In Canada, an unusual series of moves is playing out. The government, which just stood for election and returned with more seats, but still a minority, is facing off against the three opposition parties that have agreed to force a confidence vote that would bring down the government. Two of the three, the Liberals and the NDP, have agreed to a coalition, with Liberal leader Dion as care taker Prime Minister, and a cabinet of mainly liberals, with 6 NDP ministers. Dion would step down on May 5th after the Liberal Party votes a new leader, but would appoint the new cabinet. The Liberal-NDP coalition has agreed to stay together for the duration of the government, or mid 2011. The third party, the Bloc Quebecois, has promised not to vote against certain required confidence votes, but has reserved the right to bring down the government on other votes, or after mid-2010.
The Governor General, Canada’s formal "head of state" has the option of allowing the Conservative government to suspend Parliament, called "proroguing" until 27 January – effectively putting Canada into hibernation for almost two months – or refusing to allow adjournment. If the government is not adjourned, the Conservatives could attempt to avoid confidence votes, but cannot easily do so because they lack a majority. If the government faces a confidence vote, it will fall. At this point Harper has vowed to demand new elections. This request does not have to be granted. Since Harper end ran a previous election agreement, there is little taste for letting him have this his own way. The options – hibernation, coalition, dissolution – all take Canada into uncharted waters.
What is interesting is the massive screaming meltdown among the Conservative following and even members of their own party. Cries of "socialists" and "coup d’etat" have rung out. The careful message discipline and tweezing of the crazy conservative image, has melted in moments. Even as they attack the BQ for wanting to dissolve Canada, many of their own supporters have called for separation.
In England the political news is equally remarkable. This summer Gordon Brown was watching as safe Labor seats were being taken by opposition parties by huge majorities. He watched as the popular mayor of London was trounced by a loose lipped Tory new comer. His own standing in the polls, if put through in an election, would have left only a few dozen Labor MPs, and he would lose his own seat. Now the Brown Bounce as it is called, has him within the statistical margin of error of the Tories, with Labor voters "coming home" to their party. The unifying thread, in both cases, is the promise of massive Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and active response to the crisis. The Tories both in the Dominion of Canada, and the United Kingdom, have promised cuts and question marks, being dragged to admitting the need for action little and late. Dion, elected as a care taker leader, has managed to pull off one of the most spectacular negotiations in Canadian Parliamentary history, and Brown has come back from the political dead on the back of aggressive response, fiscal stimulus, and promising a direction which is avowedly rooted liberal and social democratic ideas. It’s something for American politicians to heed.
The one thing that the public has no taste for, is nothing. Because in a Depression, Nothing is indeed very strong, strong enough to destroy an economy as wages spiral below debt service, and people and corporations collapse into bankruptcy. Presently 58% of Americans favor a large stimulus bill, that number will go higher—credit card companies are set to reduce credit limits by as much as 2 Trillion US dollars over the next 18 months, and that will hurt the ability of people to stretch and smooth past the crisis.
However, the current proposals, at 500 billion dollars are still too small. Estimates based on usual macro-economic reasoning put the necessary size of a fiscal stimulus bill at around 700 billion – a number that Krugman calls "back of the envelope" – and that is assuming that it is well crafted. Throw in the almost inevitable wasteful measures, such as another round of rebate checks, and the size must be larger still. This may seem like a huge number for a year, however, we should compare it to the stimulus type spending that we’ve been doing: namely the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan. Compared with Clinton’s last year in office, the inflation adjusted defense budget was 349 billion. Counting the wars and the increases from Bush, will be about 661 billion this year. That means that we are seeing 300 billion this year in war stimulus already. and 2000, while it was a year that was sliding into recession, was no 2008.
Just some perspective.
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Watching all the Conservative water balloons burst would be really funny, if it didn’t rain on all the rest of us.
Electing government-haters and expecting them to be good at governing is cognitive dissonance of the highest order.
It is rather telling that pro-PC pundits have started up the rabble babble now – The true face is never very far from the surface, n’est pas?
I mean, honestly…Grits are ’socialists’? Go boil your hat, crazy talkers.
;>)
We’ve been chatting about this intensively at the ‘kewl kids table’ at the McGill Faculty club this week. Members of the tabular club include some of the top Constitutional Lawyers and Poli Scientists in Canada. General opinion: Harper brought on himself. If he wants to save the Conservative government, he should resign, and his right-wing populist finance minister should resign with him. No odds were given on this happening, but the general opinion is that it is low.
Some growsing needeless to say about the separatist Bloc Quebeoois Party having a seat at the table; but as I argued, they’ve been there for 18 years and are now part of the Canadian political landscape. Plus, their voters are full Canadians, and most of them want to stay that way. The real separatists are in Montreal, but the people who vote the Bloc are country folk, for whom it is a tradition.
Harper looked pretty downtrodden at Question Period yesterday. Knows he f*cked up royally, and beyond repair. Screwed the sales job the Conservatives spent so much money on. A lot of Alberta Bumf’ckers and Toronto Bay Street bankers are wishing they hadn’t wasted so much money on thes bozos.
Life goes on. Isn’t it great?
