Hard-Headed But Hopeful On CASA...

WorldWeary

AntidoteVille

Greg Fingas is a lefty lawyer from Saskatchewan whose good old fashioned amateur blog 'Accidental Deliberations' pops up regularly in the BlogCrawl over on the left sidebar.

That regularity is mostly driven by Mr. Fingas' truly excellent link round-ups but he also writes free-form posts, his most recent being a hard-headed but hopeful take on the federal Liberal/Dipper confidence and supply agreement.

Here's the kicker:

...After last year's election, (Jagmeet) Singh again floated the possibility of closer cooperation, while apparently seeing it as futile to even suggest a formal confidence agreement. But even with that lesser possibility on the table, the Libs expressed at most "not a closure" in response, with nothing coming of it until talks between the leaders this year.

And lest there be any doubt, that disparity in interest in working together is all too familiar for anybody who has hoped that Libs would treat minority Parliaments as opportunities to achieve progressive outcomes. From Paul Martin sneering that Jack Layton was "two votes short" of being worth talking to, to Pierre Trudeau torpedoing a functional confidence arrangement to manufacture a majority for himself, the history of the two parties is rife with theoretical possibilities which fell victim to the Libs' hubris and/or self-interest.

Needless to say, that leaves reason for concern that the same factors will affect both the length of time the current agreement figures to hold up, and the expectations as to what will be achieved while it does. And while the points of agreement may make some major achievements seem like real possibilities, there's a lot of work to be done to keep pushing toward actually bringing them to life before the Libs decide to go it alone.

A welcome antidote to the Keef's knee jerk(ish) take, no?

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