Coalition government in Canada, parliament prorogued

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birdboy2000

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Over the past week, Canada's three opposition parties (Liberals, the social democratic NDP, and the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois) have united into a coalition against Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government over the lack of a stimulus program in the budget and a controversial proposal to slash public funding to political parties - a proposal which, if passed, would harm the Conservatives far less than the opposition. A bunch of conservatives are calling it a coup d'etat, and in response the governor-general has accepted Harper's request to prorogue Parliament until late January.

Anyone following this? Thoughts? etc.
 
Pretty cool. I wish we could get that cooperation between parties down here.
 
Yeah, but they don't cooperate with third parties for anything, really.
 
Well, sort of hard to cooperate with third parties when they're non-entities...:p
 
Now, now, the Connecticut for Lieberman party is de facto part of America's governing coalition. :p

(They also have more seats than all the other third parties put together; Sanders is a socialist, but he's not in any of the various small socialist parties in the US.)
 
Zeta said:
Yeah, but they don't cooperate with third parties for anything, really.
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Actually, a Constitution Party member was part of a right-wing coalition in the Montana House until he was ousted this year.

In general, though, third parties rarely make the difference, so they're not needed. Blame the third parties for being unable to capture a degree of relevance, not the major parties.
 
So is Harper basically trying to crown himself King by destroying the legislative power of the country? Because that's what it seems like to me.
 
Harper is.. what can I say? He's a deceiver. The Conservative platform in the past two elections have all been lies. Rich Canadians, and youth who are blinded by the 'conservative' stance all believed that 'change' from Liberal power is what was needed. Harper hasn't followed his platform at all. The only thing he's done in his tenure is take 2% off the existing 7% GST(General Sales Tax), which is now 5%. His followers bowed down to him for doing this. But the funny thing is, is that 20 or so years ago, it was the Conservatives who initiated GST. Harper's ruined the Canadian image of 'peacekeeping' by sending Canadian born troops into Afghanistan to kiss George Bush's ass.

As a Canadian, I used to be interested in politics, and now i'm apathetic to everything involving it. Politics are so boring, I don't really give a crap about who's in power anymore because it doesn't seem to affect me one bit. The only thing that really matters is what happens in Civil and Provincial(similar to the state) matters.

I really don't know what the hell this coalition is about. I doubt it will even work. NDP are on the left side of the political spectrum, while the freaking Bloc Quebecois are freaking separatists. I used to cheer for the Liberals as they are more in the middle of the political spectrum compared to the other parties. As of now, I can't even stand it. The Liberals are led by Stephan Dion, who doesn't seem to have much confidence in his ability and his public image is lacking. I know his intentions are the best for Canada, but allying himself with the freaking Bloc and Jack Layton(NDP leader) is ridicule. There's an up and coming politician, and his name is Justin Trudeau, son of past Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Now that my friends, is a leader. Put that guy as the Leader of the Liberal Party and they'll win unanimously. The Senior Trudeau did so much for Canada that his name would probably grant his son Premiership.

Really, this Coalition government isn't good at all. Canada's population is still split and I wouldn't trust a dollar with the Bloc Quebecois. Their existence is to separate from the rest of Canada, yet they don't realize that without Canadian exports they'd be freaking screwed. Quebec cannot live by themselves simply because it would be impossible for them to maintain their population. Other than Montreal and Quebec City, the rest of Quebec is freaking farmland and industrial sites that have been used up.

The 3 Coalition leaders have so many different views, and then Harper is going to come back with his Conservative party and continuously knock them down until Parliament just ends up in tatters. The reason I dislike Canadian politics is because nothing is structured. Leaders don't have definite terms and elections happen way too often and too sporadically.

Argh, even talking about it makes me livid.
 
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Blurrz said:
Other than Montreal and Quebec City, the rest of Quebec is freaking farmland and industrial sites that have been used up.
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ROFLOL.

"Freaking farmland" is pretty rich considering that agriculture represent a fairly similar part of Alberta and Québec's GDP (5.3 blns out of 259 (2.04%) and 6.2 out of 285 (2.17%). Whooping difference there.

And of course, "Outside Montreal and Québec City" is a bit of a joke. Face it, most every province in Canada has all its population concentrated in one or two major city and a narrow corridor connecting them (well, the ones that actually have population to speak of. Hard to have any population center whatsoever when your total population is under a million). Whether you say it about Ottawa-Toronto (Okay, the corridor goes all the way to Windsor), Montreal-Quebec (with probably the widest corridor of the lot), Edmonton-Calgary...it all boils down to the same layout, where two cities amount for over 50% of the population in the province, and way more than that with the connecting corridor.
 
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Regardless of the miss wording of facts I still find no reason to believe that Quebec can strive by themselves. Yeah it would be interesting but the way Bloc is dealing with it is ridiculous!
 
Depend what you mean by strive. Québec would certainly have economic difficulties, then again, there would be some economic advantages to independence too (first and foremost: the part where we aren't stuck using Canadian money anymore, and thus won't have our exports sector getting screwed over by a CERTAIN province artificially inflating the value of the Canadian dollar via oil exports. And then boring everyone to the death with their whine when the federal government somehow wind up giving money to the other provinces and not them.)

"Freaking screwed" is WAY over the top, mind. Québec still has a first world GDP, and per capita GDP, and while it could have to rearrange spending, it would hardly suddenly become Africa or anything like that. Hard times yes, screwed no.

It's also perhaps worth noting at this point that Québec is the only province in Canada (so far) that still hasn't seen any net job losses due to the current economic crisis. So much for being economically worthless.

That said, in case you Albertans missed it, the last independence referendum was fifteen years ago, and nobody's planning on a new one anytime soon (unless somebody REALLY, REALLY, REALLY pisses Quebecers off*). The Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois, while they remain in favor of independence, are just plain busy with other things, ie, making Québec stronger within the federation, because they know perfectly well Independence is down to 30-ish percent of support and there's no point in talking much about it right now. Most of the people who vote Bloc these days do so for much the same reason you guys over west voted Reform way back when: it's OUR party. We couldn't care less what they feel on independence.

*Not that Harper hasn't spent the past two weeks trying HARD to do just that.
 
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Wait, you guys have a douchebag Conservative leader too?

It's sad I had to learn about this on The Daily Show.
 
Indeed.

In the interest of full disclosure, and also commenting on SOME people's take on the matter (ie, that closing parliament is a dictatorial act, etc), here is my reply to a list-of-people-who-suspended-government (you know the usual bunch - Adolf, Musso, Franco, Pinochet) on another forum:

Heil Harper!

(Not my fault his name really DOES fit the sentence!)

And no, for the record, I don't think he's nearly as bad as any of the people listed above, so far, including that Godwin guy. Suspending parliament to avoid being thrown out was bad, but he hasn't jailed his political opponents, or slaughtered innocents, or anything of THAT sort yet, and while it's not strictly impossible, I strongly doubt he'd do any of that. He's a chicken, not a monster.

(And the trains still don't run on time, either.)

That's Canada for you, I suppose. We have a sorry excuse for an army, a sorry excuse for a democracy, and even when one of our politicians goes all authoritarian and attempts to suspend parliament, he's still no more than a sorry excuse for a dictator :-D
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