This is what conservatives* un-ironically believe.
*To the extent that “fuck you got mine” is a conservative position. Not having any foreign military threats makes our conservatives merely whiny, instead of vicious.
This crisis has nothing to do with the economy. It’s about partisan advantage and nothing else.
I don’t believe the Commander-in-Chief will invite Dion to form a government. It would be a precedent that would fuck up the political future of the country like what’s occuring in Israel.
a) I think you mean Head of State, not Commander-in-Chief.
b) The precedent isn’t new at all, as per the King-Byng Affair and Ontario’s politics.
c) Opal’s American, not Canadian.
ETA: Governor General would be better than either of those terms, of course.
For once I wish we had one of those boring wrinkly old constitutional lawyers as GG. For too long the psoition has been about sipping tea with dignitaries and cutting ribbons that we forget once and a while a real decsision has to be made regarding matters of the constitution and governance.
Personally, I’m appalled by this anouncment. Every single party leader needs ousting and a whole new group chosen. Then we should go to the polls to decide.
Harper was a pompus idiot to try to cut down the other parties like that.
I’m no fan of taxpayer money going to political parties but this should not be sprung in this manner.
The Conservatives need to be taken down a peg or two but, the idea of this colilition sickens me to my core. The Liberals are too weak without Jack and he knows it. Duceppe also holds enough strings to force the issues he wants. Despite his promise already they have already started off on the wrong foot.
When a speech by these three discusses “Quebec and the rest of Canada” the Bloc bias shows. Worse, the other two idiots sit there and take it with shit eating grins. I hate the idea of another election so soon but I’d rather have that than this three headed monstrosity.
As I said in the thread in MPSIMS, I agree with a new election, with the proviso that every single sitting MP, and anyone who has ever been an MP should not be allowed to run in the election. Throw the entire pack of them out.
I agree with your post. Sums my feelings up quite nicely.
This is my feeling too. If the government falls, then IMHO it’s election time–there’s a precedent for that too: Joe Clark’s minority government falling in 1979. I have the feeling that regardless of the history book renditions of the King-Byng precedent in the 1920s, many living Canadians would remember how a non-confidence vote made the Clark government fall and necessitated a general election; and would feel cheated if this government fell and they didn’t get the chance to vote on a new one. Or, to put it another way: the members of the coalition just might spend much of the beginning of their mandate explaining to angry Canadians why they didn’t get to vote in their government.
RickJay’s commentary in the MPSIMS thread (post 55) on how King-Byng illustrates the dangers of coalition governments in Canada shouldn’t be forgotten. If that’s the alternative, I agree with Grey: I’d rather she said, go to the polls.
Her Excellency is, in fact, the Commander in Chief of Canada’s armed forces.
The situation’s different from King-Byng and the 1985 Ontario situation in the key area that the proposed coalition had more seats than the sitting government. This one claims not to, but instead has a written deal with a separatist party on the side. There are similarities of course, but there’s dynamics at play here that mean Her Excellency is going to be faced with having to make a lousy choice no matter what she does. I do not envy her position.
What’s especially disgusting, which hasn’t even been touched on, is that the Liberal plan is to chose a new leader - likely Michael Ignatieff - and then have him be Prime Minister for TWO YEARS without facing the electorate. Disgraceful.
So she is. My mistake.
The important point is that the government commands the confidence of the House of Commons, which they do by contract (the Bloq can’t vote down any confidence motion.) The “separatist” line is irrelevant.
Your complaint about Ignatieff is just silly. Canadians elect representatives, while the Prime Minister is not an elected position. His legitimacy comes from the Commons, not the electorate directly.
What’s to stop them from breaking their word? And their being separatists is quite relevant. They’re going to extort big bucks for Quebec, concessions for Quebec, everything for Quebec without regard to how it affects other Canadians, the the Liberals and NDP will have little choice but to play ball. The BQ is not out to help Canada. They’re out to hurt it. And this gives them a great chance to do a lot of hurting.
Yes, yes, I know what the Constitution says. However, the plain facts are that Canadians DO cast their votes with a mind towards who is going to be Prime Minister. The plain facts are that the Prime Minister is a critical role, with an undocumented but centrally important and traditionally Constitutional role in our government, and that Canadians rightly expect to have a say in who will fill that role. The plain facts are that all recent precedent is that a new party leader who assumes the mantle of Prime Minister is expected to face the electorate in reasonably short order.
