Exciting Canadian politics, part deux
Well, I thought it was exciting.
The Guardian apparently thinks otherwise -- the search "Canada" on their website nets nothing on the fact that our government could imminently fall, yet every time Obama farts there's a headline. Srsly.
Anyway, there's not been much movement other than the Conservatives are dodging confidence votes every which way they possibly can. They've put off "Opposition Day" -- in which the Liberals were officially going to put forward a non-confidence motion -- until December 8th; and they've dropped the party funding issue out of the economic plan. However, the other parties still seem likely to vote against the economic plan because it doesn't include any stimulus. So now there's actually (totally unsubstantiated) talk that the Conservatives might even prorogue Parliament to avoid the vote. I don't know if it's true, but if it is, um, running scared, much?
A couple of people over at canpolitik have summarised the situation very well (I've made additions for clarity in square brackets and tried to keep them neutral):
Summary one, courtesy of profoundtruths, here:
the tories tried to take away the $1.95/vote that each party gets from the government since the government made it illegal to get money from corporations or donations bigger than $3400/person, so that parties don't have to cater to the uber rich. It's part of a "ways-and-means" change to the budget, which offers nothing to actually stave off a recession according to the other 3 [parties, to whit, the Liberals, New Democratic Party, Bloc Quebecois].
SO. the other 3 parties go "not-fucking-likely" - Broadbent and Chretien [former leaders of the NDP and Liberals, respectively] discuss the deets of a coalition agreement and Ducieppe [sic, in fact, Duceppe, current leader of the Bloc Quebecois] is all like, "just keep giving Quebec money and I'll support whatever you do".
[Finance Minister] Flaherty peed his pants and took the $1.95/vote thing off the confidence vote - however, he's still offering SFA to stop the recession that's slowing creeping in, so the parties are like, "kthxbye" anyways to the budget change since the other 3 parties think that the paper they write the bill on would be better used for toilet paper.
So the Liberals tabled a few motions, one of which is (roughly) "we think the tories are useless morons - all in favour?" Which is a confidence vote.
And then,
fwiw, the entire media was all like, "wtf?" when the tories announced the $1.95/vote thing because it accounts for about 1/3 of the money for the tories, but about 50% for the liberals and about 60% for the other two parties. Everyone seemed to think this was a blantant attempt to bankrupt the Liberals.
this one courtesy of allhatnocattle, here and one above:
For background you have to go way back to 2002. [Liberal] PM Jean Chretien reforms the way political parties are financed. He bans corporate donations and imposes a system where parties receive $1.75/vote. His #2 man Paul Martin hates the idea. This is important to understand what happened yesterday.
By 2004 we saw huge political changes. The ReformAlliance [the Canadian Alliance, the successor to the Reform Party, a socially conservative party founded on grassroots Western alienation] merged with the ProgressiveConservatives [fiscal conservatives/moderates and social moderates, or "Red Tories"] to form the Conservatives. Chretien resigned and in an election Paul Martin was chosen as PM of Canada in a scandal plagued minority government. It is revealed the Liberal Party of Canada is in debt.
In 2006 Conservative [and former leader of the Canadian Alliance] Stephen Harper defeated Liberal Paul Martin to form a minority government. Martin resigned as Liberal leader.
One of Harper's first acts is to set term limits. The gov't has set election periods. While only the opposition can pull the plug early in a (lack of) confidence vote.
Liberals elect Stephen Dion to everyone's surprise and he becomes leader of the opposition.
Harper becomes determined to get a majority gov't feeling he can easily defeat Dion. Harper makes every issue confidence motion in order to call an early election.
Dion still trying to hammer out a platform of his own, and get favourable poll numbers refuses to defeat any confidence motion. Liberals either support confidence motions, or while vocally opposing these confidence motions don't show up to vote them down. Frustrated, Harper breaks his own law and calls an election anyways. He says the law was never meant to be applied to minority governments.
The Oct 2008 election started out with environment central to the campaigns of the Liberal, NDP and Green Party platforms. The Tories platform seemed to focus on just good government. But then the financial crisis broke out in the USA... and globally. It only affects Canada in a relatively minor way.
The Conservatives win their second minority. It is a strengthened minority with all opposition parties loosing numbers. But it is still not a majority for Harper.
Dion steps down, calls a Liberal leadership race. Dion chooses to stay on until the new leader is chosen sometime in Spring of 2009. The Liberals are still in financial debt.
The opposition has been pushing for pre-emptive action to deal with the financial crisis. The economy has greatly affected manufacturing and exports mostly in southern Ontario. But while the economy has slowed, for the most part it has not been the crisis much of the world has suffered.
On Thursday, Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty announced his fiscal update preliminarily revealing some cost cutting measures. He's announces that to save $30million dollars he will end the $1.95/vote subsidy to political parties. For the opposition, this will really hurt. For the Liberals, it might prove fatal. Either the opposition allows the gov't to hurt party coffers or they defeat the gov't sending Canada into yet another election the opposition cannot afford or win. This announcement puts the opposition in crisis mode.
Friday morning former leaders (NDP's Ed Broadbent and Liberal's Jean Chretien) met to bridge a coalition. This third option is unlikely to succeed, but the NDP and Liberal Parties set aside their differences rather quickly. Still they still 20 seats short of defeating the gov't. Separatist BlocQuebecois leader Gilles DuCeppe agrees to support the coalition under certain conditions.
Midway through the day, it was revealed one of the conditions set by DuCeppe was that Dion should not lead this coalition gov't. More rapid negotiations allowed that Dion would indeed lead this coalition gov't.
The Harper gov't backed down from their fiscal update, eliminating the plan to cut the $1.95/vote. But it is too late. The wheels of this coalition are already set in motion.
The motion to form this tripartite coalition is set for Monday. It is unclear if the BQ will join the coalition outright, or just loan out the necessary 20 seats the Liberals and NDP are shy of. But I havn't read the news this morning and details of this tripartite coalition will no doubt be hammered out over the weekend.
So the new tripartite coalition gov't will consist of separatists, socialists and a moderate party. The tripartite coalition does achieve one major objective; Avoids another election while securing their party finances. It doesn't seem likely that they will find much common ground to rule Canada. However these three all agree that Canada needs pre-emptive help to avoid a worsening financial situation (especially in automotive manufacturing GM, Ford, Bombardier, Flyer Bus). The also seem to agree that something must be done to help the environment although there doesn't seem to be much agreement as to what.
The talk of a coalition is already being downplayed after only twenty-four hours. It'll never happen, it'll be unstable, blah blah. There's some push-back -- Harper's not the only one with brass knuckles, there's momentum that's all we need, don't blink Liberals, etc, etc.
I still have hope that it will happen. Stephane Dion will be PM yet!