Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘tories’

The inevitable result of the petty political squabbling has occurred: Parliament has been shut down to stave off a no-confidence vote that would have been scheduled for Monday, where the opposition was trying to take over the country in what essentially would amount to a bloodless coup.

Looks, it’s quite simple: You don’t have to like who’s elected, but you have to respect the will of the electorate. A power grab “just cause we can” is the last thing that the country needs.

Dion, Layton and Duceppe need to back off from the brink, cool off, and find a way to at least give the Conservative minority government a chance to work. For the good of everyone. Because Harper may have been elected by a minority, but that’s more people than the zero who voted for the proposed Liberal-NDP coalition.

Now that Parliament has been suspended, maybe it’s time to lock all four of them in a room together and force them to work out their issues and get back to the task at hand: Running the country.

Another day, another Conservative minority. Stephen Harper can talk all he wants about it being a “strengthened” minority, but the fact is he called this election with the objective of securing a majority government. He failed. ‘

Stephane Dion led the Liberals to one of their worst results in history, and the pundits were calling for his head on a platter even before the votes were finished being counted. He, more than anyone, failed.

Gilles Duceppe set out to prevent a Conservative majority, and that worked. But the Bloc didn’t change its position much since 2006. At best, a neutral result for the Bloc.

Elizabeth May’s Party saw more popular vote breakthroughs, but failed to win a single seat – the stated objective for the Greens in this campaign. May will spin this campaign as a big success, but she, too, failed.

The big winner? Jack Layton and the NDP, who bolstered their support – not at the expense of the Conservatives, but at the expense of the Liberals. In Layton’s book, where power is everything and soundbytes run rampant, this result represents success.

The big loser? The Canadian public. This election cost taxpayers $300 million bucks. This in the midst of an economic crisis. And this, for an election in which only 59% of people voted – the lowest turnout in history.

To quote Don MacPherson in the Gazette:

This year’s campaign was the most negative ever, with the parties doing a much better job of explaining to voters why they should vote against their opponents than why they should vote for them.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if once again, the most popular choice yesterday was “none of the above.”

The Election Prediction Project is forecasting 125 seats for the Conservatives, 94 for the Liberals, 51 for the Bloc, 36 for the NDP, and 2 for Independent candidates. They’ve been pretty dead-on in past elections, so we’ll see if that trend continues this time.

Voting is our most fundamental right and privilege. Regardless of your politics, make sure to exercise that right today and vote. Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the results.

A CBC reporter was caught red-handed playing favourites among federal political parties:

A Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who covers Parliament will be reassigned because she inappropriately wrote questions for an opposition legislator, the public broadcaster said on Monday.

The ruling Conservative Party — no fan of the CBC — complained that television journalist Krista Erickson had given the questions to a Liberal member of a committee examining the dealings of a former Conservative prime minister.

Whatever your politics, you have to admit that this is a new low for the CBC. Our tax dollars at work.

With the Conservatives’ popularity rising, and Harper so far refusing to cave to the opposition parties’ throne speech demands, the only question in this high-stakes game of political chicken is: who will swerve first?

Hard to say, but I’m betting Harper is sleeping better than Dion, these days.

Bribery money for Quebec, tokens to the environmentalists, money for families and small business incentives were some of the highlights of today’s spend-happy, tax-cuts-devoid federal budget, announced by Tory Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

The Bloc Quebecois banded together with the Tories to avoid a government collapse. But most people don’t believe this minority government will last more than a few months longer. A friend of mine was just hired by Elections Canada, so if you’re the betting type, you might want to put your money on spring or summer.

All that the Tories have managed to do with this budget is to legitimatize the Quebecois claim of a “fiscal imbalance” and to make an attempt at social engineering. The Tories seem to have forgotten their promises to balance the budget, cut taxes and grow the economy, preferring to tell people that they should drive greener cars, get married, have more babies, and own businesses that don’t grow too big. From a financial management perspective, based on initial impressions, I’d give it a D.

