I agree with those who say it is NOT anti-Quebec sentiment. It’s anti-Bloc. They are seen as the party that wants to destroy our Canada, which includes Quebec. I love Quebec, the people, the culture, the food, everything - except the separatist movement. Please don’t assume otherwise.
eta - I’m willing to give this a chance, though I don’t much like it.
Why don’t you tell us exactly what you sense ?
Because if you sense an anti-Quebec sentiment, I’d suggest you are dead wrong.I can’t imagine any Canadian including a lot of Quebeckers who wish the Bloc was never formed.
matt_mcl you didn’t voted for a prime minister. No Green, NDP, or Bloc voter voted for a prime minister. You guys voted for a voice, not an administration.
Liberal and Conservative voters by and large voted for a prime minister. That is why we Canadians clamour for a quick election every time the governing party changes a leader in mid term.
Given that a majority of Canadians who voted for a prime minister are in danger of having their choice wrested from them, I think the right thing to do is call an election. Then this time the electorate will have a clear choice before them.
The Conservatives or a Liberal/NDP/Bloc coalition.
If you think about it Matt this could well work in favour of the NDP. There are many NDP inclined Canadians who vote Liberal because they vote for a “left wing” prime minister. I see a major increase in NDP support considering the all anti-conservative voters can now vote for a government. Not only that, at this time their choice is between Dion and Layton.
This could be the big breakthrough for the federal NDP at the demise of the Liberals.
Here’s a link to many MPs’ e-mail addresses just in case you’d like to express your outrage directly to them.
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E
Spare me. I hate the Bloc & PQ with a passion and I grew up in Quebec outside Montreal, along the Richelieu. I’m with RickJay this is a completely legal and valid approach to be taken by parties in a minority government situation. BUT the Bloc’s core principal is one of working to negate Canada in its current make up. I will not stand by and accept the “rightness” of such a party making up the critical element in a new executive.
There’s nothing nebulous about it. I’m saying that what the Liberals and NDP are doing is wrong. They are betraying their trust as Canadian statesmen and stateswomen by giving governmental power to a party dedicated to the destruction of their own country. I am saying that I would prefer it if Her Excellency were to recognize the unique nature of this situation and call an election, assuming Harper asks for one. Or, the NDP and Liberals could try to manage a minority government without making a formal deal with the Bloc. Or, they could ask for an election. Or they could use their leverage to get major concessions from the Conservatives. Anything that is legal and does not put Parliament on hold for an extended period (like proroguing for a year, as some have suggested is theoretically possible) is preferable to allowing the Bloc power over the government.
Let me repeat it again; What they are doing is wrong. What they are doing is morally bankrupt, designed solely to advance their own power, and will hurt our country far more than ANY Liberal, NDP, or Conservative government has ever or would ever do. Is it LEGAL? Yes. But it’s wrong. Reprehensible, in fact.
Is that clear enough?
And spare me the hints that I’m a bigot. Anyone who says or even hints I am is a liar. I don’t care where the separatists are from - Quebec, Newfoundland, Alberta, the house next door to mine. People who want to destroy my country are not my friends and I am entitled to say that I don’t think good Canadian politicians - be they CPC, Liberal, NDP, Green or what have you - should sign deals with them giving them de facto veto power over the government.
We never expected the Liberals to actually bring the Bloc into a coalition. A combined Liberal/NDP minority government? Sure, I can live with that. What’s been proposed so far - I loath with a passion.
Actually, I did vote for a Prime Minister, or more accurately, I voted for the candidate of the party I wanted to form government. But that doesn’t matter now. All this points the futility and irrelevance of trying to divine what we think was going through the heads of Canadians when they elected the parliament they elected. As I said to RickJay, that’s not how we do it; we go by the parliament that actually was elected, and government is formed on the basis of who can hold its confidence.
It’s kind of absurd to talk about a coalition running for office: coalitions are formed on the basis of who’s elected. They’re about holding the confidence of the Parliament that was elected, and making it work. They’re a post-election creature, not a pre-election one. As I said before, if a different Parliament had been elected, none of this would have happened.
All of this argument is coming about because we’ve been tainted with the presidential system and have forgotten that our system works very differently in many fundamental ways. At the end of the day, regardless of the unknowable motivation of each voter, he or she is voting for the Member of Parliament for his or her riding. That’s the fundamental unit of legitimacy, until and unless our electoral system is somehow changed. That’s the whole point of why a coalition is legitimate: it proceeds from the parliament that Canada elected, everyone will be represented by the MPs who won the election, and the government will hold the confidence of a majority of those MPs.
Well, unfortunately a Liberal/NDP coalition isn’t an option. The Liberals have 3 options:
a) Give unfettered power to the Conservatives
b) Negotiate with the Conservatives
c) Negotiate with the NDP and Bloc
The Liberals have decided, quite rightly in my opinion, that (a) simply isn’t a workable option, and the Conservatives have shown zero willingness to cooperate with anyone. That leaves the Liberals with the Bloc.
I don’t think that anybody likes giving the Bloc this kind of power, but the Conservatives total unwillingness to make a minority government work has forced this option on us.
Well, you’re certainly wrong about the last point quoted above: the Bloc is a political party the same as any other and has the same standing in Parliament to support a coalition, and for the Governor General to impair it in any way as a result of the policies it defends would be profoundly antidemocratic.
