadian non-fiction books.  The organization was supposed to release the shortlist in "early December." Still on the phone with the teacher, I typed the number into Google. Yep -- the number came up as listed to the "B.C. Achievement Foundation," the body behind the award. 

I blurted out to the teacher that I'd have to call her back and then stared for a minute at my basement's cinderblock wall. I wanted to prepare myself for not making the cut. This could have been a consolation call. Kind of like, good show, old chap, it's great you made the longlist but that's as far as you got. I mean, getting longlisted was a pretty big honour. Three figures with enormous reputations in Canadian arts and letters comprised the jury, and plenty of great books were on their long list. And luck has a lot to do with any award — the mindsets of the judges as they open your book for the first time, the setting in which they're reading the book -- these things can have nearly as much to do with their response as the contents of the book itself. 

I called back the number. Nora Newlands, the foundation's executive director, asked whether I could make it to Vancouver on February 2. "Why?" I asked. "Because you're on the shortlist," she said. I said, "I can make it." Some administrative details followed. She wanted an up-to-date headshot. An excerpt from the book. And then she said the actual news wouldn't come out for a week, so for a week I'd have to keep it a secret. "Can I tell my wife?" I asked. "Or my mom?" "No," Nora said. "You can tell them in a week."  

Well, I sent off the excerpt, no problem. And the headshot took some doing. I always feel like a dork posing for those things, possibly because I suspect I end up looking like a dork in them. Anyway, I sent off the headshot that afternoon, too. But the final part of my conversation with Nora -- well, I may have violated that last promise about keeping the news secret. For example, I may have run upstairs the second I got off the phone and wrapped my wife up in a bear hug and then danced her around the kitchen. Amid all the excitement we may also have woken up Myron from his nap. He came downstairs accompanied by a curious look. And I just may have given him a hug. "Daddy got some good news today," I may have told him. Oh heck, naw, I can come clean on that last bit. I did tell him. Myron can keep a secret. 

Links:

Story in the Globe and Mail here.

Story in the Vancouver Sun here.

Official announcement: http://www.bcachievement.com/nonfiction/2009/finalists.php

(The announcement includes info about each of the other three books shortlisted. Check those out too -- they look fascinating.)

Michigan Avenue

Yesterday I stopped in at the UAW's Local 22, one of the oldest union chapters on the continent, for a meeting with George McGregor, the local's current president. McGregor has worked for GM since 1968 and was gracious enough to provide me with several hours of interview time. As he told his stories he'd get so excited he'd pound his desk's glass-top table, which has this crack down the middle because sometimes McGregor gets too excited. Afterward I was driving along Michigan Avenue and thinking that what I love about Detroit is the spirit of the place. Michigan Avenue is as desolate a stretch of road as any I've seen in North America. Most of the buildings have been torn down. What remains are burned-out ruins. And yet, when you do come upon a business that is a going concern, there is a spirit about the place unlike anything I've experienced. 

The best Detroiters have a toughness about them that comes from being around tragedy and desolation and not letting it bother them; in fact, using the presence of such tragedy for inspiration. This came through in particular yesterday at the Mercury Coffee Bar, where I stopped to make a few phone calls after my visit with McGregor. One of the bar's owners told me about an art installation he was hoping to build near the abandoned remnants of Michigan Central Station, a rail hub that once connected Detroit to the rest of the U.S. The above photo of the station was the view from the Mercury yesterday afternoon around 4 p.m. Even though it's just a cell phone pic I think the image has a beauty and tragedy to it—just like the city it watches over.

Learn more about the Motor City's spirit at the Detroit Blog.  

Buyout

Abandoned auto factory pic by DetroitDerek

So I think I mentioned I'm in the Detroit area to do a little research. Last night as part of that research I paid $25 to attend a seminar given by renowned financial adviser Ric Edelman. It's a little strange: Financial advisers are crawling around Detroit lately. You can't turn on the radio without hearing one of their ads that cater in particular to autoworkers.

