"a viable alternative government " / "un gouvernement de rechange viable"

I agree pretty much 100% with Scott Reid's strategic analysis:

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081129.WReid29/BNStory/politics

Scott Reid was Paul Martins flack- the beer and popcorn guy.

Stockholm wrote:

No, why would it? The Tories have not in any way backed down on getting rid of party funding. All they have done is take it out of the bill to be voted on on Monday - they are still committed to scrapping the funding in a stand alone bill in coming weeks.

The Liberals would have to be NUTS to let the Tories survive on a vote on their broad economic policies and then vote them down in two weeks in a vote purely on the party funding.

I doubt the second vote would be a confidence vote. If they had any brains, the Conservatives would, or would have, tried to cut, not eliminate the funding. Particularly as a stand alone bill, it would make it more difficult for the opposition to oppose.

Pierre Beaudet blogged on this today also:

"The Bloc on the other hand are ambivalent. Their left-leaning heart
tells them to support the anti-Stephen alliance. Their realpolitik head
tells them that Stephen is the best enemy they can have. In the end,
however, they understand popular moods; they will come on board. The
NDP probably has the most to gain although a similar alliance with the
Liberals in the 1970s did not yield an increase in support for them.

Can these politicians have a sense of what is at stake and overthrow
the right-wing revolutionaries? It requires that the the Liberal
establishment refuses the lousy deal that Stephen will without doubt
offer, like scrapping the cutback in party financing. But
fundamentally, it requires that citizens wake up and come out and
shout, ‘throw the bums out'"

The thought of Jack the double dipper influencing increases in both taxes and government debt as part of a Liberal coalition is frightening.

The prudent course for economic stimulation is to wait for Obama's direction and tailor Canada's stimulus accordingly rather than throwing taxpayers' money at Ontario's auto industry and Quebec's forest industry. This leaderless coalition of the grasping is doomed to disintegrate but it can do lasting damage to Canada in the meantime.

Ratbert wrote:

The thought of Jack the double dipper influencing increases in both taxes and government debt as part of a Liberal coalition is frightening.

The prudent course for economic stimulation is to wait for Obama's direction and tailor Canada's stimulus accordingly rather than throwing taxpayers' money at Ontario's auto industry and Quebec's forest industry. This leaderless coalition of the grasping is doomed to disintegrate but it can do lasting damage to Canada in the meantime.

I highly doubt any tax increase to corporations is likely to go through in this potential coalition. However, it is unlikely that they would cut corporate taxes anymore either. Also,every single country in the developed world is prepared to go into deficit to deal with this crisis, and most of them were already before this crisis struck. Jack has no special status in this, as the liberals are prepared to spend more in this time of need. 

I imagine you've failed to notice but Obama is already directing policy in this 'lame duck' session of Congress. It doesn't take a genius to figure out generally where he is going on this or even where the rest of the world is going.

 Money should not be blindly 'thrown' at the auto industry and even the Democrats in Congress are not prepared to do such a thing. The only way money should be invested in the auto sector should be on conditions of major reform, and that is what the opposition wants to be a part of as Congress has already started that process.

Personally I think they need to go bankrupt in order for major changes to happen, but I'm not strictly against any support, however deserving the big three need a kick in the ass.

The forestry industry is failing all across canada, not just in quebec, and it is largely to do with US consumer demand. 

The lasting damage to Canada you are referring to is already being done by the Conservative Government, and they need to be replaced.

There is rising consensus that Dion will remain as leader and will become Prime Minister for the time being.

Webgear wrote:

I am not sure where to place this rant but here seems like a good spot.

 

I watched the members of parliament working on Thursday evening night for about 1 hour around. I had a few hours to kill before meeting a friend, so I thought I would go to Parliament Hill and observe the politicians at work,  I was not impressed with the conduct of the professionalism and so called leadership of this country.

 

The speakers I witness were horrible, none of them were clear or concise. Their statements lacked common sense, and direction. It was nothing but personal attacks against the opposite parties.

