Canpol: Election Imminent?

[Richelieu]

Don't misunderstand me Ben: i agree that this government has lost the confidence of the house. It should be disolved and elections called immediately.

[Kontiki]

Let's try to be realistic just for a second.

Likely outcome: new election is called, Conservatives win and form a new minority government. They do up their first budget. Who's going to support it, exactly? When will this cycle end?

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Let's try to be realistic just for a second.

Likely outcome: new election is called, Conservatives win and form a new minority government. They do up their first budget. Who's going to support it, exactly? When will this cycle end?

Italy anyone?

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Let's try to be realistic just for a second.

Likely outcome: new election is called, Conservatives win and form a new minority government. They do up their first budget. Who's going to support it, exactly? When will this cycle end?

NDP Majority with Prime Minister Jack Layton.

(People should stop splitting the NDP vote by voting for no-good centrist corporate lackeys.)

[Ben Kenobi]

i agree that this government has lost the confidence of the house. It should be disolved and elections called immediately.

Ah, merci.

Strange bedfellows then!

[Shi Huangdi]

So the basically BQ is messing the whole thing up, and the people of Quebec have been able to hijcak and ruin the stability of Canada's government, bringing the whole thing to a standstill?

If the people of Quebec keep electing BQ and then BQ MPs continually vote for no confidence, what is likely to happen? You can't go on with no budget forever. Would the situation likely resolve itself by a party gaining a majority, or by LIB/NDP gaining a coalition majority? Or would someone finally form a coalition with the BQ, or would you have something weirded like a LIB/CON coalition?

[KrazyHorse]

It's been a while since we had more than 1 minority government in a row.

It happened in the 60s (3 straight minority governments) and in the 20s (2 minority governments back-to-back)

Looks like something like this rolls around every 40 years.

[KrazyHorse]

20s was the King-Byng affair, 60s was under Pearson, the greatest PM we have ever had, yet one of only 2 to never have a majority.

[KrazyHorse]

So, we've got at least two minority governments in a row now.

Will there be a third? That's the real question...

[notyoueither]

I'd bet there will be.

It's going to be very difficult to make any majority so long as three regions of the country, the West, Ontario, and Quebec are all at odds about who to support at the polls. You need at least two of those regions to agree, and some support elsewhere as well to get a stable majority.

The wild card is going to be the effect on the Liberals of Gomery come polling day. The devastation of Campbell and the Tories is never too far from my mind. It is conceivable that Martin gets totalled, just unlikely. He is a much more adroit politician than Campbell was, and he has had time to build support among at least some of the diehards, certainly more time than Campbell had. However, if ~20% support for the Liberals is spread too thin in too many places, we could watch a blue wave with orange foam break over the country as the polls report results. A Tory majority is unlikely, but not out of the question.

Failing that, I don't see anyone having any majority success until they have had time to chip away at the Bloc position in Quebec, or either a majority of people in Ontario or the West change allegiances. It could easily go three or four minorities.

[notyoueither]

http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_050511.html

The Gomery Parliament has never been a real Parliament

May 11 2005

The history books will write this one down as the Gomery Parliament, and the Gomery Parliament is down to its last breath.

Last night, the Conservatives and the Bloc humiliated the Martin government.

Mr. Martin and his allies, the NDP, were defeated 153 to 150.

Call it a technical defeat or a substantive defeat. It was a defeat.

But from this moment on until whatever hour the lights officially go out on this Parliament, its only true real remaining function is to choose the moment of its own extinction.

The Liberals have scheduled their vote for the 19th, but whatever the vote, whatever the issue, the budget, non-confidence, a committee report, it's all ornament and window dressing, a designed occasion for the election to come.

In other words, the only reason why this House continues is to squeeze the last possible ounce of tactical advantage out of it and set the best possible terms for whichever party finally brings it down.

But Gomery is the engine and the energy of it all. Mr. Harper and the Conservatives figure Gomery with its smug and smiley ad execs, its ructions and revelations, the great tales of envelopes stuffed with cash, they figure Gomery has put the spike in the Liberal Party's up to now invincible heart, so it's time to go.

