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"Excuse me, M. Dion, I don't want to be a cabinet minister in your government because I think I should be the Prime Minister. Even if it means that the Liberal party won't take power when it otherwise could."
That's not a statement that a Liberal really wants to make in public.
The whole thing is running on a knife edge which is why it's interesting to watch.
Dion may have to promise to be an interim Prime Minister in order to make it happen, which would be weird and excruciating for Dion. The question then is whether or not Iggy and Rae trust him, OTOH, even if he is Prime Minister he probably doesn't have enough support to go into an election.
Popcorn in any event.
Because it is an entirely fanciful outcome.
First, all it takes is 17 opposition MPs to go to the bathroom for the government to stand - nowhere near as embarrassing for the Liberals (or the Bloc) as the shenanigans in the last house. That`s 17 to the bathroom or 8 to vote with the government. (143+2=145 v a combined opposition of 163-1=162 - presuming Mr. Speaker Milliken is returned to that office.)
Second, while a qquick defeat would give the GG the OPTION of asking for another person to form a government, it would still be at her discretion. Doubtless her prime advisor (the PM) would say that he doesn't see how anyone else could possibly win confidence. So will anyone else on her staff. Unless she sees a reasonable chance of success, she will not offer the opportunity to Dion or to Layton oor to Duceppe or to me or even to you.
Third, if she did offer the opportunity to Dion the net result is liable to make both him and her look foolish. Dion would be as big a fool to take it as Jean would be to offer it. An unsuccessful attempt by someone else to win confidence will make that person (likely Dion) look weak, and will make the GG look like a petty, interfering partisan.
Finally, any deal would require all three opposition parties to sign on. Any two and you might convince me it's possible. All three? Ain't gonna happen.
I may have misunderstood your post, but I read it as suggesting that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc would agree to some sort of formal coalition or similar arrangement if the Harper government fell on a vote of non-confidence. This is realistically the only way the opposition parties could form a government - all three would have to unite. Even if you had a formal Liberal-NDP coalition, that's only 115 seats, so they would need a formal arrangement with the Bloc that the Bloc would vote confidence and supply, if not an outright Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition, before the GG would ask them to form a government.
A coalition or similar arrangement of this sort with the Bloc would be political suicide for the NDP and Liberals in the ROC, and they know it, so it's a non-starter. I know it's fashionable around here to pretend like the Bloc is just a Quebec version of the NDP but a government that included the Bloc would be anathema to the vast majority of voters in the political mainstream in the ROC.
Why would it be necessary to have a written agreement from the Bloc that they would vote confidence? Our minority governments have never had any such assurances-what matters is support in the House, not backroom written agreements. All the Bloc would have to say was what they always say-that they would vote in the best interests of Quebec, deciding on each piece of legislation as it comes. So obviously they would find it easier to work with a government that didn't make passing draconian crime legislation a confidence issue.
I think you have a very low opinion of Canadians if you think they would have a problem with other parties cooperating with the Bloc in such an event. It certainly didn't hurt the Conservatives in the ROC when their budget passed with only support from the Bloc.
This is not going to happen this year because the Liberals, despite having helped stop Harper get a majority, have convinced themselves that they lost, to justify dumping Dion. They have no will to replace Harper right now, although they may pretend otherwise. If a non-confidence vote passed after the throne speech debate, they would demand a recount.
However, in general: it would be necessary to have some understanding that the Bloc would support the new minority government on its own throne speech debate, or the new government would be a farce. In fact, if the new government was defeated on its first confidence vote too, the GG should probably ask Harper if he wants to try again.
But if you don't want to be hung out to dry by the Bloc publicly saying the throne speech was not good enough, and demanding some concession to Quebec as its price for letting the government survive the week, and then threatening to keep playing the same game -- or if the Bloc doesn't want their bluff to be called by the new government, having survived the first confidence vote, then taking a hard line with the Bloc and saying "go ahead, defeat us if you dare, we'll gladly ask the voters to release us from this blackmail and give us a majority" -- both the minority government and the Bloc need a confidence and supply agreement with at least a two-year term. Exactly as both the Liberals and the NDP realized in Ontario in 1985.