For additional perspective, I never heard any concerns about the long run deficits caused by making the Bush upper bracket income tax cuts permanent from conservative, or ‘center-right’ corperate media pundits. And the deficits that would be caused by those permanent cuts would dwarf the (probably) 18 to 24 month fiscal stimulus plan we need now.
The media pundits were also enamored of the stimulus of upper income tax bracket cuts to economic activity, but those are also dwarfed by fiscal stimulus going to expand and reform food stamps, unemployment insurance, education loans, and especially various infrastructure programs.
I think fiscal programs for on energy efficient transportation infrastructure, new les carbon intensive energy infrastructure (which includes conservation) and education are most important. And I do not mind some temporary government directed public goods investment programs, and government directed private investment subsidies for those up to middle class income, at least until we have meaninful reforms are made to financial markets.
The Governor-General is not the head of state but rather the representative of the head of state, Queen Elizabeth.
Harper’s big mistake was in having the arrogance to show his true colours. Now, Harper has never had a majority because 2/3 of Canadians consistently find him creepy; he’s a control freak and a closeted dictator and a desperately-wannabe Bushbot and most of us don’t like him.
So he’s in a minority government, and the first thing is does is to eliminate the subsidy of $1.95 per vote which all of the federal parties get. (Little history here: several years ago the Parliament passed legislation which severely limited the ability of corporations and unions to buy, er, contribute to political parties; in its place political parties get a subsidy proportionate the the number of votes they get in the federal election.) Being that the Liberals are broke and in a leadership race and the other two parties (Bloc and NDP) are heavily dependent upon the subsidy, Harper was basically trying to arrange permanent one-party rule — from a minority position!
He was a fool to think that the other parties would support their own death sentences.
As I said, he’s an arrogant, wannabe dictator and he’s blown his load too early. It’s a stupendous miscalculation, and even though I don’t like having the Bloc in the mix, I’d be very much happier (I’m a Canadian, in case “colour” didn’t tip you off) with a coalition government.
Remember, our national health care was enacted by a minority Liberal government with the assistance of the Creditistes, a regional Quebec party of the ’60’s. The best legislation of the twentieth century in Canada was almost all the result of minority governments. All hail forced co-operation!
Pics of Harper looking all pouty and pissed off may be found here.
Wow.
WOW.
The U.S. is messed up but you folks have a real cuisinart political system!
All I can say as a Lefty American on the outside looking in is to say that if your conservatives are like ours?
Get rid of ‘em!
It’s not that our system is cuisinart, it’s that it allows more than 2 choices. We currently have four active federal parties (Conservative, Liberal, NDP, and Bloc), and we may have a fifth, the Green Party, soon.
I actually like this system because of the liklihood of getting more minority governments — governments which can be summarily tossed out (and by summarily, I mean within a week) if they piss off enough people.
You guys are stuck with your elected kings for four years (Presidents), or six years, (in the case of Liebermans).
For further discussion of these developments see Making Light here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makin…..tml#010835
For translation of all the options into program code (yes, seriously) see the subsequent post here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makin…..tml#010837
Our con..serve..themselves party is typical of most.They make policies that benefit corporations and not the middle or lower class. Funny how politicians in Canada and the US don’t seem to know that there is people below the poverty line. Not even at election time.
There is about as much difference between the Liberals/ Conservatives as there is between the Democrats / Republicans. Harper does what the US tells him to do. I suspect he broke his own rule and called an election because he was told to by the US. Harper is much disliked by many of us. The MSM is as bad here as it is in the US. They pushed for him like the MSM is pushing for Palin.
I hope that Harper is dumped on his fat ass. Not too sure how the parties will rule together, but it should be very entertaining to watch.
About 60 per cent of the MPs in the Commons oppose Harper. Minority governments can’t survive unless the PM works very hard to gain at least some opposition support, and for sure they won’t survive if the PM spits in the opposition’s faces, which Harper did. So one way or another, he’s a goner. How can you tell that a lot of us are suddenly very happy?
I agree that there isn’t a lot of light between the Cons and the Libs, but it’s also true that minority Liberal governments, with a good NDP caucus to keep them honest, have produced our most progressive legislation.
Och, if Tommy Douglas were here, you know what he’d be saying: “Courage, my friends — it’s not to late to build a better world.”
(NB: Tommy Douglas was leader of the old CCF and then the NDP, father of universal health care in Canada; he was voted greatest Canadian in a CBC poll last year, and was incidentally grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland.)
Pedantry: The term “dominion” is outdated (although some of us have a sentimental fondness for it). The former dominions of the Commonwealth are now known as “realms” within the Commonwealth and are equal in status to the republics.
In all the Commonwealth countries, there is a separation of government (prime minister) and state (president or queen). They all recognize the queen as head of the Commonwealth, but republics have their own presidents as head of state, while the queen, through her representative the GG, is head of state in the realms.
And this sentence is a little confused:
The passage in bold is mistaken. The only way to bring down the government is to oppose them on a confidence motion. The Bloc is free to vote against the coalition on any other matter, but that will not bring down the government. Governments often lose votes but do not fall.