news EI reform, not Tory defeat, is the NDP focus this spring: Layton

[rwilli1]

EI reform, not Tory defeat, is the NDP focus this spring: Layton



1 hour, 11 minutes ago





By Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - The House of Commons should spend the next couple of months focusing on reforms to employment insurance and pensions, not electioneering, says NDP Leader Jack Leader.

It's a significant change in tactics for Layton, who portrayed himself as executioner-in-chief of the Harper Conservatives through a raucous winter run that threatened to topple the minority government at every turn.

On Monday, the NDP leader marked the return of Parliament after a two-week Easter break with a public, 15-minute pep talk to his MPs and party workers, in which he spoke about the toll the recession is taking on Canadians.

The carefully staged, bear-pit speech was noticeably devoid of anything that could be construed as a threat to the survival of Stephen Harper's minority government.

"I didn't hear anybody saying that they were hankering after an election," Layton explained later in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The two-week break, he said, gave New Democrat MPs a chance to canvass the public to assess "what should we do in the next 10 (weeks)."

Of course, few Canadians were hankering for an election back in January either, when Layton was thundering about Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's perfidy in allowing the stimulus-laden Conservative budget to pass.

"Today, we learn that we can't place our trust in Mr. Ignatieff in terms of defeating Mr. Harper," Layton said at the time.

"We have a new coalition on Parliament Hill. It's a coalition between Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff. I can tell you we will be opposing this coalition each and every day."

Since then, Liberal polling numbers have steadily climbed, the Conservatives have fallen behind and Layton's NDP has flatlined around its traditional baseline of 15 per cent.

Pollster Jeff Walker of Harris-Decima says New Democrats are getting squeezed in the public angst over the recession.

"The government's doing OK, Ignatieff is doing quite well, and it just crowds out the ability of the NDP to have an independent and loud voice," said Walker.

Political scientist Tom Flanagan, Harper's former campaign chair and one-time chief of staff, wrote a provocative op-ed piece last week in the Globe and Mail positing that Layton won't dare wager his current 37 seats by helping Ignatieff bring down the government.

"Will he risk those gains trying to put in power a Liberal leader who mirrors the Conservative leader on so many major issues?"

Layton laughed off Flanagan's analysis, saying he hadn't read it and NDP support is where it was before the last election.

But his speech Monday, for all its clenched-fist vigour and denunciations of successive Liberal and Conservative cuts to employment insurance benefits, spoke the language of accommodation.

"Get moving on it prime minister, work with us to implement the changes that must happen and must happen now," Layton told his caucus, clutching a cordless microphone in one hand, stabbing a finger at the news cameras with his other.

Just last December, Layton ordained that the time was ripe for a change of government. But he was far more circumspect in his interview Monday after two weeks of town hall meetings with voters.

"What I heard (Canadians) say is that they want action," said Layton.

"And they want action now, not off in the future when someone deigns to ordain that something should happen in Canadian politics, months and months away from now."

So is it better to have the Commons in session, exerting pressure on the government, than on the campaign trail? he was asked.

"For the next 10 weeks, for sure."