One game of hardball he couldn't lose

At first, this little crisis in Ottawa was good, old-fashioned fun — blood sport for political junkies that made for great entertainment.

It began, of course, with the government's economic statement, a colossal misstep for Mr. Harper. The nastiness and partisanship caught everyone off guard. Sane cabinet ministers had to grin and bear it as the leader revealed a strategy that not only highlighted the very worst elements of his personality, but reinforced the nagging cliché; that this Conservative Party cares more about inflicting pain on those they dislike than offering support for anyone in need.

Mr. Harper, the self-professed master strategist, figured this was one game of hardball he could not lose, but then a funny thing happened on the way to the vote in the House of Commons.

Mr. Dion may lack the basic skills needed by all political leaders, but he has a grasp of basic math, something the PM, an economist, seems to have lost. He crunched the numbers and realized that not only could the government fall, he could even become prime minister. Revenge like that comes once in five lifetimes.

In theory, a coalition could work. If aliens from outer space were running roughshod over the country, perhaps a Liberal, a socialist and a separatist could put their differences aside and work together to defeat the alien overlords. A global economic crisis, however, is probably not enough for these three wildly divergent visions of Canada to gel.

But whether the coalition can or will survive is irrelevant; what matters is that it can oust the PM.

Stephen Harper loves being the Prime Minister of Canada. Since he came to power, the motorcades have got longer, the office more presidential, the trappings more grand. The idea that he could suddenly find himself standing in line at the airport with regular Canadians, photo ID at the ready, attempting to board a Jazz flight to Moncton so he can explain to party faithful why he now travels in a Jiffy Taxi gnaws at his very being.

Knut the Polar Bear could not survive such a humiliation and neither could Mr. Harper. So he slapped his Finance Minister and tore up the economic update; he blinked and backtracked — behaviour not before seen in this political animal.

And this is where it should have ended; a substantial and unexpected victory for a lame-duck Liberal leader and a humiliating lesson to the Prime Minister. A nice little reminder to all involved that nobody was granted a majority in this Parliament, and we expect everyone to get along.

Tragically, Mr. Dion wasn't strong enough to put on the brakes. Or more likely, he was unwilling.

Enter the Governor-General of Canada.

Try explaining this one to those alien overlords: 35 million people in one of the greatest democracies on Earth stare at their television sets, waiting to see whether an unelected former TV broadcaster will choose to shut down our government for over a month or let it live just long enough to be killed by the opposition.

The drama that played out this week was many things: unimaginable, embarrassing and, yes, it made our parliamentary system look like a laughingstock. However, this situation was not, as Mr. Harper insisted, undemocratic, illegal or un-Canadian.

The facts are clear. He has a minority in the Commons — something he has never accepted. So he loves daring the opposition to defeat him, and prides himself on shaming them at every opportunity.

Them's the rules and he knows it. And yet, when faced with actually losing a confidence vote, he chooses to launch a full-fledged attack on the very institution he is sworn to protect.

He took to the airwaves saying that having him lose a vote would amount to a coup d'état. He knows this isn't true, but he said it anyway. Then his ministers fanned out and told everyone who would listen that an election was being stolen. They shouted from the rooftops that, as a nation, we elected Stephen Harper to lead us, that the 308 members of Parliament actually had no say in the matter.