Canadian Dopers: Looks like another government is coming

Great Debates
1

I almost put this in the Pit but I can’t really work my frustration into outrage. Per the venerable CBC, the Bloc, NDP and Liberals have decided to form a coalition government and topple the Conservatives when the next confidence motion comes up. Their reasoning for this move is that the Conservatives aren’t doing enough to save our economy. The main goal of this coalition is to get a stimulus package happening. They also promise to improve child benefits and childcare “as finances permit” (which I read as a bald-faced lie- finances will not permit. Sorry kids!). Apparently we also need to be a part of a North American cap-and-trade market for carbon emission.

In case it isn’t apparent, I’m not happy about this whole thing. I think the Conservatives are doing just fine as a government and I’m happy they’ve managed to keep us out of deficit and pay down the debt. They’ve also cut taxes and red tape. I have a feeling this new coalition is going to undo all of that, spending Canada right back into record deficit and debt while crippling industry with their carbon scheme, which is a tax wrapped in red tape. I expect personal income taxes will be raised to higher levels than they were before the Conservatives came into power and I expect the GST will go back up to at least 7% as well. After all, economic stimulus isn’t going to just magically pay for itself and the government’s cupboard is pretty bare as is.

Issues for debate:

  1. Is our economy bad enough to warrant drastic measures such as a stimulus package?

  2. How long can a Liberal-Bloc-NDP alliance last?

  3. If this new government forms, it is obviously going to spend like a drunken sailor on things of dubious value. Will this help or hurt the economy?

  4. What could or should the Conservatives be doing for the economy?

2

I am severely pissed off. And scared. That is very rare for me. We have a government that kept our country’s financial position on much better footing than other first world countries, just had an election that broadened their support, and now we are at the mercy of an appointed official as to whether or not we have another election or just turn it over to a NDP/separatist compromised loser like Dion whose already lost the confidence of his party.

3

What reasons that these 3 parties haven’t been in a coalition before? Do any of them have enough theoretical support to win a majority?
The article mentions that the bloc are only committed for 18months, it will be interesting when that time frame is up and what happens after.

4

This sort of thing would never happen if you benighted Canucks just did the sensible thing and united with the U.S. under our separation-of-powers Constitution, just sayin’ . . .

::d&r::

5

That is very much up in question.

6

Warning: gross simplification of party positions ahead:

The Liberals are the largest of the three parties and could theoretically form a majority if they became a lot more popular and if the scandals that got them booted out of power in the first place are forgotten. Right now they’re pretty disorganized after a poor showing in the last election. Their leadership is in disarray but for some reason they’re willing to stand behind Dion even though there were loud calls to get rid of him right after the election. They are a centrist party with flexible values- they support whatever will get Canadians to vote for them.

The NDP is a socialist party. Their policies are not particularly popular amongst Canadians and it shows in how little support they get every election cycle. They are pretty universally opposed by all the other parties but they still doggedly hold onto a useful chunk of power. The big parties will occasionally throw them a bone in order to buy support.

The Bloc is a party that is all about Quebec. The more extreme elements of the Bloc wish to separate from Canada altogether and have Quebec become its own country. The Bloc doesn’t particularly care about any issue outside of Quebec.

These are of course pretty gross simplifications but that’s my understanding of each party’s basic ideology. And as you can see, all three parties are pulling in different directions. This coalition can bring down the government but probably won’t be useful for doing much more than that. So a few months down the line, once the infighting becomes severe enough to paralyze Parliament, we’ll have yet another election. And the soap opera of Canadian politics continues, as the government turns.

7

Only the Libs have ever won a majority or even a minority! The three are very different parties - very, very different parties - this will not end well.

eta - what DWMarch said.

8

Not really – no more so than America’s erstwhile NDP-inspired New Party, or the Working Families Party, or the Vermont Progressive Party – any of which is easily distinguishable from, and distinctly to the right of, even such a moderate socialist organization as the Democratic Socialists of America. They are progressive parties – a term which, in contemporary usage, means a political position to the left of “liberal” and to the right of “socialist.”

I’m a little sore on this point and must insist on clarifying it because, during the recent election, reports that Obama had been marginally involved in the New Party back in the day were seized on by the RW as proof he is a “socialist.”

9

I’ll defer to your expertise here. I was merely simplifying their position to illustrate the ideological differences that make this coalition a taxpayer funded Jenga game.

10

No. It’s complete bullshit. The economy isn’t really all that bad - it’s still growing, inflation is low, interest rates are low, unemployment is actually reasonably low. Government spending is ALREADY very high - it grew a lot in the last two years. Just a few months ago the Liberals were complaining that the Tories were spending too much.

Until the Bloc can most hurt Canada by breaking it; they’ll bust up the “government” whenever it will most discredit Canada. The average coalition minority lasts 18 months, or so the pundits say, but the Bloc could make it two months or 24.

As is plainly evident from what’s going on in the USA, it will do little at all in the short run and probably hurt it in the long run. Especially wasteful will be the billions the NDP will likely earmark for the Big 3, money which would probably do more good if it were dropped in $20 bills from helicopters over random cities.

They should have been willing to run a reasonable deficit in 2008-2009 and maybe 2009-2010. Unfortunately, they already raised spending a lot, for no good reason, the last two years, and so the government doesw not have the flexibility it should. In any case, Canada has one of the strongest economies in the Western world, in case people haven’t noticed.
**
This crisis is not about the economy.** It’s about political power. The Conservatives made a greedy play for more power and the other parties are defending their power. It’s hard to say who comes out of this looking worse; the Conservatives, who made a naked attempt to game the system and now look like fools? The Liberals and NDP, who are now nothing but Quislings, selling themselves to their country’s enemies for a chance to be in power? Of the Bloc, who always looked bad because they were, you know, the Bloc?