This is all disgusting, but before we go trashing all of Canada’s politicians, we should remember that Canada is projected to have the strongest economy in the G8, and may be the only one of the bunch to avoid a recession (not looking as likely lately, but that was the projection a couple of months ago).
The reason for this is that we avoided many of the pitfalls the U.S. and other countries stepped into. We have no sub-prime mortgage mess, because we didn’t let our banking system run amok. We don’t have a Fannie and Freddie problem, because our politicians didn’t use a government housing agency to prop up bad loans and act as a risk aborber for private banks. Our housng bubble wasn’t as severe because we didn’t push home ownership on people with ridiculous loan rules and tax deductions on mortgage interest. We’re not facing the kinds of fiscal structural crises other countries are, because we’ve been running budget surpluses and paying down our debt.
Both Liberals and Conservatives deserve credit for this. So does our Parliamentary system, which doesn’t give individual politicians strong incentive to play pork-barrel politics.
That said, this notion that Canada needs a big ‘stimulus’ is ridiculous. Especially since they want to couple it with anti-growth carbon taxes. What Canada needs more than anything else is to continue a policy of sound fiscal policy, a stable dollar, and a solid banking system.
The ‘stimulus’ is nothing more than a laundry list of the things the left has been trying to pass for years. Now they see a window opening in the name of ‘stimulus’. The same thing is happening in the U.S. A year ago, politicians were fighting to fund programs worth a billion or two - now they’re tossing around 100 billion dollar checks like candy. We’re heading for a massive trainwreck if this nonsense continues.
And the programs being suggested will not stimulate a damned thing. Infrastructure spending is not a stimulus. Hell, it can take years just to get the regulatory approvals and environmental studies completed for a major infrastructure project. And long gone are the days when you could put untrained people to work on infrastructure, swinging hammers and pickaxes. Today, the first people that would be employed would be lawyers, engineers, surveyers, and the like. After that, it would be the skilled tradesmen.
Canada has no shortage of jobs for such people. The people who are hurting are the people who will be unemployed because of slow retail sales and reduced manufacturing output. An infrastructure program does nothing for them.
Other spending ideas are even battier. I heard one politician say that a stimulus bill should include universal daycare coverage. Say what? Since when does funding daycares create a stimulus? That might be an answer to a labor shortage, if you could get a lot of people out of the home and into jobs if you gave them some way to have their kids cared for. But it’s not an answer to high unemployment and a slowing of the velocity of money. It’s insanity.
If this coalition forms and does what they say they’ll do, I predict bad things for the Canadian economy AND for them, once voters get a whiff of this bunch in action.
The Globe and Mail is reporting that an economic advisory group made up of Frank McKenna, Roy Romanow, Paul Martin, and John Manley would guide the as-yet-hypothetical coalition government’s economic policy. I’ve got a better idea. Let’s have a few quick byelections and have those guys draw lots for PM, Finance, Industry, and International Trade. I really wouldn’t care which one was in which position. Any combination would beat any possible cabinet drawn from existing MPs.
Well, as long as you’re doing that, how about a general election?
Let Canadians decide how they feel about the Liberal-NDP-Separatist party, versus the Conservative party.
Of course, the people mentioned won’t be running, and so far as I can tell don’t want to be in charge of anything anymore. It’s just that they’ve all proven themselves to be not complete fuckups in positions of leadership, and none of the current crop of politicians inspire that degree of confidence in me. As for a general election, we just had one. I’m not at all sold on the utility of having another just yet.
I’m sorry to see that our Neighbors to the North™ are having to watch their government spasm like this, but I’m fascinated by your different political system and grateful for so many of you having a public discussion on the Dope. Thanks for an opportunity to learn about and observe firsthand another country’s political wranglings.
Your last general election was mid October, wasn’t it? I’m getting the sense that a lot of what brought this about was a power grab. Was there enough of a “mandate” in the election results to justify it, or was it just something that someone(s) thought they could pull off and get away with?