We're in a financial crisis, one that afflicts the auto sector worse than almost anything else, and yet lots of people around here are walking around with bank accounts recently injected with tens of thousands of dollars. Buyout packages provided by Chrysler, Ford and GM to their workers can range between $70,000 and $140,000. That's not to say they're in a position to be envied. The money comes in exchange for their jobs. Many of them have worked for decades in auto plants welding the same connecting rod to the same door panel. So far as jobs go, there are more exciting ways to make a living, but the pay was great--with overtime, autoworkers could make enough to buy nice homes and put their children through school. 

And now those jobs are evaporating. But they're evaporating with buyout packages. And former autoworkers are using their buyout packages to do all sorts of interesting things. That's what intrigues me about this moment in Detroit history.

This is also why the financial advisers are crawling around Detroit. For Edelman's thing last night the place was rammed; probably 400 men and women crammed into a hotel conference room. There were so many people they had to set out extra chairs. I sat there wondering whether Edelman was exploiting Detroit's misfortune. There was something of an ambulance-chasing mentality around this affair, and it grew worse around two-thirds of the way through the seminar, when Edelman gave his advice about whether the workers should accept the buyout packages they're being offered. "Yes," said the man whose umpteen radio ads remind viewers his web page address is spelt "Rice Delman dot com." "Buyout packages never increase -- the ones you're being offered are the biggest ones you'll be getting." 

Never mind that Edelman also is asking the autoworkers to give his company their money to invest and diversify. The incident underlined for me how high the stakes are.

Another One Bites The Dust

Photo credit: Kevin.Ward

I'm currently in Detroit, where I'm doing some research into the mass migration happening as factory workers leave their high-paying jobs at the auto plants and look for other work. Yesterday my dad took me to Ford Field to watch the Detroit Lions play against the Minnesota Vikings. It proved to be a remarkable moment--one in which a sports team functioned as a metaphor for the fortunes of its home city in a way I've never experienced. 

The Lions went into the game with an 0-12 record and a lot of speculation around them that they could become the first NFL team to ever register a 0-16 season record. Sportswriters and Lions fans have taken to calling them the worst team in the history of NFL football. And the fortunes of the city's football team has mirrored Detroit's economic luck. A mood of despondency pervades this region. It's not just the empty storefronts in the city's downtown. It's not just the Big Three car companies who have already shed tens of thousands of jobs and are looking to shed tens of thousands more. And it's not just the hundreds of different parts suppliers who provide everything from extruded foam bucket seat cushioning to tire bolts to create the cars we all drive. This region of southwestern Ontario and Michigan thrives and busts by the auto industry. If it dies, everyone's livelihood suffers. 

That's why everyone around here has been following the U.S. Congress debates about whether to provide the automakers with some or all of the $34 billion they're now requesting. The public attention is similar to what I imagine existed during the Watergate hearings. Everyone is talking about the bailout hearings -- they're on the WJR radio show, Albom in the Afternoon, run by the guy who functions like Detroit's poet-laureate, Mitch Albom. They're what I talk about with my brother-in-law, a manager in the auto industry, as my wife's family gets together to decorate the Christmas tree. And the bailout hearings were the subject of many cross-row conversations on Sunday at Ford Field. 

Everyone around here has been beaten down so often by the auto industry's travails. And at the same time, everyone is looking for a reason to hope. So there was a cautious optimism at half-time on Sunday as the Lions went into the break leading six points to the Viking's three. Could this be the time they actually pull off a win? Many people around here will tell you they want the Lions to break the record for the most losses in a season. But I think they're lying. People want this team to turn around. They want this team to start winning so they can have something, anything to root for. 

The Lions are one of the few NFL teams who don't sell out their home games anymore. Ford Field looked to have maybe half its seats filled on Sunday. But even at half capacity the stadium's roar was deafening in the third quarter when Lions QB Daunte Culpepper threw a 40-yard pass to WR Calvin Johnson, who ran the ball another 30 yards for a touchdown. The Lions were ahead. An optimism filled the stadium -- not just for the Lions' fortunes, but for the entire town.

