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Tory minority in jeopardy as opposition talks coalition. Will there be another election?

Just a note... watch the DION tape.
1.  Its out of focus
2.  Its colour is wrong
3.  It looks like it was shot with a Web Cam
4.  It was late for the broadcast

and the book behind Dions head was titled.... wait for it......  Hot Air... I kid you not :D:D

One Liberal MP from London Area has declaired he will not support it... the cracks have started
 
Let's take a look at the time and space of the defeat of the government by the coalition around the first of February. If the Governor General asks Dion to form a government, and he takes over about 15 February, will the parties have time to do the battle procedure to prepare a budget before the Liberal convention and transfer of leadership on 2 May? Probably, but only by a few weeks.

If the GG opts to dissolve Parliament on 1 February, the earliest an election could be held would be 7 March. The new goverment would be in place in a week or so after that, and therefore could not prepare a budget until after the changeover.

Crisis, what crisis? If the national aim is to get a budget in place as soon as possible, then the best course would be for the parties to cooperate on a consensus budget.
 
I think that the Governor General made the wrong decision, purely from a constitutional perspective.  Our parliamentary system is based on responsible government - in which the government is responsible to Parliament.  When a prime minister (of whatever party) seeks to prorogue Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote, it is a subversion of that principle.  The question of whether or not an election should have been called after the non-confidence motion is a different issue.  I am concerned that a prime minister in future can take comfort from the idea that he or she can simply dissolve Parliament and continue to govern if he or she is faced with a loss of confidence in Parliament.
 
Privateer said:
I think that the Governor General made the wrong decision, purely from a constitutional perspective.  Our parliamentary system is based on responsible government - in which the government is responsible to Parliament.  When a prime minister (of whatever party) seeks to prorogue Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote, it is a subversion of that principle.  The question of whether or not an election should have been called after the non-confidence motion is a different issue.  I am concerned that a prime minister in future can take comfort from the idea that he or she can simply dissolve Parliament and continue to govern if he or she is faced with a loss of confidence in Parliament.

Had the government fallen your point would be correct, but that is exactly why Harper did it before there was any confidence vote.  With no formal confidence vote the GG's hands are restricted if not completely tied, she has to follow the direction of the sitting Prime Minister.
 
From Privateer
"When a prime minister (of whatever party) seeks to prorogue Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote, it is a subversion of that principle"

Pardon? You want subversion? How about parties getting together to defeat a government less than two months after an election and lying to the public that it was about the budget? IT WAS A STINKING POWER GRAB!!! END STORY!!!  >:(

I think there will be some serious battle damage done to the liberals and the NDP after this whole mess is over.

 
I find it interresting that the Three Stooges want us to do what other countries are doing.... at a time when most countries are trying to play catch up with Canada.

how could anyone suggest $30Billiion in spending now, when you (we) have no idea until Jan what if any money will be spent by the US to bail out the US economy?

As for constitutional stuff.... The GG has taken the advise of her PM to cool things off, which is legal and based on presidance (sp)

The GG has the responsibility to ensure the smooth working of the Govt and insure she protects the rep of the Gov't.  It is being reported that the email servers at the GG's place are working overtime to handle the letters form Canadians wanting a vote.

The PM needs to turn 12 votes.  2 are independant... 1 Liberal has already said he will not support the three stooges.

BTW it appears that fundraisers for the Liberal Iggy, have reported that the money dried up when he said he supported the three stooges

Cheers
 
Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail is no friend of the PM or the CPC, never has been, never will. The media format, from which he is quoting Ed Schreyer, is CTV’s Canada AM. Who is a very frequent quest of that program? Bob Rae. Who has been stating that all the rallies/petitions against the coalition are CPC computer generated? Bob Rae.

Don’t forget that Bell Globmedia, CTV, Macleans, and the Globe and Mail have the same beneficial ownership.

The media judge all events solely in terms of their ability to make (manufacture) headlines, their reporting reduced to an ambition to be on page one.

I have attended several functions in the last few years where Ed Schreyer was a guest rambler or a recipient. You wonder if he has totally lost it, and lost it some time ago. A good candidate to interview on Canada AM and to quote in the G & M if you want to smoke screen the issue to the left wing loons.

In my reasoning, the GG had no choice but to follow the advice of “her” first Minister. e.g. If the PM was going to declare war on Germany in Sept 1939, was the GG at that time in a position to say no? Whose Speech from the throne is read by the GG.