Gilles Duceppe, who must be looking at Gomery as a kind of daily Christmas, Mr. Duceppe and his Bloc who are soaring over the Quebec political landscape at 56 per cent compared to 16 per cent for the Liberals, Mr. Duceppe knows it just can't get any better.

Within Quebec, Gomery is a great grindstone. It has abraded the Liberals and Mr. Martin's credibility to dust under the wheels of the separatist Bloc.

The NDP and Mr. Layton owe much to Mr. Gomery. The Liberals were staggering in the bull ring because of Gomery which gave the NDP a chance to hold the spotlight, work a vaporous deal and pose for the moment as trying to make Parliament work for Canadians.

And the Liberals and Mr. Martin, well, Gomery, the brittle child of the Sheila Fraser report, Gomery has been the farewell gift that keeps on giving. Mr. Chrétien's final dark salute to the man who undermined him and the party or the portion of it which supported Mr. Martin. The great parting shot which wounded a new Prime Ministership before it even took air.

Now it's all tactics and all maneuver, but it's been that, all tactics and all maneuver from the beginning. In the shadow of and in counterpoint to the Gomery hearings, this Parliament could have been nothing else. The Gomery Parliament has never been a real Parliament, just the struggle for choosing the battleground at the next election. As such, it's been a patchwork of partisanship and improvisation from the moment of its installation, and its only substantial moment won't be the infinitely rewritten budget, the Kyoto bill or same-sex, or the multiple ad hoc deals with the provinces. Its one substantial moment will be the motion that brings it down and which party can claim the fractious credit for doing so.

The polls say Canadians don't want an election. Who does? But a Gomery Parliament is unsustainable, unworkable, and undignified. We may not want an election, but we need one. For "The National," I'm Rex Murphy.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
So the basically BQ is messing the whole thing up, and the people of Quebec have been able to hijcak and ruin the stability of Canada's government, bringing the whole thing to a standstill?

If the people of Quebec keep electing BQ and then BQ MPs continually vote for no confidence, what is likely to happen? You can't go on with no budget forever. Would the situation likely resolve itself by a party gaining a majority, or by LIB/NDP gaining a coalition majority? Or would someone finally form a coalition with the BQ, or would you have something weirded like a LIB/CON coalition?

Ironically enough, Harper and Duceppe most likely agree about a lot of things. The Bloc is there to get the best they can for Quebec while Quebec remains part of Canada. Harper wants the provinces to resume a more prominent place in Confederation. Sounds like grounds for agreement to me.

Harper was the one who papered over the cracks between the Liberals and the Bloc early on and gave this Parliament a chance to work as well as it could while it could.

Watching Harper govern in a minority position could be very interesting.

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Ah, merci.

Strange bedfellows then!

As long as Asher stays out of this...

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
So the basically BQ is messing the whole thing up, and the people of Quebec have been able to hijcak and ruin the stability of Canada's government, bringing the whole thing to a standstill?

How the hell is voting for the party you feel best represents your interests "highjacking"? Quebecers have given up on the Liberals and their corruption long ago and the Conservatives are too far to the right to be considered. We're not talking about the centrist PC of olds here: these are the BK kind of guys. This will not fly here. As for the NDP, i'm not sure they've ever had an MP from Quebec. (Philip Edmunston maybe?) They have no roots, no organization, no presence.
Canadian governments are as stable as Canada is. The current representation in the parliament was not decided by Quebec: it was decided by Canada.

If the people of Quebec keep electing BQ and then BQ MPs continually vote for no confidence, what is likely to happen? You can't go on with no budget forever. Would the situation likely resolve itself by a party gaining a majority, or by LIB/NDP gaining a coalition majority? Or would someone finally form a coalition with the BQ, or would you have something weirded like a LIB/CON coalition?

For obvious reasons, federalist parties cannot form a durable coalition with the BQ.

[St Leo]

Along with moving motions to shut down House business, on Thursday, the Tories and Bloc Québécois began boycotting parliamentary committees to try to slow parliamentary process.

However, the Conservatives will continue to attend at least one Commons committee: the one debating same-sex marriage, to which they are adamantly opposed.

[Please insert a disrespectful plural noun here].