And then they lost it. Culpepper muffed a quarterback sneak on a fourth-and-inches. The Vikings' second-string quarterback performed well and their running back, Adrian Peterson, ran through the Lions' poor tackling. The game ended with a 20-16 loss for the Lions, and Detroit continues to look for a reason to hope. My dad and I were pretty both quiet as we walked through Detroit's ever-empty downtown on our way back to the car. Here's hoping the bailout comes through, because otherwise, plenty of people I know will be having a bleak Christmas. 

What's with kids' movies and mice?

Photo credit: DJ_Riel.

We don't currently have mice in our house. I don't think. But we have in the past. We usually get them when the weather turns cold. There isn't much we can do about it. Our house is one in a series of brick row houses and if one of the places gets them then we all do. 

This wouldn't be a big deal, except I've developed something of a complex about mice. Back when I was a kid, mice didn't bug me. I don't think I thought much about them. None of my parents' homes had them. That I knew of, anyway. Naw, my first battles with the cheese-loving invaders started in university, when the place where I lived as a second-year student was infested. One of the traps was deep inside a closet that was under a set of stairs. My room-mates and I heard the trap go one evening and I lost the paper-rock-scissors tournament which meant I was the one to dispose of the results. To extricate the trap I had to crawl into the space and reach my arm out. I reconsidered at that point -- I went and got a set of tongs from the kitchen. 

Back then, I felt bad about killing mice. This business was troubling enough that I didn't want to leave the dead mouse inside the house, in, say, the kitchen trash bin. I wouldn't have been able to stop thinking about it. So the tongs, the trap and I all went to the backyard to the spot where we put our garbage. This girl who lived in one of the building's other apartments must have been looking out the window because she came running out her front door. She eyed me, the tongs, the trap and the dead mouse and she teared up. She said, "You didn't have to murder it." Then she fled back into her house. I felt terrible about it. Clearly I was a bad person. I was a mouse-killing maniac guilty of rodenticide. 

That was, let me see, 15 years ago. Since then it has become comparatively easier for me to kill mice. What really emphasized this transformation was this incident that happened last year, as Natalie and I were lying on the couch watching a movie. We heard a skittering on the other side of the room. We'd already known we had mice — Natalie had seen the telltale little droppings in the shelves where we kept Myron's toys. It was the first time since we'd had a kid that we had mice and the presence of a child heightened the sense of invasion. I had begun having nightmares about mice crawling into Myron's crib. They weren't pleasant. 

Some minutes later the skittering came again and this time we saw the thing running along the floorboards. It went from the bookshelves to the nest of wires behind the TV and the sound system. "Get it!" Natalie cried, but I didn't want to put my feet on the floor. My feet were bare. I went and equipped myself with my slippers and a broom and then I knelt down and stuck the broom handle in among the cable cords and everything else. But the mouse seemed to have disappeared. I set a snap trap in the space between the floorboards and our sub-woofer, and we returned to watching the movie. 

Maybe another ten minutes passed before we heard the skittering a third time. And then: Snap. It was the trap by the sub-woofer that got it. Except the trap hadn't completely gotten the thing. There was a squeaking exactly like the kind that mice make in the cartoons, and blood on the floor, and a half-dead mouse. It was a pretty bad scene. 

Oh wait, I forgot to mention the topper: The movie we were watching was Ratatouille. I fully realize that sounds like too much. It sounds like I'm changing the details to make this anecdote a better story. But I swear I am not making that up. We were watching the Pixar flick about the mouse who wants to be a Parisian chef while a mouse was running around our family room. 

So this mouse was dying a horrible, drawn-out death. As we watched a movie about an anthropomorphic mouse that, frankly, lays it on pretty thick about the plight of rodents everywhere. If there was any circumstance in which I should have felt guilty about killing a mouse, it was this one. But I didn't. Actually, I felt the opposite of guilty. Among that moment's complex set of feelings was satisfaction, and triumph. In contrast to the sympathy and guilt I felt after killing the mouse 15 years before, now my stance toward mice has shifted. An accurate description of how I feel these days would be all-out hatred. These creatures carry germs that endanger my kids and when they invade my house they get terminated with extreme prejudice in the Martin Sheen / Apocalypse Now sense of the term. 

