I predict next week’s confidence motion, if it comes, will act as a safety valve, emotions will cool and the Parliament will limp on for another six months or so

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For your edification, here are four disparate but related thoughts:

1) Everyone on Parliament Hill seems to be in a state of nervous agitation, as an inevitable confidence vote looms that might take the country to another election.

Jagmeet Singh has been a happy campaigner for most of his political career, but it looked as if it might seriously kick-off when he confronted a right-wing heckler who called him a “corrupted bastard” while walking on the Hill.

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The NDP said after the confrontation went public that Singh does not condone violence but, in that moment, it looked as if the heckler might soon be trying to eat corn on the cob with no teeth.

Keyboard warriors suggested Singh was emboldened by the presence of Hill security officers, but it didn’t look that way to me — or to the craven heckler, who denied making the comment, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

It seems unlikely the incident was contrived but like any politician worth his salt, Singh tried to make it work to his advantage. He said on X that bullies in Ottawa have been spewing hate and harassing Canadians who don’t agree with them. “That’s the country Pierre Poilievre wants,” he wrote.

That prompted Poilievre’s wife, Ana, to put out her own post, in which she said if Singh wants to talk about the country her husband wants, he should listen to his policies and watch the man he is.

“I’m tired of you and your friend portraying my husband as someone he is not. He married a proud Latino woman and fully embraces my culture… He supports, celebrates and promotes strong women around him. He is a loving father of two and is incredibly protective of our young, vulnerable daughter. He loves to read books to bebé Cruz. Just tonight he was reading ‘Le Petit Prince’ to him,” she wrote.

Ana has proven herself time and again to be a great asset to her husband, humanizing him in a way no spin-doctor could.

Yet, her intervention speaks to the political tension.

The only time I can recall when nerves were being jagged quite so obviously was in the spring of 2005, when Stephen Harper was pushing for an election on a budget vote, despite being behind in the polls.

At the time, the........

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