If you are not prepared to fight a battle do not provoke one.

So another much hyped "confidence motion" was defeated in the House of Commons last night.

It all started when the Conservatives, cheered on by the other Opposition Parties, decided to put forward a motion to form a committee whose title, terms of reference and even composition was nothing the Liberals could accept.  They tried to claim it was nothing serious but even a cursory review of it revealed that it would have done serious damage to the government's ability to govern.  

So the government made passing of the motion a matter of confidence, stating that if it passed the Liberals would call an election.

Did the Opposition truly believe the government was going to give into their demands?  Do they really believe that they have the strength and the leverage to make them do so?

In the end it was the Opposition that backed down when the NDP contorted itself into a pretzel in order to justify not supporting the motion, even though they supported it when it was first presented.  Not that the other Opposition Parties showed any strength.  The verbal gymnastics of Mr. O'Toole to stave off an election were a study in doublespeak.  

The simple fact is only the Liberals are actually ready to fight an election.  The Conservatives have spent the last year in a leadership race and not in election preparation.  The NDP is broke.  The Bloc has hit its high water mark in Quebec and the only direction it can go is down.  With that in mind why are the Opposition Parties pushing their luck?

If they believe that doing this, allowing them to frame it as the government trying to cover up some kind of scandal or some other silly excuse, will help them they have not observed very recent history.  From 2006 until 2008 the Harper government routinely made bills and motions confidence matters and the result was the Harper Conservatives increased their seat count.  They did it again between 2008 and 2011 and the result was a Conservative majority.  

The Conservatives and the media have to understand that the machinations of the various parties in the House of Commons does not resonate south of Laurier Avenue, even in normal times.  In COVID times that concern is even less.  So playing these silly games is pointless at best and counterproductive at worst.  Make no mistake, if an election happens in the near to medium-term the result will see the leaders of all of the major Opposition Parties relegated to the lecture circuit.

On a final note there is a possibility that another confidence vote will take place Monday.  Since the government survived on Wednesday it will probably survive on the following Monday.  The media and the Opposition Parties will howl with outrage but I will again point out that no one but politicos will care and even the reaction of some of them will be "Meh".

None of the Opposition Parties are in any position to successfully fight an election so their attempts at brinkmanship are not strategic.  They are pathetic.  They may just provoke the government enough to call an election, which would not be in the best interests of any of the Opposition Parties right now.