The two contests for the federal leadership, the NDP -- already started -- and the Liberal -- on hold -- give an opportunity to think political realignment in Canada.
These leadership races could be an opportunity for serious debate about proportional representation, to give every person an equal vote, and climate change, the most urgent issue humankind faces, and one where the majority in Parliament is at odds with the majority of Canadians.
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Dear Mr. Ignatieff,
Your statement of March 7, 2011 re: Israeli Apartheid Week is deeply unethical. I say this not simply because of your unethical support for Israel, but because the statements you make in condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week betray a deep lack of intellectual integrity.
The odds now seem to favour a spring election -- as Stephen Harper headed out across the country with his cabinet ministers to announce over $300 million in goodies. In anticipating yet another campaign it is worth remembering that without the NDP Canadian politics (outside Quebec) would look an awful lot like the U.S.: two political parties, economically and socially right-wing, both with a recent history of dismantling the activist state, and gutting its revenue base through huge tax cuts. All the while pretending to compete for our hearts and minds.
The Leader of the Official Opposition has put the Harper government on notice. The prime minister must cancel the scheduled reduction in the corporate income tax (worth $10 billion in lost revenue over three years) in the upcoming federal budget, or the Liberal party will vote against his government. In this case, unless it gets the (unlikely) support of the NDP or the Bloc in a budget vote, the Harper government will fall, triggering a Spring election.
National party leaders are criss-crossing Canada testing their messages with supporters and would-be-supporters. In the two-week period before the House of Commons resumes at the end of January, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, and Michael Ignatieff are off and running in a national pre-election campaign mode.
The Conservatives are leading in the polls, but without enough popular support to win a majority. Looking to make a significant move upwards in the next weeks, Harper has adopted a two-stage "Here for Canada" strategy to ready his party to win the additional 12 seats he needs for a parliamentary majority.
Canada's 40th Parliament ends its current session this week. It will resume sitting in February, and after a few weeks, a budget debate is expected to trigger an election show down. Shuffling of voting intentions between Liberal and Conservative has drawn most media interest; especially with the Conservatives back on top. However, going back to the 2008 election, what characterizes Canadian public opinion is how little things have changed. The Liberals and Conservatives share between them something over 65 per cent of voting intentions, while the three other parties share something short of 35 per cent.
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