It's been awhile since I've talked about politics on this site; life's been too busy to pay attention to them. But the recent chaos in Canadian government has caught my attention. What's caused me to post about it, however, is Jack Layton and the NDP.

Layton has made some exceptionally good political decisions as of late. The first was after Paul Martin's television address to the nation regarding the Gomery Inquiry. Other parties harped on the fact that Martin's address was an all-out admission of Liberal corruption, and that the government should be dissolved as soon as humanly possible. Layton took a different tack: he spent his time outlining the issues that we as voters, and the government that represents us, should be paying attention to. Sure, it was a heavily socialist list of issues -- but that's what the NDP stand for. Layton didn't use his time to parrot the words of the Conservatives and BQ; he used them to address Canadians and say, "Hey, the Gomery thing is not what's important here. Let's talk about what's really wrong in Canada and what we can do to try and fix it."

And Layton did try to fix it; he worked with the Liberal party in adjusting their budget to give better social spending to Canadians, including subsidized housing, tuition reduction, more funding for public transit and increased foreign aid. Martin has also said that the budget will be balanced. Sounds like a win-win situation to me - the Liberals get added support from the NDP, the NDP gets the political spotlight and a measure of power in government, and the Canadian population gets more social funding with no additional tax burden.

Which is, of course, why it makes perfect sense for Stephen Harper to decry it as a deal with the devil. I don't think Harper gets it - Canadians do not want to head back to the polls and waste millions of dollars in election proceedings. We want to wait for the Gomery Inquiry to conclude and supply its findings to the public. Then, and only then, will we decide what to do with our current government.