The disappointing turnout at the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce all-candidates’ forum was expected because of scheduling it on the Thursday night before Good Friday. What was not expected was the vitriolic response from candidate Brent Rathgeber — both at the forum and in Saturday’s Gazette — when asked about co-operation with other parties. If Rathgeber’s pessimistic outlook is part of the Conservative Party platform, then voters need to send a strong message on Monday — find a way to make it work.
Rathgeber has already served in one minority government and, barring a late surge in the final week of campaigning, if he wins Monday he will serve in a second. Another minority government would indicate that Canadians would rather have the other parties watching the Conservatives closely instead of giving them a blank cheque in the form of a majority. So it is incumbent on all parties, in the interests of governing the country, to find a way to work together, as they have attempted for the last four years.
Yet Rathgeber has no interest in working with anyone that does not wear Tory blue. At the forum on Thursday night, as candidates Brian LaBelle (NDP), Kevin Taron (Liberal) and Peter Johnston (Green) committed to working with other parties to conduct the business of governance, Rathgeber instead said, “There’s no room for compromise here,” adding the House of Commons will never be “a municipal council chamber or a school board meeting where people can park their partisan interests at the door and work together.”
In Candidates’ Corner in last Saturday’s Gazette, Rathgeber repeated that same sentiment by calling the idea of the parties working together to pass a budget “fairy dust,” saying none of the last three minority Parliaments have worked and added that Canadians would be naive to expect a different result with a fourth minority.
Yes Parliament is adversarial in nature, but not to the point of never getting anything done. Its purpose is to hold the government to account and if the Conservatives haven’t gotten anything done since taking power, why are they trumpeting their economic record so forcefully? How were they able to accomplish that if Parliament functioned so poorly? Is it naive to expect everyone in the House of Commons to get along? Absolutely, but Canadians also expect whoever is elected Monday will go to Ottawa and find a way to make it work.
Rathgeber is either suffering from a serious case of political myopia or trying to feed the fear factor here in St. Albert — if you don’t elect a Conservative majority, nothing will ever get done. In his world, and within the rest of the Conservative camp, it has to be Stephen Harper’s way or no way at all. With statements like those, is it any wonder we are voting again and, if his attitude persists, why we will probably be heading to the polls again sooner rather than later?
No one person or party in politics has a monopoly on good ideas, which was made plainly evident Thursday night. Given LaBelle, Taron and Johnston all pledged to work with other parties if elected, Rathgeber might have just been trying to stand out. But if he was trying to illustrate his point, he proved only that alienating the opposition supersedes the best interests of both our constituency and the country as a whole. If voters were naive, they’d believe in Rathgeber’s scare tactics. We believe they aren’t.
