Opposition has acted properly

In your article of March 11 (Federal government not likely to fall over latest dispute), local MPs Peter Van Loan and Paul Calandra confidently predicted that the interim Supply bill would get passed, and indeed it has.

The official Opposition cooperated and the Senate did its part too to pass the bill. What your readers may not know is the process by which spending is approved in our Parliament. According to my research, the government provides all its spending plans by department in its main estimates. Then the government introduces an interim Supply Bill for approval of some of its spending between April 1 and June 30; thus, the government can continue to function while the budget makes its way through Parliament. Then, a full Supply Bill is proposed for approval to cover its spending for the full year.

Usually, the interim Supply Bill allocates the spending on a departmental basis, but in a departure from the Westminster tradition of several centuries, $3 billion was designated to Treasury Board for later distribution to the other departments. In other words, the government presented no plan to spend $3 billion. Of concern to the Opposition is that the money can be spent on nearly anything without the traditional oversight of Parliament - hence, the risk of corruption and waste - until after the fact. Another concern is that if the money is not spent by June 30, then it cannot be spent at all.

Before passage of the interim Supply Bill, Prime Minister Stephen Harper resorted to his by now predictable behaviour of blaming the Opposition for a problem of his making. Indeed, Harper said, "To be blunt about it, the opposition has nothing positive to contribute to this economy," and declared last month in Vancouver that he was willing to fight an election if the interim Supply Bill was not passed. If it were not for the Opposition, however, there would be no stimulus spending despite an economic crisis that few living people have seen. Let us remember that the last election was called with Stephen Harper's confident prediction that Canada would not be affected by the problems of the United States; then, as the election wore on, he predicted that Canada would suffer only a "technical" recession, and even said that the stock markets represented a great opportunity for investors. After the election, he became the bearer of bad news, despite the contradictory assurance in his Finance Minister's economic update last November that Canada was doing well. In the meantime, Statistics Canada has reported that more than 100,000 jobs have been lost in the last several months.

Stephen Harper has shown once more that he has not adjusted to the times. He remains confrontational, rather than cooperative. He continues to misrepresent the true state of affairs to Canadians, and he flouts Parliament. Let us remember that he called an election in spite of his fixed election date law, (you may ask why he called it in the first place) and now upsets the time-honoured tradition of budgetary approval. He also prorogued Parliament so that hardly any Parliamentary business from September until January was considered. If there is a need to hurry things up, it is not the fault of the Opposition.

In summary, we need a prime minister who will learn how to get things done according to the circumstances. Stephen Harper is not such a leader.

Jim Hodder,

Kettleby