Now, it IS possible that the Harper gov't will not be able to win confidence. What is not possible (barring a clear agreement among all three opposition parties) is an invitation for anyone else to form a government.
An election is the inevitable fallout of an early defeat of the Harper government, as surely as night follows day.
Unless someone "forgets" they were paired, or something, and invites the government to move a motion of confidence which then passes. The precedents indicate that the proper constitutional course of action is for the government to introduce its own confidence motion within a few days, as with the 1968 defeat of the Pearson government's supply motion. In that instance the prime minister argued that several members were unable to return in time for the vote called at short notice. He then adjourned the House and reconvened with an explicit vote of confidence with all members present who could attend; he won that vote and carried on governing.
If the defeat is on the first confidence vote in the new House, I disagree. In that case the GG has no discretion: she asks the leader of the opposition if he wishes to try to obtain the confidence of the House.
The discretion arises if the government survives for a while, and then loses the confidence of the House -- perhaps because a member has crossed the floor. If that happens within six months or so of the election, the GG may refuse to dissolve the House -- but in that case I agree, she would look for a clear agreement among all three opposition parties before refusing dissolution.
How so? If the government is defeated accidentally, Michaelle Jean would have had nothing to do with that.
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With the country facing growing unemployment in the wake of free-trade imports driving down prices and profits, Baldwin decided to call an early general election in December 1923 to seek a mandate to introduce protectionist tariffs and thus drive down unemployment. Although this succeeded in reuniting his divided party, the election outcome was inconclusive: the Conservatives won 258 Members of Parliament, labor 191 and the Liberals 159. While the Conservatives retained a plurality in the House of Commons, they had been clearly defeated on the central election issue of tariffs. Baldwin remained Prime Minister until the opening session of the new Parliament in January 1924, at which time the government was defeated in a motion of confidence vote. He resigned immediately.
Return to office
For the next ten months, an unstable minority Labor government under Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald held office, but it too fell and another general election was held in October 1924. This election brought a landslide majority of 223 for the Conservative party, primarily at the expense of the now terminally declining Liberals. .
It seems to me that the difference between Britain 1924 and Canada 2008 is that Baldwin had run on a particular issue and had clearly lost on that issue, losing 86 seats and being reduced from a substantial majority to a slim minority, whereas Harper's support actually increased (albeit slightly) in this election.
I still think that in the present case the only way to avoid an election if Harper fell on a confidence vote would be if the three opposition parties cobbled themselves together into some sort of coalition or alliance. The Liberals have half as many seats as the Tories and the NDP has half as many again as the Liberals. I think most people would agree that no arrangement would be workable and likely to satisfy the GG it could win a confidence vote without formal support from the Bloc, which is a political non-starter both for the Liberals and NDP and, I suspect, for the Bloc as well.
None of which would help him if he is defeated on the first confidence vote in the new House. By every precedent he must then resign (unless he can quickly win a second confidence vote, on the 1968 Pearson precedent.)
In practice, you are correct.
Not because Dion would have to satisfy the GG before being allowed to try to win the confidence of the House (assuming Harper has been defeated on the first confidence vote), but because, without such an alliance, the Dion minority government would also fall quickly or be too shaky to have credibility. Therefore the Liberals would decline to even try to form a government without such an alliance.
Although they might play some interesting games: can you imagine the Liberals defeating Harper on the first vote, then keeping the country in suspense for 24 or 48 hours while they pretend to negotiate with Jack Layton, and then blame Jack Layton for partisanship, give up the attempt, and move a reluctant motion of confidence in Harper's government, saying the NDP left them no alternative?
No, the Liberals would never trust Dion to play that game well, would they?