What, aren’t you all looking forward to six more weeks of scheming, sort-of-campaigning, fact-twisting, ad hominem attacks, “OMG there’s a fiscal crisis OMG OMG OMG!!!1” and non-stop talking heads babbling away about every conceivable detail? You don’t want to see Harper, Layton, Dion and Duceppe barbling and gumbling their talking points over, and over, and over again, until you finally decide to gouge your eyes out rather than see it any more?
No?
Me neither.
It sets a bad precedent to allow a PM to suspend parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote. On the other hand, it would have set a bad precedent to have the GG refuse the request of the PM to suspend parliament. Jean really had no good option open to her, and I resent Harper for having brought us to this juncture. All he had to do was behave like a grownup and he would never have lost the confidence of the House in the first place.
QFT.
I think the GG had no good choices, and her least inflammatory choice was to allow Harper to prorogue Parliament. I admit I will be really disappointed in the coalition if it manages to fall apart before the vote (if you’re going to play hardball politics, do it right please) but have no faith that these yahoos can keep it together till end January 2008. On the other hand, I am not looking forward to the talking heads and uncertainty over the next several months if we go to a successful non-confidence vote and then either the opposition coalition governing or going back to an election.
I am really irritated with Harper for precipitating this mess.
I wanted an election but I’m satisfied with the decision.
I think giving Harper some time to come up with an actual decent budget, which takes some time, some meat rather than musings that have pissed off the opposition, is the responsible basis for whether or not a government should be taken down.
I think that we need a constitutional amendment to prevent this from ever happening again. My proposal:
Parliament can override prorogation with a majority vote.
Parliament can override its dissolution with a majority vote within 4 years of the last election. If, however, no government which has the confidence of Parliament can be formed within a week, Parliament is dissolved and we go to an election.
Anyway, what’s next? It seems to me that the possible scenarios are:
Technically, the Speech could pass and the budget could be defeated, but I don’t see that happening.
So, anyone want to lay odds as to what will happen?
Harper just brought Ed Broadbent & Bob Rae not only back on the same page, but crying out in unison for blood. And they both meant it.
This is not over, not by a long shot.
I should probably have put my comment in the MPIMS thread here.
Affront to Parliament and Governor General should probably not be in the same sentence, but I think it’s correct here.
I’m looking out for around 12 Liberal backbenchers suddenly finding themselves nice cushy civil servant job appointments, spurring by-elections in their ridings. All of this in time for the January budget vote.
Note also - 18 current vacancies in the Senate, with another 10 coming up in 2009.
I can see this working for the coalition as well. “Stick together and you get to nominate X number of Senators”. I doubt that there would ever be any openly BQ Senators, but we could see a number of souvrainiste-leaning Senators from Quebec claiming no official party identification.
I really doubt that there are 12 Liberal MPs willing to end their political careers and make themselves total pariahs with their party for some plum appointment. Besides, there’s nothing that Harper can offer them that the coalition couldn’t.
… And it just goes to show you can’t keep up with the crazy news.
Jesus, I swear, who could believe this? According to the CP, some Liberal MPs are already saying the coalition will or should die. It’s been what, three DAYS? Okay, it’s only two guys on the record and one hinting pretty strongly, so far, but this is a rather startling trend.
I mean, all they have to do, if they believe in this, is have a nice Christmas, rest up, come back, and stand up once in Parliament. That’s it. And they already have rank and file members telling reporters the coalition isn’t working. And even if you have reservations, you’re going to bolt in 72 hours? Who could possibly have believed our politicians were capable of this level of stupidity?
I think Jean may be even smarter than I gave her credit for, and I already thought she was pretty smart. She just might be some kid of genius; maybe she saw proroguation as a solution even before Harper asked for it. Because when you think about it, it’s a perfect litmus test to prorogue. If the coalition can stay the course until January 27, they’ll go through the motions of a nonconfidence vote and form a new government. If they can’t even keep it together for seven lousy weeks, we’ll know they never would have been able to run a stable government anyway and giving them the reins would have just meant more instability and a new election. Yes, I think Michaelle Jean is most definitely the smart one in this story.
In fact, I kind of wish she was the Prime Minister.
I just love our parliamentary system, warts and all !
I agree with you on this. Although, I must say, it wouldn’t be hard to find people smarter than these bozos. I’m disgusted with the lot of them.
Imagine you are a Liberal backbencher nearing retirement. Nobody outside of your riding knows your name. You fly back and forth to Ottawa every week (no small feat if you don’t live in a major city). As PM, Harper can offer you positions like Ambassador to Turks & Caicos Islands, or any number of well-paid nicely-titled paper-pushing jobs that don’t require running for election every five years (or more), or flying to Ottawa every week. What might the Coalition offer that would compare to this?
