Opposition coalition top story
Published Wednesday December 31st, 2008
Intrigue | Politics was anything but boring
OTTAWA - The three-headed political monster that nearly swallowed Stephen Harper's minority government has been chosen as the top Canadian news story of 2008 by the country's newspapers editors and broadcasters.
The stunning opposition bid to cobble together an unwieldy coalition government to replace the Conservatives was the No. 1 choice in the annual year-end survey of newspaper and broadcast newsrooms conducted by The Canadian Press.
Not even the stock market meltdown, which ran a close second, could beat the coalition gambit for sheer drama or for provoking a stronger - and mostly irate - response from average Canadians, survey respondents concluded.
"Who would have thought this bunch of terminally boring politicians could have worked Canadians into such a lather?" said Mel Rothenburger, editor of the Kamloops Daily News.
"Canadians haven't been this scandalized since Sir John A. (Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister) vomited on the podium."
The coalition story, which played out over a tumultuous two weeks in early December, garnered 48 of 133 votes in the survey, compared to 44 for the market turmoil, which presaged a global economic crisis.
The two stories are intertwined, however. Without the economic crisis, the three ideologically divergent opposition parties would have had little impetus to come together in a bid to topple the Tories.
Few other stories attracted nearly as much attention, according to the editors who responded to the survey.
The gruesome beheading of a man on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba was picked by 11 editors, while 10 others cast their ballots for the deadly outbreak of listeriosis from Maple Leaf Foods products that killed 20 people.
The coalition story had the most benign beginnings, with broad Conservative hints that restraint measures in the coming fall fiscal update would require everyone - including politicians - to share the pain.
Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Quebecois MPs agreed in principle, but were stunned when Harper used the economic crisis to justify a measure that would financially crush his opponents: scrapping the $1.95-per-vote subsidy for political parties.
That partisan sucker-punch proved the spark that ignited an epic power struggle, not only among the parties but also among contenders for the Liberal leadership.
Scott Metcalfe, news director at Toronto's 680 News, described the ensuing high-stakes political drama as "almost Shakespearean in scope, co-authored by Stephen Leacock."
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