After the shutting down of Parliament and before leaving for the UN climate conference in Poland, I had to perform important emergency surgery. I had to fix the papiere mache donkey my mother had made ten years ago for St. Bartholomew's Church annual Christmas pageant. My mother was a sculptor and the donkey, Esther, is a work of art. She is the size of a real small donkey, with her withers at about three feet the tips of her ears just under five feet. My mom built her from a structural base of two by fours and built out a solid body with plastacine, covered in papiere mache....She looks so very real, with bright expressive eyes, a grey yarn mane and tail and a leather halter. Under each of her hooves is a wheel for pulling her, with a young Mary on her back, to the front of the church for pageant. My mum spent months making this donkey, and then built a huge wooden crate and shipped "Esther" from Cape Breton to St. Barts - C.O.D. Even though I am rarely at St. Bartholomew's anymore, having put down roots at St. Georges in New Glasgow, whenever I do worship at St. Barts, I go visit my mom's donkey in the storage room. Last time I was there, I discovered that her ear had been yanked off. There was talk of duct tape to put it back on, but to me, that would be like using crazy glue to fix the Venus de Milo.
I had to make two special mid-week trips to the parish hall to get Esther fixed. My first repair failed and there was no room for error on the second attempt. The pageant will take place next weekend before I am back. I went to the church first thing Friday morning with a better plan. I drove a sharp metal lobster fork (long and thin but strong) through the ear and then into the clay of her head, and then papier mached all around the damaged join. As I performed this operation, I was not yet packed for the trip to Poland and had not yet dealt with the backlog of bills I had to pay before leaving. My friend Shelagh teased me for feeling I alone could fix the donkey. I told her some people spend time tending a parent's grave. I look after Esther.
It is enormously gratifying to fix something broken. It made me wish someone could fix Parliament. That central point -- that Stephen Harper has broken Parliament -- seems to be receding as the media spin shifts to undermining the coalition. But this crisis is not about any one issue or set of issues as much as it is about the fact that the Opposition MPs cannot work with Stephen Harper anymore. As Danny Williams warned, none of them can believe a thing he says.
No amount of papering over, crazy glue or duct tape can work. Perhaps if the Conservative Party and numerous commentators were to succeed in persuading Stephen Harper to resign, there could be trust rebuilt between the parties. It does not seem at all likely that he will do so. Harper is not a man prone to backing down. To hang on to power, he has risked exacerbating regional divisions and tensions. He has, as others have noted, turned a political problem into a national unity issue, without stopping to really address our economic situation in between. Compromise and contrition are not in his repertoire.
More fixing is needed -- I would also like attention paid to fixing the economy. Over 70,000 Canadians lost their job in November 2008. That's the largest single month job loss since 1982. And we have a government that's barred the doors to Parliamentarians in a national crisis. No debate on the economy, no committee process. All to save their own skin.
Even more urgently, we need to fix our climate policy. Here in Poland the news is grim. The US is still following the Bush mandate of deny and delay, and Canada is right in there with them. We are racking up the "Fossils of the Day" awards and threatening to leave this critical, second to last negotiating session, with a series of weak, bordering on useless, commitments.
To fix what's broken always starts with knowing it is broken and having a plan to put it all together again. Mr. Harper doesn't want to admit he has broken faith with our traditions and risks the very nature of Parliamentary democracy. He broke it and he cannot or will not fix it. Somehow, all of us, together, must make sure all of these things are fixed - our economy, our appalling climate policy and democracy itself.