Cons fear budget votes hurt their political capital

Prime Minister Stephen Harper stands to vote with Government House Leader Peter Van Loan and Defence Minister Peter MacKay during a marathon session in the House of Commons on June 14, 2012.

The Canadian Press: 

After almost 24 hours of bobbing up and down in their seats for votes on the government’s budget bill, there’s no doubt Conservatives MPs are tired.

But government members and cabinet ministers are also expressing private concerns they’ll come out of the showdown over Bill C-38 having exhausted some of their political capital as well.

Conversations with Conservative caucus members conducted on condition they would not be quoted suggest MPs are hearing complaints from Tory voters in their ridings about the government’s bundling several measures into a budget bill that have nothing directly to do with the nation’s finances.

Those complaints may start anew in a few months.

Pushback from within the Conservative caucus over Bill C-38 could pop the Prime Minister’s penchant for knitting together disparate pieces of legislation using the single thread that it’s all needed for the current economy.

The Jobs, Growth and Long Term Prosperity Act clocks in at more than 400 pages and changes nearly four dozen laws ranging from rules for charities to oversight of Canada’s spy agency.

Major opposition has come to changes being made to environmental assessments, Old Age Security, Employment Insurance and fisheries regulation and it hasn’t just flown from the political opposition to Mr. Harper but from within his ranks.

Both Mulroney-era Conservatives and a recent Tory cabinet minister lashed out at changes being made on the environment front. Meanwhile, grassroots Conservatives at the riding association level have written letters expressing their own scorn.

A single crack in the Conservative caucus could quickly become a schism, University of British Columbia political scientist Max Cameron said, and the environmental changes in the budget could be the chisel.

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