I shoulda voted Green.

…

BrainGlutton, if I send you $20 in the currency of your choice, will you please stop shitting on every single goddamned thread on this board that concerns Canadian politics?

11

Had to look that up. (What?! I got no kids!) Based on the OP, it’s a pretty good metaphor.

12

What enemies are you talking about ?

That’s uncalled for. Its refreshing everytime an American doper shows an interest in our politics.

13

The Bloc Quebecois. What else to call a party that wants to destroy the country?

How is “Ha ha! You should have joined the USA!” exhibiting an interest?

14

It seems that two of the bigger worries of the OP are higher taxes and a possible economic stimulus package. Wouldn’t enacting both essentially cancel each other out (depending on the tax increase of course)? While it would not affect those who pay little or no taxes, a stimulus package would presumably not affect them very much anyway since any such money would likely go towards necessities and wouldn’t add much job-creating power.

If the Lib/NDP/Bloc coalition did happen - who would be the likely PM? As others in the thread have mentioned, his political standing has been squashed and he doesn’t have much salvageable legitimacy at this point. The Bloc would never be offered the PM slot, so that leaves either someone from the NDP or another Lib.

I can’t even begin to imagine the foreign policy direction from such a coalition.

15

:confused: Most times, I ignore them. This one’s different because it’s exciting. Besides, I almost got here first.

16

This has already been decided (PDF). Dion, the current Liberal leader, will lead the coalition (he’s due to resign in May, and has indicated he will do so). He’ll appoint 24 cabinet ministers, of which 6 will be NDP. The remainder, including the finance minister, will be Liberals. The Bloc get no cabinet seats, as they are not formally part of the coalition. The Bloc’s connection is that they have agreed not to defeat the coalition government for the time being.

To those who might call this a ‘coalition in all but name’, note that the roles of the NDP and Bloc are clearly very different, the Bloc’s participation has a much sooner expiry date, and the Bloc will not sit on the government side of the house, or be invited to combined caucus meetings. On the other hand, the accord states:

The nature of that consultation mechanism is obviously unclear, but what is clear is that while the Liberals and NDP share information so as to present a common front, the Bloc are merely ‘consulted’, presumably to keep everybody playing together.

Here’s the policy agreement, in PDF, which hints at it.

17

Can you catch me up? I’ve been out of the Canadian loop. What did the Conservatives do to make a play for more power?

18

What precicipated this was the Conservative “budget update,” which included the poison pill requirement that political parties would lose their government financing.

To explain, for a number of years, Canadian federal parties have received regular financing from the federal government itself to defray their costs and run campaigns. This financing is proportional to the number of votes received in the last election; I beleive at present it’s $1.95 a vote. So the party that gets the most votes get the most cash. The ostensible purpose behind this system - which, when brought in, was also accompanied by a severe limit on personal and corporate donations - was to prevent special interests from dominating politics, and all the usual arguments there.

Anyway, as of this November, the Conservative Party of Canada had accumulated a very substantial war chest. The Liberal and NDP Parties had very substantial debts. Elimination of the federal subsidy without any new program - and while keeping donation limits in play - would have almost certainly guaranteed the bankruptcy of the Liberal and NDP parties, who were counting on that money to pay off their debts. The money is also of immense value to the Bloc, who for geopolitical reasons get more out of it than other parties do.

The Conservative claim was that the move was designed to be fiscally responsible, a claim that not a single person in Canada believed, since

a) The total savings would have been in the order of $30 million a year, which in the context of the Canadian federal budget is a ridiculous line item to focus on; there are BILLIONS to be saved elsewhere,

b) The fiscal update didn’t include any other real plans to save money, aside from a rather bizarre and mean-spirited attack on the public service unions, and

c) It was just too goddamned convenient.

The Liberals and NDP are now saying it wasn’t this issue that precipitated their sudden love affair with each other and the Bloc, but that’s absurd; it absolutely was this one issue that moved them to act, and to be honest it’s understandable to some extent. A political party cannot simply allow its opposition to game the system in a way that will put them out of action for five years.

To provide a little more background, it’s been the weakness of the Liberal Party since the 2006 election that has allowed the Conservatives to put forth their agenda. In fairness, their agenda has been pretty modest; they haven’t really done anything particularly earth-shattering or controversial, but they could do as they pleased to that extent, DESPITE being a minority government, in large part because the Liberals lacked the strong leadership and money to fight an election campaign.

Then this September, for no real reason, Harper called an election, in a pretty stark attempt to get a majority. He just missed; the Conservatives won more seats than before, but not quite half.

So last week they suddenly went for the Liberal Party’s jugular. Rather than pushing them around as they had before, Harper actually tied to hurt them. And out of necessity, they fought back, and he’s surprised they fought back.

19

All our politicians need a spanking and to be sent to bed without dinner.

Harper made a strategic miscalculation about the relative weakness of the Liberals in light of the Dion fiasco, and tried for the jugular of the party system. They rightfully responded with outrage - it pissed me off too. But, this should have ended the minute Harper backed down from his decision to curtail public financing.

Instead, Dion and Layton are scurrying around like children the night before Christmas, and Harper is acting like a petulant child with no presents to open. He released a private recording of an NDP conference call, hinting that the trio of doom had something up their sleeve even before this most recent debacle:

Here’s a transcript link.

The entire thing is embarrassing.

20

Aside from wanting to gut every single politician and then string them up as an object lesson for future generations could someone explain something to me? Why the GG would consent to having her government be led by a party that is kicking out the man slated to be the new PM in 5 months time? My personal biases aside I’d rather she said - goto the polls.