Let the history books record that the Conservative government headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not fall this week, partly because Alice and Harry decided to redo their kitchen. A new granite counter, a gleaming hardwood floor and voil à! The parliamentary beat goes on.
I am talking about the Conservatives' handyman special: the home-reno tax credit and how it has goaded many of us into spending something - anything - to spiff up our homes.
The Bloc Québécois didn't dare bring down the government, so popular is the proposed tax credit in Quebec. I'm sure it didn't hurt the New Democratic Party's decision to prop up the Tories, either.
In reality, the precariousness of the tax credit is a bit of a trompe l'oeil. (A trompe l'oeil! Perfect for the den wall -call the painters!)
As most editorials have pointed out, no government in its right mind would risk the wrath of the renovating public by axing it now.
It's amazing how less than $2,000 can jump-start our hopes and juice up our optimism.
After all, $1,350 - the maximum amount you can claim - is only a fraction of the cost of many remodelling jobs.
Yet it shouldn't really surprise us at all how little it takes to apparently entice people to call the contractor. Improving or "enhancing" as they say on the government website, one's home is one of the great and satisfying compulsions of all time. It's also necessary to protect the investment. For some people, it's the only investment they've got left.
So, well before the deadline next year, my neighbours are finally redoing that bathroom, our relatives just repainted their house - it looks fabulous, especially the passionately red master bedroom. We're hiring someone to paint and carpet our basement, we've re-carpeted a bedroom as well, and we're contemplating new windows. Why not? It's also a seasonal urge as we batten down the hatches for winter.
Political pundits everywhere have noted the humour in all this. "What's next?" sputtered Rex Murphy on the CBC the other night: "Mike Holmes for governor-general?"
But there's method in the government's - and our - madness. The program is designed to get people to do these jobs sooner rather than later, thereby qualifying as a stimulus. And I'm mostly hearing about small jobs, ones that won't break the bank, but will give everyone who participates - homeowners and contractors alike - a psychological boost as we decide whether or not to believe, as even Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, is saying down south, that the recession is truly over.
We used to hear about "affordable luxury" being whittled down to a designer coffee. But I think we're braver and smarter than that. Affordable luxury is getting rid of that slightly rusted bathroom sink or installing built-in shelves. Feathering one's nest breeds far more optimism than moodily sipping a soy latte and reading the stock index.
I'm a veteran of both big and small renos, even though the former pushed me to the edge of insanity. But renovation is a bit like childbirth - once it's over, you forget the pain. And bonus, you don't have to save for your house's education! I've been scrutinizing the government's list of what is an allowable expense under the new tax credit. Furniture, obviously is a no go, as is regular maintenance. But what about - and I realize how unsexy this is - brand-new sewage pipes in the basement? We've had to spend thousands on that this summer, after multiple visits by so-called drain "experts" who now arrive officiously with cameras and probes and give your house what amounts to a colonoscopy. Mystified and alarmed, you peer at the camera screen while they point out: "See? Right there, that's where your root problem is. All that clay pipe needs to go."
If they have new furnaces on the list, surely the government could help me out here - or if there's an election before the tax credit is actually passed, another more enterprising party's platform will include an expanded list of allowable expenses.
In the meantime, like many others, I'm staring intently around my house, wondering what else I can "enhance" without going too far out on a financial limb. Even thinking about these small renos makes me happy.
Hope, it turns out, is not, as poet Emily Dickinson famously wrote, "the thing with feathers." It is another trip to Home Depot. And maybe Karl Marx got it wrong too. Renovation, not religion, is the opiate of the people.