I understand what you’re saying, but I think your approach to the Bloc is really quite overwrought and counterproductive. “Destroying the country”? The Bloc won’t even run on a platform explicitly advocating a referendum anymore, let alone take any concrete measures theretoward. Hell, half of their image problem is the fact that they haven’t done much of anything at all, let alone “destroy the country.”
Furthermore, the whole reason the Bloc has agreed to this in the first place is because it needs time to lick its wounds. Look what it asked for in the coalition package: more employment insurance. How exactly is “being part of the government,” as you suggest they’ll be - the federal government, mind you - supposed to lead to the separation of Quebec? If anything, it’ll get the Bloc and Quebec more engaged in the federal system than ever before. Any concessions the Bloc will be able to wrest from the coalition will be all the more evidence that Quebec can get what it needs without separating.
And regardless of this all, you simply cannot get around the fact that forty-nine ridings elected members of the Bloc Québécois as their representatives. In a minority parliament, that’s simply not a small enough voting bloc to ignore or isolate, by anyone. (ETA: What Rysto said.)
You and I are unlikely ever to reach a consensus on this issue, and I guess we’ll just have to come back in two years and see whether the Bloc has destroyed the country or not.
On a lighter note, and just to show how desperate Harper’s becoming, he said the coalition deal is somehow depreciable because it was signed in a room without a Canadian flag in it.
Which, besides sounds like an argument out of tax resister court, is, even more entertainingly, false.
Did I miss option d) Topple the government and go to the polls?
You didn’t even understand the “last point quoted above,” which was a statement about what I preferred; unless you can read my mind, you do not know if I am wrong in stating what I prefer. Perhaps you’re secretly doing Psychic Hot Line on the side. You should sign up for the Randi challenge.
Anyway, if you don’t like the rules, don’t blame me, I didn’t write them. Jean can dissolve Parliament if she wants. She could ask Dion and Layton to form a government, which is the heavy odds-on likely scenario, but things have been weird enough that I’m ready for anything. (Including long-term prorogation, which I regret to say I think Harper might actually be dumb enough to try.) I think it’s ridiculous to suggest calling an election is “undemocratic,” but hey, I’m not a Constitutional scholar; I just think Canada’s better off with the Bloc outside government. You have a partisan interest in the result and I do not, so perhaps your perspective is different.
Either way, it is perfectly Constitutional for Her Excellency to choose a coalition or call an election. If I am not mistaken it would even be within her powers to refuse either. I’m not going to whine about Michaelle Jean’s commitment to democracy if she picks the path I’m less enamoured with - as I have said, she’s a smart woman with access to people who know far more about it than you or me, and I believe she’ll do what she thinks is right. I’m cheering for one outcome over the other but I’ll accept either.
But either way, Jack Layton and Stephane Dion are Quislings. Stephen Harper’s a pig-headed fool. It’s s sad state of affairs.
Leaving the rest aside, this is amazingly offensive. Whatever may be said about the Bloc Quebecois, they are not Nazis, nore are they compassing the invasion of other countries by force, and comparing seeking their confidence in the House is in no way comparable to being a Nazi collaborator.
Your previous arguments were overwrought, but this is just unacceptable, and I would really appreciate a retraction on this.
I find this completely hilarious. Harper is becoming more like Bush/McCain every day. Are we going to hear about flag lapel pins next?
Eh, what? Was it undemocratic that the Liberal government decided to give money to the parties based upon their vote count? Then why is it undemocratic to remove such a practice?
The only reason that the Liberals, NDP, what have you, would go bankrupt is because their supporters won’t give them enough money to actually support them. What business is it of the government to take up the slack? Each party gets $1.25 for each vote. What is stopping them from asking half the people who voted for them for $3, or a quarter for $6, or an 1/8 for $12? Hell, ask them for a lousy $20. $20 isn’t a hell of a lot to support the party you want to represent you in parliament. But, why should I be forced to support some party with my tax dollars that I have no interest in and think would actually damage the country in which I live?
And I agree it was a mistake Harper made doing this without a majority, it is by no means undemocratic for him to do so. If anything it is more democratic, because it would force parties to make a pitch to their supporters for cash and that pitch would have to be based upon rational policies that their supporters would be willing to pay for. That they don’t should tell us quite a bit about them and the people who vote for them. If they can’t manage their own house why should they be put in charge of anyone elses?
You didn’t support the Bloc, unless you voted for the BQ. Whichever party that you voted for got $1.25 of your tax dollars.
I did a quick reference check and I will have to retract it. Having referred to my dictionary, which I finally found after two months of looking, “Quisling” is semantically inaccurate. You are wrong in assuming it refers only to Nazis. However, references clearly indicate that to be a quisling, one must betray one’s country to an foreign power (irrespective of its political stripe.) It could be said, for instance, that Achmed Chalabi was a quisling. I assumed the word had taken a broader definition but no reputable source supports that.
It is more accurate to refer to Mr. Layton as a Judas.
That isn’t the way our taxation system works, you know.
I have a feeling that should this go through the Liberals might as well close shop in the West for good. The backlash will be worse than that against the National Energy policy.
They’ll cease to be a national Party and can represent Ontario and parts of the Maritimes.
We might as well run nothing but regional parties and end with endless minorities and coillitions.
So anyone up for creating a new national Moderate party, you know one that can represent every region in the country?
And if you didn’t vote because you think they are all incompetent?