Instead of being called the Three Stooges, they should be called Huey, Dewey, and Louie who would often behave in a rambunctious manner, sometimes committing retaliation or revenge on their uncle Donald Duck for something he did to them. Seems to fit.

This Parliament is dead, dead dead. No matter what the CPC do, Huey, Dewey, and Louie will never accept it, not now, not in Jan 09.

When the election comes, let’s remind Quebec of this:

Federal equalization payments:

Quebec - $8.35 billion
Manitoba - $2.1 billion
New Brunswick - $1.69 billion
Nova Scotia - $1.57 billion
Ontario - $247 million
P.E.I. - $340 million

 
Here's what I think is the most important part of Mr Harper's comments:

"It's the opportunity to work in the next six weeks on these measures, and I invite all the opposition parties, especially those that have a responsibility to the whole of Canada, to work with us, to inform us of their detailed position and we will be there to listen."



The olive branch is extended, who among the "ThreeKings Stooges" will accept it. I wonder if they will continue to claim that Mr Harper is closed to cooperation.

It will be interesting to see what the preamble to the budget is. I think now there will be an expectation among Canadians that this is an all party document. If the other parties don't participate, and vote non-confidence in the budget, they will have sealed their fate. The GG will not be able to grant them the opportunity to form the government as the Liberals are in turmoil, and the Bloc is not a signatory. The Bloc's implicit support is not nearly as secure as their explicit support would be. If I were the GG, then that would be the salient point for me. I would require that all three parties form the government with representation in cabinet. Anything less, and there are still too many opposition seats to reasonably presume an NDP/Liberal government will retain power.
 
Rifleman62 said:
When the election comes, let’s remind Quebec of this:

Federal equalization payments:

Quebec - $8.35 billion
Manitoba - $2.1 billion
New Brunswick - $1.69 billion
Nova Scotia - $1.57 billion
Ontario - $247 million
P.E.I. - $340 million

Using 2003 populations, per capita they work out to:

Quebec - $1115
Manitoba - $1806
New Brunswick - $2252
Nova Scotia - $1677
Ontario - $20
P.E.I. - $2467

So, by the metric of per capita transfers, Quebec's share is the second lowest, while PEI is grossly over-funded.
 
What do you think of Jack Layton as the new Minister of NATIONAL Defence.  Shudder !!!
 
My sole hope is that now all of the respective leaders will stop behaving like petulant children, and get on with the serious business of running the country.
 
STONEY said:
What do you think of Jack Layton as the new Minister of NATIONAL Defence.  Shudder !!!

It wouldn't matter, because in the end that's how their going to fund their agenda. We all know that the Libs will take from Defence and spend elsewhere. During the decade of darkness DND's budget fell 23% where all other departments saw an increase.
 
Some pretty harsh words from UK's The Economist, shared with the usual disclaimer....

A most un-Canadian caper
Canada’s prime minister clings on to office, for the moment

Dec 4th 2008 | OTTAWA

THERE are no tanks in the streets or protesters occupying the airport, but Canada is in the midst of political turmoil the like of which this normally placid country has rarely seen. Only seven weeks ago Stephen Harper, the prime minister, won a second term for his Conservative government, but once again without winning a parliamentary majority. Now the three disparate opposition parties—the centrist Liberals, the socialist New Democrats (NDP) and the separatist Bloc Québécois—have ganged up in order to oust the Conservatives and replace them with a centre-left coalition. That left Mr Harper scrabbling for survival.

On Thursday December 4th he asked Michaëlle Jean, who as governor-general acts as Canada’s head of state, to suspend Parliament until January. After a two-hour meeting, she agreed to do so. That means that for now Mr Harper has dodged a confidence vote scheduled for December 8th that the opposition parties, provided they stick together, were bound to win. The opposition holds 163 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons.

Their alliance is an unlikely one. Stéphane Dion, the Liberal leader, is an academic from Quebec who came into politics a decade ago expressly to oppose the French-speaking province’s separatists, represented by Gilles Duceppe and his Bloc Québécois. Jack Layton, the NDP leader, has spent his career savaging previous Liberal governments.

Yet on Monday the three leaders wrote to the governor-general offering to form a Liberal-NDP coalition government. The Bloc will not join in but its 49 MPs will back it for the next 18 months. The letter prompted Ms Jean, a former refugee from Haiti, to cut short a trip to Europe to rush back to Ottawa. Under the constitution, it is the governor-general’s prerogative to invite a party leader to form a government, with or without an election.

