Harper delays his demise

Relevant Link

Good to see my buddy Mike on Don Street in Winnipeg blogging again.  He is always a good person to debate with and can be very tricky to beat.

Relevant Link

In the face of impending defeat, Stephen Harper has delayed a confidence vote by a week.  This gives him a week to cave into the opposition demands, or to poke them some more.  I wouldn't put it past Harper to do the later.  But seriously, this fiscal update is without a doubt the biggest political blunder since John Turner "could have said no".  If the Conservatives are defeated and there is an election, it will be the shortest lived parliament in history.

To suggest that the Conservatives have sole right to be in power because they won the most seats is rediculous, as has been shown in history.  In 1925, the Conservatives won the most seats, but because the Progressive Party was more likely to side with the Liberals, they were the ones who got power.  Of course, that only lasted a couple of months before they fell, but it lasted longer than the Arthur Meighan government, that fell after 3 days.  However, I think in this case, the other parties have a self interest in keeping the Conservatives out for a while so that they have time to recover from the last election.  I would anticapte that a coalition government would last until next fall, enough time for the Liberals to get a new leader and probably enough time for the Conservatives to consider throwing out Harper for such a foolish move.

What the hell are the Conservatives doing?

Relevant Link

Don Martin is one of the best political analysist in Canada, and I think he hits it bang on with the Conservative plan to "save money" by eliminating public financing of political parties.  Having followed the Green Party since the 2004 election, it is clear that they would not have been able to mount the past two campaigns without public financing.  By having public financing, it allows smaller parties who may have more support with people less able to donate money, it allows these smaller parties to operate.  What is really jarring is that the Conservatives have such a high amount of donations, that the relative amount they get with public financing is far less than the other parties.  All of the opposition parties get more than 50% of their funding from the public financing, while the Conservatives only rely on 37%.

The sad thing is that this was likely just a way to divert attention from the fact that this fiscal update offers up no plan to help the economy.  The only way they balanced the budget was by putting in $10 billion in anticipated sales of crown corporations.  Selling crown corporations is the worst way to budget, as once they are gone they will never again provide benefit to the government.  There is no stimulus package either, something that every other major economy is putting forward.  As exports decrease, unemployment will increase, and there needs to be plans in place to create jobs now, before the rate increases too much and tax revenue goes away to start those jobs.  Shoring up infrastructure is an obvious way to create jobs and create important spinoffs.

Considering how bad this fiscal update is, there may very will be another election.  I hope instead that the opposition parties can come up with some sort of agreement to make a coalition government for a year or two in order to give these delusional Conservatives a time out and to let them recover from the election.

The Quebec Election

Relevant CBC Editorial

Now, I am pretty much electioned out, and have chosen to pretty much ignore the election in Quebec, the second in just over a year.  Everything is pointing to the ADQ collapsing.  People do not like Jean Charest and nobody cares about separation right now.

The article I linked is certainly sensationalist.  I have driven through a large part of Quebec, and I didn't think that the roads were any worse than anywhere else in Canada.  I don't really know a whole lot of people who are from Quebec, so I cannot comment on the health care and education systems.  There has been a common theme that is heard from many commentators that the province has stagnated as the red herring of separation from Canada continues to persist.  The politics of Quebec continues to be stuck on tired ideals based solely on separation vs continuation in Canada.  Right now, Quebec, no less than the rest of Canada, needs leadership to deal with the recession and ultimately build up infrastructure.  Although blaming socialism is probably a bit harsh, it is unlikely that any of the three parties has any real plan to deal with the real problems facing Quebec.