Canadian Government Crisis

[lesliepear]

Several of my LJ friends are referring to an unstable government in Canada - not sure of what's going on - I've never understood how the parlimentary system works with it's not regularly scheduled elections - maybe someone can explain what is going on.

I did like the comment that on asimplelifethat no one in Canada is talking about moving to the US if things go wrong :)

Comments

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

Ok... outline goes something like this:

We currently have a minority government. The conservatives have the most seats, but not a majority. The remaining seat are split between the liberals, the NDP (socialist), and the Bloc Quebecois (an odd party that's federal, but really only represents Quebec and has some seperatist leanings, but in recent years has mostly been pushing for special status benefits for french canadians).

This means that, because it has the most seats, the defacto leadership is the conservatives. They have to be careful, though, because they need to keep at least one other party onside to pass any legislation (to get their 50% + 1 needed to pass a measure).

Because of a) the economy and b) it being so close to an election so they thought they could get away with it they were trying to pass a bill that did a number of things. One, it removed the federal funding of political parties (currently, for every vote a party gets, they get x dollars from the gov't towards funding the party... I like this system because it means they aren't completely funded by contributors, giving them a little less reliance on large contributors and thereby lowering special interest group leverage). Two, it basically stripped all salary increases from already negotiated civil service contracts. Three, it removed the right for women to sue for equal pay status. Four, it temporarily removed the right to strike for three years.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is an extremely unpopular measure. I think it's abhorrent, personally. And if it had gone to the table as was, the other three parties would have voted against it. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except it would have been a vote of "non-confidence", meaning that it would symbolise that too many people didn't believe that the conservatives were ruling in the best interest of the Canadian people.

Another bone of contention is that the conservatives have not offered any form of "economic stimulus package", taking a wait and see approach. The other parties think that's irresponsible. I have no real opinion on that... my understanding of economics isn't good enough to comment.

In the event of a vote of non-confidence, the alternatives are:

1) A new election is called... less than 2 months after the last one. This would be what is known as a "bad idea".

2) The Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois get together and agree to rule as one group, as a coalition. These tend to be unstable and rather awkward. It would either disintegrate quickly, in which case there would be an election and the three groups would likely take a hit at the polls as "punishment". Or they succeed and last out the term... at which point they're unlikely to go into a second term as such.

3) Harper dissolves parliment kinda unofficially by putting it on a hiatus to avoid the issue. Which probably isn't a good idea either, as it means that nothing really gets done, although it does give him time to try and regain support from the other parties and apologise for trying to cram an ideology driven piece of legislation down our throats.

Now, to add a twist, the PM and parliament does not have final say over this. The person who will finally make the decision on which route is taken is the Governor General, Michaelle Jean.

I think I covered everything... in short and brief anyways.