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
The conservative party was riding sufficiently high in public popularity that there was a reasonable chance to achieve a majority of seats in the House. The main problem was that the government had introduced a bill effectively mandating fixed election dates - except when election dates aren’t fixed. A bit of ideological law making driven by their frustration while in opposition to a PM with lots of electioneering savvy (Chrétien). Turns out that governing and opposition are 2 different things and they effectively gutted the legislation by calling an election due to an inability to work with the rest of the House. :rolleyes:
Regardless the election went more or less as planned until the financial world imploded in the US. Up here we haven’t really had the same type of fiscal meltdown BUT the electorate was inundated by US news shows, the Daily Show’s Clusterfuck to the Poor House and everything else. Effectively the US meltdown became our meltdown and WHY THE HELL ISN’T THE GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
Still the Conservatives managed to increase their share of seats as did the NDP and Bloc (mainly due to Liberal collapse and Conservative tin ears).
The Conservatives either don’t understand the fear running through the electorate or don’t believe there’s much government can do. Either way they’ve effectively been brought to the point where they had to be seen doing something. Except they made a singularly petty series of moves which has since led to this little tempest.
But here’s the kicker in my opinion. The Liberal leader was effectively booted out of his leadership job however he declared he would remain leader until a successor took over in May. The fact he can’t even hold his own party leadership makes me wonder at his ability to shepherd a Lib/NDP/Bloc coalition.
So the conservatives were a valuable opposition party, but have not proven so good at governing now that they are the Big Dog.
The Canadian public is well informed about the US economic troubles, and fears that Canada is in trouble or headed that way. They want to know what their government is doing about it.
The conservatives in control of the government did some stupid things that caused backlash with the public, and now the lesser factions are threatening to band together to oust the conservatives, who only recently forced a general election.
Have I got that right?
Thanks, Grey for the summation. I hope I understood it correctly.
Almost right.
The Conservatives managed to govern in a minority position for over 2 years - a remarkably long time in our system of government. To date they’ve been no less effective than the previous governments. They’ve been alright.
The election could easily have provided the Conservatives with a slim majority but the sudden and dramatic collapse of the US financial sector and the associated tepid response from the Conservatives in the middle of an election campaign drained away some potential seats.
Since public pressure was increasingly insisting they DO SOMETHING they threw together a small fiscal update and poked the opposition parties in the eyes. Partisan and petty but has little impact on the public at large - and they have since retracted those measures.
So we now have a party leader, who has agreed to step down as party leader in 5 months proposing to the Governor General that he is able to get legislation passed through the House thanks to support from 2 other parties – one of whom has the mandate to disassemble Canada as we know it.
I’m only half joking when I say I’d like to seem them all gutted and strung up as an object lesson to the future.
Just saw this thread this morning, I’d been participating on the one on MPSIMS.
1 - Not sure, but most of the economists speaking up publically seem to think we need to spend our way out of this impending mess, and that battening down the hatches and cutting spending would make this worse.
2-They apparently have signed an agreement for 18 months. Assuming politicians can keep their word when under the irritated close scrutiny of The People, it may actually last 18 months. A lot of people are particularly concerned about the honour (or lack there of) of the BQ.
3- It will spend lots, and your dubious value choices may well be my high value choices, and vice versa. At the same time, the coalition would be perfectly aware that Canadians are concerned that giving the NDP say in financial matters would be a very bad move, and so I suspect that the NDP would want to use this opportunity to show that they can be financially responsible and that the Liberals would want to demonstrate that they can hold NDP spending impulses in check. As to whether increasing spending in general is a good idea with this economic situation, please see my answer to #1.
4- I’m not sure that Harper will be able to convince the Opposition parties to play nice now, no matter how much crow he eats (not that he seems to be good at that). If he hadn’t burned all his bridges, he could’ve been consulting with the other political parties and/or stealing some of their better ideas re: spending on the economy. If you believe the economists, the government needs to spend in ways that keep Canadians employed and encourage Canadians to spend rather than save, to stimulate the economy.
The Conservatives do not have a monopoly on fiscally responsible government. The Conservatives did do some fiscally responsible things in their last mandate but so did the Liberals for several mandates before that.
Thanks again, Grey, for the clarifications. I’m all over wiki, the CBC.com site and the Globe & Mail sites trying to learn.
Y’all are our closest neighbors, and seem so similar… until I started looking closer! Lots to learn, must keep reading!