My antipathy toward mice has developed to the point that I can no longer watch movies with mice in them. Even Ratatouille. I mean, I love all of Pixar's movies. The Incredibles was a masterpiece, and that bit in Cars where Lightning has to turn right to go left gives me the shivers every time the little race car figures out how to do it. But I thought Ratatouille was terrible. For obvious reasons, I found it really difficult to empathize with the main character.

I mention all this because lately we've been introducing Myron to movies and it turns out that children's cinema is obsessed with mice. Have you seen the kids' shelves at the movie store? They're lousy with rodents! Infested, I tell you! And what's with that? It's not just Ratatouille. It's Mickey Mouse and Stuart Little and An American Tale and then coming up later in December the big Christmas animated movie is The Tale of Despereaux with a main character who happens to be... a mouse.

I get that mice are little and somewhat cute and therefore they make it easy for animators to create sympathetic protagonists but somebody needs to tell the people at Pixar and Universal Pictures and Dreamworks about the seven bazillion other species in the animal kingdom who would be just as great main characters as mice -- as creatures who carry germs and various other nasty things into my home and therefore, I'm sorry, but I'm no longer remotely apologetic about this: MICE MUST DIE!!!   

Semantics

What strikes me about what's happening with the power struggle to lead the Canadian federal government is the way it emphasizes the power of semantics. Each side has its own terminology -- the Liberals say they're forming a coalition with the New Democratic Party that is supported by the Bloc Quebecois; the Conservatives say the coalition includes the Bloc -- everything hinges on the meaning of coalition. When Conservative leader Stephen Harper addresses anglophones he refers to the Bloc as separatists; when he addresses francophones in French he uses a word that translates into sovereigntists -- a far more politically correct term. 

But to me the most egregious obfuscation through semantics is what's happening to the word "government." The Harper Conservatives accuse the Liberals and their allies of a coup d'état because, they say, they're overthrowing a democratically elected government — one that was elected just seven weeks ago. 

But that's nonsense. The Canadian people didn't elect a government; they elected Members of Parliament whose duty was then to attempt to form a government. The Conservatives won the greatest number of seats in the House of Commons -- 143 of the House's 308 seats. So everyone assumed they'd be able to govern. After all, they'd had a smaller minority during the previous parliamentary session, and they got along fine for most of that. 

This time, however, and for a number of different reasons, Harper wasn't able to convince any of the other parties to vote with his party. In other words, he and the rest of his MPs failed to form a government. There's no coup here. No revolution. There's nothing to overthrow. Harper failed to form a government. And now it's up to the other democratically elected MPs to attempt to form their own government.

By misusing the word government the Harper Conservatives are attempting to depict the Liberal-NDP-Bloc alliance as somehow anti-democratic. In fact, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc alliance received a majority of the popular vote -- 54.32% -- just as their MPs voting together create a majority in the House of Commons (the Liberals' 77 seats plus the Bloc's 49 seats plus the NDP's 37 seats equals 163 of the House's 308 seats). Rule by a majority of democratically elected MPs isn't sedition, as Conservative MP Bob Dechert has claimed. It's democracy in action. 

  

Political Debate

This morning my mother sent me the following forwarded email. 

Subject: Canadians 4 Democracy
Send this to as many of your Canadian friends you know. 
By now I am sure you have all heard about the coup d'etat attempt going on in our Nation's Capital.
I urge you to go to:
http://canadians4democracy.ca/
And sign the petition.
Kindest Regards,

In response I sent this email:

Mom, what's happening in Ottawa is a lot of things but anti-democratic isn't one of them. It's democracy in action! 

In the last federal election Stephen Harper and the Conservatives received 37.65% of the popular vote which resulted in 143 of the House of Commons' 308 seats... not enough to win a majority of a parliamentary vote by themselves. It's a situation that happens fairly frequently in parliamentary democracies. When a similar minority situation happened after the 1972 federal election, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau formed a coalition government with the NDP's David Lewis. In the UK it happened in 1918 with David Lloyd George forming the government with a coalition of Conservative, Liberal and Labour MPs. And in Ireland, prime minister Bernie Ahern has formed the government with the help of a coalition through three consecutive general elections. 

