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well it looks like Canada is going to topple the ruling government in favor of a coalition govt run by three parties...go figure

Wow, when did that happen? I thought Canadians liked their government, at least better than Americans like theirs O_o;;

I'm moving to america if it happens.

i'm really out of the loop, but today is the first i've heard about this, from many places. how did this come about all of a sudden?

Darth Wenus wrote:I'm moving to america if it happens.

There's a phrase I never thought I'd hear from a Canadian. Talk about roll reversal.

I, for one, am glad. Steven Harper is a power grubbing lunatic who wanted to upset the entire democratic process by yanking the funding of the other political parties. So the New Dems, the Liberals and the Bloc have signed a pact to share power. It's all up to the Governor General to decide now - and she's not even in the country.

Steven Harper apparently has said he wants to shut parliament through January in response. Since, you know, before a Canadian economic stimulus is planned we need to see what the US does with their stimulus package. Heaven forbid we bail out our own failing auto industry first. So it doesn't matter if he holds on to the reins by sitting on his ass, right?

nikki4982 wrote:

Darth Wenus wrote:I'm moving to america if it happens.

There's a phrase I never thought I'd hear from a Canadian. Talk about roll reversal.

If McCain was elected, I'd be staying put.



But seriousy, if all three oppositions are THAT upset with the current government, then they should let the voters decide again. I have no love for Harper and his goons, but the people did vote him and party into office.

myownsatellite wrote:Wow, when did that happen? I thought Canadians liked their government, at least better than Americans like theirs O_o;;

FYI "Government" has a different term in Canadian parliament. The party that wins the most seats etc acts as the government and one that came in second becomes the opposition. (I think it's like... how your president has an administration. Our Prime Minister has a government) What is happening is that the Liberals who are currently leading the opposition are signing with the NDP who have a strong share but not enough to win either position, so that together they will have enough seats to win the government position and force Harper and his conservatives into the opposition.

I think it's awesome. It's like Canada has been fucked and here is what we are going to do about it.
Harper has really shown how outraged he is about it all. I think it completely took him by surprise and he doesn't know how to fight this.

Really, it's kind of a smart move by the Liberals. I think they know that they screwed up during the last election, and now they are looking for a new leader and it's probably going to be another 5 maybe 6 years before they are strong enough to win the government. And the NDP have a strong showing and are holding their own but it's not a lot. Neither of them are really going to be able to get into power any other way, and by doing this I think they are going to get a lot of support from Canada because it means that their policies are going to have to be very middle of the road, straight forward to have 3 parties all agree on it.

Screw Obama, Canada is way cooler now.

Darth Wenus wrote:

nikki4982 wrote:

Darth Wenus wrote:I'm moving to america if it happens.

There's a phrase I never thought I'd hear from a Canadian. Talk about roll reversal.

If McCain was elected, I'd be staying put.



But seriousy, if all three oppositions are THAT upset with the current government, then they should let the voters decide again. I have no love for Harper and his goons, but the people did vote him and party into office.

Okay, not really. The point is to eliminate the minority government because nothing is being accomplished with it. Besides, Harper is fucking the country, we are in a recession, Canada has had no strong leadership in years and we need change that.

Moved to the more appropriate forum.

Herd snippets about that this morning on CBC. (I then switched to TSN for hockey highlights)

But it seems like Canada wants/is moving to a 3 party system.

Which in the US could turn the government into complete grid lock becuase we would end up with 3 different parties with 3 different plans for everything and 3 different votes.

Or as Sarah said eveyrone would get their head out their asses and learn to comprimise leading to a very middle of the road agenda.

Canada has been a three party system for a long time, Brian. Hence the ability for multiple parties to join together to have more seats than the party in power. The other thing is that Harper made a similar backroom coalition with the NDP to topple Paul Martin's Liberals a few years back - and then he cries no fair when it happens to him. Plus, taping a private NDP meeting and releasing the tape to the media? Come on. I hope he lands in a load of legal trouble for that - Mounties are investigating and a lot of people have been throwing around the words "Canadian Watergate".

Look at the stats - on election night the popular vote was split like this:
Conservatives 37.6%
Liberals: 26.2%
NDP: 18.2%
Bloc: 10%
Green: 6.8%

Collectively, more people liked Canada's leftist parties than the right-wing Conservatives. A majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives; this coalition is a better representation of how the country actually did vote. Although, being a coalition, I expect very little to be accomplished outside the key issues that they've worked into their contract.

Stevie Harper has asked for TV airtime tonight, i believe 7 pm to rally the country, and of course the other parties have asked for the same time to rebut his comments.
There was a great editorial in my local paper about how the sweater wearing family man has disappeared (immediately after the election) to be replaced by Darth Vader.

I think the main contentions are the proposals to remove funding for political parties, removing the ability for govt workers to strike and the fact that he has not addressed the recession.

someone mentioned bailing out the big three auto companies and I for one think this is a reallly bad idea. I know that Windsor survives on this and the the mayor will tell anyone who will listen that one auto sector job lost will affect 7.5 other jobs. But this is true of any job that you are making $38/hr, which is for the most part the problem. There are no other industries that will take on these workers for that wage, and imho, rightly so. While i am all for heathy industry overinflated wages are unsustainable. I am all for retrofitting this industry for either greener vehicles or green technology, because this is where consumer demand lies.

If harper had come out an offered X billions of dollars to start to retro fit one of these plants and offering retraining for employees he would not be in the pickle he is in.

crap i missed it, he only talked for a few minutes. Stephan dion up next

I missed the speeches - I was attending a friend's book launch (plug - check out Jenny Sampirisi's novel Is/Was - so beautiful. so heartwrenching). And Christine, I agree, I am not for a blind bail-out. But the economic crunch would be a good time for the gov't to offer the auto industry some of the needed money with conditions that would enforce sustainability. There are a lot of reasons why we need the auto industry to survive; our economic balance would suffer a lot of damage if the plants were to collapse entirely, or relocate to cheaper places. Ah, and now I see that you mentioned retrofitting. So yes, I agree .

so harper got his way with parliament. now it's just wait and see what happens i guess