You don’t have much of a reputation to protect. Your career is already nearing its end and you’re thinking about an easy easy out. Me, I’d be happy in the Islands no matter what the flailing Liberals said about me.
I think there are a number of people in that position.
To follow up, it looks like both Harper and the GG read the mood of the people and ignored the mood of the parliament.
68% of Canadians polled think the GG did the right thing and Conservative support is now at 46 %.
So, did Harper really screw up ?
While he may have screwed up by losing the “confidence of the house” by making known what he’d like to do, he’s certainly gained support amongst the people. What is clear, is that he never had the confidence of the house anyway. Now he has time to carefully craft a responsible budget that hopefully avoids mistakes .
The coalition should have waited until an actual budget was presented, before attempting to take the government down, and use their time in the house to influence the government budget as much as possible. Now they have no voice and lost support amongst the people. I blame Dion. He’ll screw up the country if he has a chance and he’ll screw up his party as well.
If the coaqlition does take the government down after the budget, the Liberals are fucked. NDP will come through unscathed, but the Bloc and the Conservatives outside of Quebec will prosper .
So in the end, I see that Harper has less reason to compromise the budget for political reasons, and has more leeway to bring in a real pragmatic budget.
It’s interesting to note in theory that if the polls are accurate, an election held today would yield a crushing, overwhelming Conservative majority. If you parse it down by region you could be looking at 200 seats. They’d lose a couple of their Quebec seats but would still hold on to a few, but outside Quebec hold 55% support, a staggering number - they’d win, out of 238 seats, at least 180, I’d guess. Maybe more. That is a phenomenal percentage in Canadian politics.
However, there’s no election going on. Not now, not next January. The only realistic election scenario is if there’s a vote of non confidence, IF the coalition falls apart beforehand or immediately after and, therefore, Her Excellency can’t be convinced they represent a realistically stable government, in which case she must dissolve Parliament. It’s hard to envision how those events could both happen; if the coalition collapses the Liberals and NDP are not going to walk into an election disaster on purpose. The Liberals, especially, would be in a position where they could be slaughtered - finishing behind the NDP. If they vote to bring the government down it’ll only be because the coalition held, and Jean will be obliged to ask Dion, or whomever’s running the New Libs on the Bloc, to form a government.
We’re likely a long way away from any election, so how the polls look now just isn’t relevant. The Conservatives may get over 50% now, with much of Canada thinking the opposition are snakes and Harper is the best of some bad options, but over time support will regress back to the usual percentages. I suspect a lot of the “support for Conservatives” is in fact disgust at the coalition; note that Harper’s approval rating is pretty bad.
Purely from a tactical POV:
The coalition should have signaled that they would bring down the government over the original proposals, as they did, so that the government had a chance to respond to their issues. Then they should’ve shut up about taking the government down and being available as an alternative government until the vote came to the House and then either accepted the modifications or then voted down the government. They could’ve spent the intervening time bemoaning the lack of quick government action to bring forward a good economic package in this time of economic crisis (possibly in combination with complaints that the government is not consulting with the opposition to get all the possible bright ideas on the table), which would’ve played just fine in the media. If they voted down the government, that would’ve been the time to alert the GG that they did indeed have a possibly viable alternative to the government (rather than an election) so that she didn’t have to send us all back to the polling booths so soon, and then let her make the call: election or Coalition.
Based onThe Globe and Mail today[URL=“http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081205.wparlliberals05/BNStory/politics/home”], it appears Dion is willing to back down under the right conditions:
"Mr. Dion appeared to be open to changing his mind about defeating Mr. Harper’s government, saying that a “monumental change” on Mr. Harper’s part would alter that.
That phrase angered some Liberals, who began shouting at Mr. Dion, accusing him of not going far enough, according to a caucus insider. That is when Mr. Rae approached the microphone, telling Mr. Dion that even “monumental change” was not acceptable.
Mr. Dion appeared shocked, the insider said. "
The Liberals need to find a way to retreat gracefully, not to try to take power now. If they take power without an intervening election, they will pay for it in the following election, losing both donations and votes in a major way because (legal or not) voters don’t want Dion as PM and many voters feel that this switcheroo is not right. They should let the Tories take the rap for how the recession hits Canadians, then come up with a new leader as a fresh alternative for change.
Dion’s got to go, period. He can’t even control his own party, let alone a coalition, let alone a government. My hopes are that the Liberals elect a new leader by January 26th, though I doubt that’s feasible. If not, then I’ve got to hope - for all the parties concerned and for Canada - that the coalition crumbles.
You do have to wonder why the entire country can hold an election in five weeks but a political party needs until May to choose a leader.