Coalition governments are a normal, integral part of the functioning in any parliamentary democracy. There are certain situations when a minority political party can govern without forming a coalition with other political parties. In the last parliament, for example, Harper's Conservatives had a minority without a coalition. What they did in that situation was ensure that every important legislative package had things in it that the other political parties could support. Essentially, they said, well, item A, B and C are Conservative goals, and item D is a Liberal goal, and because we need Liberal support to pass this bill that has A, B and C in it, we're also going to incorporate D into the legislation so the Liberals will vote for it. That's putting it simplistically. When it came time for a vote, both the Conservatives and the Liberals would vote for it, the bill would pass and the Conservatives continued to have the privilege of forming the government. 

Harper should have continued along the same course after this latest election. But when it came time to design the first important act of legislation after the last election, he changed his tactics. His first bill after the election was supposed to be a simple budget bill -- something that would get the government to the end of January, when Obama would presumably pass his stimulus package in the States, allowing the Canadian government to respond with a stimulus package of our own. Harper's tactic was smart -- it didn't make sense for us to do anything major until we found out what the U.S. was doing. 

The problem was, in what was supposed to be a simple budget bill, Harper included a number of unrelated things that none of the opposition parties liked. This is the part where Harper wasn't smart. For example, he incorporated a measure aimed at preventing public servants from striking—irritating the NDP in particular. Another Harper measure would have severely reduced funding for the opposition parties--irritating the Liberals and the Bloc. This was risky, but Harper thought he could get away with it because he figured no one would dare defeat the government and risk triggering a new election so close to the last election. 

Let's think about this for a second. At a time when the TSX is plunging 900 points. With Ontario's auto industry close to all-out collapse and Alberta's oil industry threatened by oil prices under $50 a barrel -- With all this instability facing our political system, Stephen Harper's first act of legislation was a risky ideological move that opened the possibility of a defeat of his government. To me, that's the most undemocratic thing about this whole business. 

Apparently Harper was under the impression that a political party with a minority of seats in the House of Commons, which received only 37.65% of the popular vote, could set the political agenda for the rest of the country, without soliciting cooperation from any of the other political parties. It seems to me that if we're flinging around words like "anti-democratic" then the term applies to Harper and the Conservatives more than any of the other leaders. This was cynical. This was arrogant. And it was profoundly undemocratic. It's simple arithmetic! 

Isn't this a time when Harper should have set aside politicking and concentrated on what's good for the country? Rather than attempting to pass a budget bill that included profoundly divisive legislative measures, shouldn't Harper have attempted to be the unifier, the one who brings the whole of the country together?

I am not a fan of Stephane Dion, or any of the other political parties. But calling what's happening in Ottawa "undemocratic" is inaccurate. It's democracy in action. And for triggering this turn of events, Stephen Harper should be ashamed of himself. 

OK, and then in response to that, my brother sent this email:

Chris – great factual account but couldn’t the government just have voted against the legislative package?

To which I responded:

Aw shoot that's a question I intended on answering in this email and then I got carried away. Good question. Yeah that's what's slated to happen Monday and what Harper wants to avoid -- Usually when the party that forms the government puts forward a budget bill, as this one is, and that budget bill is defeated, the government falls and that triggers a new election. At least, that's what usually happens. In this case, Harper figured none of the other parties would risk that, so they would hold their noses and avoid defeating this bill.

What Harper didn't take into account is that there is apparently a short window after an election when the opposition parties can defeat budget bills without triggering a new election. The Globe's editorial today explains this pretty well. Essentially, because this is the first important act of legislation after the previous election, defeating the bill doesn't trigger a new election if the other political parties can form a viable government. Somebody in the opposition parties realized this, saw their chance, and what is probably going to happen is that we'll have a transfer of power with Dion leading a coalition of the Liberals and the NDP and the voting cooperation of the Bloc.