Dividing The Right

Conservative leader Stephen Harper's fate will literally be decided based on what happens in a nameless boring parliamentary comittee.

The Liberals have obviously bundled the Kyoto provisions, a long with the offshore revenue agreement as an attempt to divide the Conservative Party along the East West divide.

Giving Eastern provinces a better share of offshore oil and gas revenues was a central theme of the Conservative campaign. Voting against it would be poke in the eye to the East, and would really tick off Newfounland Conservative Premier Danny Williams. And as we all know you don't want to tick off Danny.

Meanwhile the Kyoto protocol would kill Alberta's burgeoning economy and it's freakishly Conservative population wouldn't be happy with a Conservative Party that voted for Kyoto and propped the governing party up instead of bringing it down like good western Conservatives should.

Bundling the two together was brilliant strategy on the part of the Liberals. Dividing the right was the main beating rod Jean Chretien loved to use. The current Prime Minister Paul Martin employed it again with his tactic of appointing Senators from out west that were labelled "Progressive Conservatives." (For all you Americans out there the Progressive Conservative Party doesn't exist anymore - it merged with the rightist Canadian Alliance ending a decade of vote splitting between the two parties).

My only hope is that Harper can split up the two in that comittee before it's too late.