Posted below is a slightly longer version of my column in today's Globe and Mail regarding the Harper government's highly creative approach to making up labour law on the run.

My mind keeps drifting back to the recent Air Canada flight attendants' strike that never happened, as a result of threats from the Harper government. I know it's already mouldy in news-cycle terms but its significance, its potential as a teachable moment, only became clear with the spread of the Occupy movements and their demand for some genuine democratic experience, versus the sham versions we now get in most elections. So return with me now to yesterweek.

When the flight attendants voted down, for the second time, a deal negotiated by their leaders with Air Canada, it's the reaction that was so illuminating. Labour Minister Lisa Raitt said: "Maybe the union misjudged, maybe management misjudged, but to do it two times in a row is a warning bell ..."

It wouldn't have exactly brought the Canadian Establishment to its knees. But late last fall, the Liberal-NDP coalition did briefly seem poised to become the most progressive Canadian government in a generation, possibly ever.

Then before you could say "corporate welfare bums," it was all over. The Conservatives had mounted a hysterical campaign, the media had joined in trashing the coalition, and the Governor General had shown it no more mercy than she would a tasty seal.

By the end of January, the Liberals, now with Michael Ignatieff in charge, had come full circle, voting in support of the Conservative budget. Having briefly dallied with the NDP, the Liberals had returned to the corporate fold.