The key question is, will the extra $2.3 billion be enough to elect Jean Charest next week?

Stephane Dion is wasting no time clarifying the policy differences between his Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Tories, with his promise to scrap the GST cut to fund the environment:

He told the university audience that he would not follow through with a promise by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reduce the GST to five per cent, from six per cent, by 2011.

“(The GST cut) is $5.5 billion out of the economy every year and it will not transform the economy and it is not a good social policy,” Dion said.

Instead, he would introduce tax measures that would encourage people to choose appliances that conserve electricity, cars that use the least amount of gas and for retrofitting homes to reduce heating fuel consumption.

“We want to make a link between your wallet and the planet,” he said, adding that such measures will be part of the party’s next election platform. ”It’s the way you change the culture.”

This is actually pretty savvy of Dion. The announcement is clear-cut, it’s easy to understand, and it comes at a time when the environment is at an all-time high as a voter concern.

Now, we can argue all we want about whether it’s a good idea to reverse tax cuts to try to use the government for social engineering, or whether the GST cut was a silly idea to begin with, or what the best way really is to help the environment. But whichever side of this one you’re on, the most encouraging sign is that suddenly we have a debate that’s once again about vision and policy, rather than about scandal and character. If this is a sign of things to come, I, for one, find it downright refreshing.

Parliament voted to uphold legalized gay marriage today, defeating a motion introduced by the Harper government to appease their right-wing base:

“We made a promise to hold a free vote and we kept that promise. The result was decisive and we’ll accept the democratic result,” Harper told reporters.

Legislators voted 175 to 123 to reject a motion by the right-leaning Conservatives to re-examine the law, which some religious groups and critics say undermines society.

This motion was defeated by an even wider margin than that by which the initial law was passed last year (158-133), indicating that most of the country believes that this has already been decided, and it’s pointless to keep drumming it up. Same-sex couples have had the threat of the law being reversed hanging over their head ever since Harper took office, so hopefully this means that everyone can now get over the issue and move on to things that actually matter.

Well, maybe. Or maybe not. Nobody seems to know for sure what the results of a vote on whether to re-open the gay marriage debate in Parliament will mean, other than that Stephen Harper will notch one more promise onto his belt that he can claim to have kept.

I suppose the Tories need to do this, get past it, and get on with things; Harper is probably even secretly grateful that it’s likely they’ll lose. Despite his personal convictions, the last thing he wants is a divisive fight on the issue and lengthy court battles. Then again, the timing makes me wonder whether he’s just trying to mobilize his conservative base ahead of an election.

In any case, the motion will probably be easily defeated. Here’s hoping people can get over it at that point and get on with things, and that they don’t allow this to devolve into a neverendum-referendum situation. The Quebec sovereignty issue is already one thing too many that refuses to go away. We don’t need another.

Harper is under attack for his “pro-Israel stance”… at least, according to Reuters:

The decision by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to take a pro-Israeli stance is unwise and could cost him votes in the next election, particularly after seven Canadians were killed by an Israeli attack, political observers and commentators said on Monday.

Harper’s Conservatives, who took power in February after 13 years of Liberal rule, have a fragile minority and rely on support from other parties to govern.

Harper is widely expected to call an election in the first half of next year but to win a majority he will need to start winning seats in major cities like Toronto and Montreal, both of which have large ethnic Arab populations.

“A lot of Lebanese voted Conservative (in the last election) because they were tired of the Liberals,” said Mazen Chouaib, executive director of the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.

“Those who would have been swayed to vote Conservative will not do so (next) time,” he told Reuters.

Note how the article only vaguely refers to “commentators”, before quoting a clearly biased interested party that makes no sense on the key issue because most Arab-Canadians didn’t vote Conservative in the first place.

This is nothing more than a thinly-veiled editorial disguised as news. I can sleep well at night knowing that such a high quality of journalim exists.