Don't look now...

...but Belinda Stronach and other Ontario Tories are wavering, too. Damned if the Liberals might not pull this off.

Update: a bombshell: Stroncach has crossed the floor. I'm just speculating here, but I wouldn't be surprised if her sudden change of heart involved 30 pieces of silver in a brown envelope with the "Liberal" logo in the corner.

Carolyn Parrish says she will vote with the Liberals, so Martin just needs Cadman or Kilgour to support the budget.

Update II: looks like her price was a cabinet post:

Belinda Stronach, the millionaire businesswoman who ran for the leadership of the Conservative party in early 2004, has crossed the floor to the Liberal party and will sit in Paul Martin's cabinet as minister of human resources and skills development.

She will also help the Liberals implement the recommendations in the Gomery report when it is delivered later this year, Martin said Tuesday morning.

"After difficult reflection, I reached a conclusion," Stronach told reporters in Ottawa. "I cannot exaggerate how hard this was for me, but the political crisis affecting Canada is too risky and dangerous for blind partisanship."

Now, more than ever, I'm glad I didn't support this woman's leadership bid.

Update III: Bob Tarantino (he's back!): "whereas, previously, Tory Belinda was a well-clad blonde bimbo with too much of daddy's money who was a vessel/puppet of Mulroney-esque forces determined to seize back control of the country, now, Liberal Belinda will be hailed as a shrewd and effective political operator with a deep understanding of, in no particular order, French, public speaking, complex economic and/or political issues, 'what Canadians want' and 'how evil Stephen Harper and the Conservatives really are'."

Lots of interesting commentary in Andrew Coyne's comment section, too. But can I suggest that comments of the "Alberta should separate" and "I hope this country goes in down in flames" variety are not what the Conservative Party needs right now?

Update IV: Paul Wells:

...she's absolutely a match for most of the rest of Cabinet in talent and intellect. ...How's Dan McTeague feeling today? Or the MP I will not today name, who once showed up in Jean Chrétien's office with a PowerPoint presentation explaining why she deserved a Cabinet job? The Prime Minister seems awfully big on prodigal sons and daughters. To bad for any suckers who devoted 20 or 30 years of their life to the Liberal party.

Update V: Colby Cosh, citing a much-blogged-about Michael Bliss article from last week:

The lede here--that this move pushes the constitutional crisis which began last week into full-scale red-alert mode--hasn't just been buried, it's been taken out and shot. It is arguable whether Stronach's defection is a "blow" to the Conservatives in either the short or the long term. What's not arguable is that the delay imposed last week on a formal non-confidence vote in the House of Commons has now--with the balance of power in the House teetering on the razor's edge--visibly become a banana-republic power tactic.
[...]
The whole point of the tradition that the confidence of the House will be tested at once, upon the government's defeat in a supply-related division, is to prevent exactly the sort of shenanigan just perpetrated. Martin has used the delay he imposed unilaterally to purchase the services of a disaffected Conservative leadership candidate--one, it bears noting, elected by her constituents as a Conservative. (She'll be in charge of "democratic renewal", says Martin--never let it be said the man lacks a taste for irony.) "I am not sure," Bliss concluded, "that Canada has ever had such a serious parliamentary crisis." There can be no doubt about it now. If the Liberals win Thursday's confidence vote by virtue of Stronach's presence on the government benches, we will continue to have a government openly acknowledged to be illegal by most if not all of the major constitutional authorities in the country.

And Canadians seem perfectly OK with it, since "we just had an election last year."

Posted by damian at May 17, 2005 12:16 PM | TrackBack