This sudden decision to stage a political coup was prompted by a government economic statement on November 27th. The ostensible reason for opposition outrage was that Jim Flaherty, the finance minister, offered no new measures to stimulate the economy. But that smacks of a pretext: despite alarmist headlines, for now the economy remains in relatively good shape.

What really provoked the opposition parties was that, having said there was no need for extraordinary measures, Mr Flaherty threw in some highly partisan ones: a big cut in public funding for political parties; a ban on strikes by public-service unions; and measures making it harder for women civil servants to complain if they are not paid the same as men.

A joke doing the rounds in Ottawa holds that Mr Harper, credited with having united two feuding right-of-centre parties to form the Conservatives in 2003, has now done what was thought impossible and united the left too. The government quickly dropped the measures on political funding and the right to strike. But it was too late to stop the opposition’s plans to seize power.

The opposition’s putative coalition is beset with flaws. Its problems start with its leader. Mr Dion piloted the Liberals to their worst-ever showing in the election. He is due to be replaced as Liberal leader at a party convention in May. Then there is policy, which has required some difficult compromises. Mr Dion has agreed to drop his unpopular carbon tax (he now backs a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions). Mr Layton has dropped his previous opposition to cuts in corporate taxes. A further awkwardness concerns reliance on the votes of the Bloc, whose raison d’être is the break-up of Canada.

All this means that Mr Harper may yet manage to cling to power. He has defiantly raised the political temperature. He has accused the Liberals of selling out the country to separatists (in fact, in his first term he sometimes relied on separatist votes and when in opposition the Conservatives similarly offered to replace a Liberal minority government with help from the Bloc and the NDP). The Conservatives are repeating that message in a blitz of radio and television advertising, as well as planning rallies across the country. He has vowed to “use all legal means to resist this undemocratic seizure of power”.

Nevertheless, the prime minister is damaged. Although there is no open revolt in Conservative ranks, several ministers pointedly failed to applaud the prime minister in the House of Commons this week. But Mr Harper shows no sign of contrition. Now he has bought himself time. He will use it to prepare a January budget that will doubtless include some measures to stimulate the economy. He will also hope that the opposition’s ardour for unity may cool. But the parliamentary hiatus might allow the Liberals to bring forward their leadership vote and replace the lacklustre Mr Dion. Mr Harper may have merely won a stay of execution.

Whatever happens, this week’s events may change Canadian politics for ever. Only the Liberals or Conservatives have governed in Ottawa since 1926, but Canada now has four significant parties (a fifth, the Greens, won nearly 7% of the vote but no seats). Coalition politics may be inevitable. Even so, Canadians have little idea who might be governing them after Christmas.
 
john10 said:
Paul Martin was responsible for managing a budget of $160bn+. Do you really expect him to have known how every increment of tens of millions was spent or mis-spent? It's a pretty silly allegation.

Jean Chretien as Prime Minister initiated the program(s) which collectively fell into the corruption pit known as ADSCAM, while Paul Martin Jr was not only the Minister of Finance, but also the Minister responsible for Quebec, and therefore the one minister most attuned to the day to day activities of the Liberal Party in that province.

Stephan Dion was also a Minister of the Crown in those days, but judging from his performance to date, it is pretty clear he would not have a  clue as to what was going on during the Sponsorship Scandal (AKA ADSCAM). Makes you wonder what sort of oversight the PMO or the government in general would be getting if he was to actually become Prime Minister.
 
Celticgirl said:
As for Duceppe, he has never minced words. He fully admits to his separatist agenda. At least he is honest.  ::)

Yep, you have to give him that. As for the other two: they are already at each other's throat. This "threesome" will probably not last very long.  >:D
 
NFLD Sapper said:
Celtic I think given her history (supporting the separatists in Quebec) she had no other choice.

Bull$hit on that one my friend - she has absolutely no such history
I can guarantee that if she did have such a background AT ALL, she would never have gotten accepted or retained in the position.
 
Has everyone so quickly forgotten the controversy generated over the GG's appointment?
 
The link probably won't work for long, but here's a clever mock-up I found: LINK


*edit for grammar.
 
GAP said:
Has everyone so quickly forgotten the controversy generated over the GG's appointment?
You talking about the documentary prepared by her husband... a French national
 
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