 

Mr. Layton was the best overall, however he was too quite for my liking, there was passion in his voice however it seemed to scripted.

 

Hardly anyone paying attention when a member was speaking, there were at least 4 groups of MPs having there own personal discussion, another dozen were too busy playing with their blackberries and I saw some MPs just looking at the roof for minutes on end. There were countless and unnecessary comments from other parties against the speaker.

 

I can not believe what I saw, it was like sitting in a daycare centre and the kids were let lose to do whatever they wanted.

 

What a sad state of affairs this county is in.

That is what has happened since cable.

I will back you up on most of this. I should know I worked there for a bit. MPs will all pack into the house behind someone speaking at the correct tv angle in order to give the illusion that the house is full. Most of the speeches are directed for the camera. There are tvs in every office where MPs and the like will monitor the goings on of the house without being present. 

 It's terrible! Question Period is the worst. Heckling is just so lame! I've seen some of the younger Con MPs playing video games on their laptops in house even. Most of the activities in the house are partisan and scripted. The less partisan activities tend to happen in committies although that has been largely tainted since the conservatives gained power as well. The real stuff generally happens in the lobbies behind both sides of the house as well as elsewhere around the hill outside the eye of the public. There is generally more cooperation behind the scenes than appears on tv. It's not all bad, but it certainly is generally quite disturbing!

Has any other provincial governments other than Quebec spoken on the issue yet?  If not endorsing along the lines of "we'd be happy to work with such a coalition government"  then why not?  Prefer the CONs?  or afraid of the hand that feeds *or rather starves* them if the coalition plan evaporates?

.....gonna make my morning java...snow again! I just shoveled!...

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why is it that polling booths look like cattle chutes?

The message from Harper Crew seems to be:

"If that isn't enough of a climb down, we'll go further."

Apparently they are now going to remove the party financing cut legislation entirely, not just delay it. And Flaherty is going to make some announcements today....

I'm still trying to figure out the logic of what they had in mind. Clearly they were bullying again and way overplayed their hand this time. But I still cannot figure what was supposed to work.

The best I could come up with is that they planned all along to just say that the party financing cuts would be part of the confidence vote and then say they weren't. That would be assuming that the Liberals were going to cave on the economic update... and catch them in the headlights when as the Libs changed their story about how they would vote when the part financing was no longer part of the package.

Makes sense, and that's what it looks like. And it has never seemed possible the Cons thought the Liberlas would vote for cutting the party funding even with a confidence vote. But....

It doesn't really make sense. Because that assumes the Liberals were going to cave on the economic package. Not an unwarranted assumption given their performance to date- not to mention Dion's indications he was going to keep doing it.

So fine, the Liberals were reasonably expected to cave. That is by far the main action for Harper Crew. Then what would the threat/withdraw of  manouver be for?

It wouldn't have anything to do with helping cow the Liberals line.

So I guess the ploy was just thrown into the mix so that when the economic package [presumably] passed with the usual caving from the Liberals... they weren't going to be staisfied with just getting it passed.

They also wanted to duck the inevitable follow up commentary taht they were not actually doing anything about the economy. Put the spotlight on the Liberlas instead.

Not that it really matters exactly what they had in mind. Whatever that was, it was a product of extreme arrogance and hubris. Including a demonstration of how even as we do the inevitable caving to Keynesianism, we'll do at our own pace, and with our own little twist of extreme bashing out at civil servants and more humiliation of our opponents.

"Your statement is rather disingenuous because what you refer to as"gave
away tens of billions of dollars of revenue" is actually allowing
owners to keep their funds rather than government taxing it and "giving
it away" to others"

That statement demonstrates the deep ignorance behind Conservative thought. Taxes pay for all of the serviices including police and military and the hardware little Conservative minds liove not to mention bailouts for profitable banks. Conservatives are the very people always demanding that free lunch on the dime of the people who do pay taxes - the middle-,  and working-classes.

Sources told the Star last night that high-level talks are afoot to choose someone other than departing Liberal leader Stéphane Dion as the interim leader of a coalition government. One prominent name being mentioned is former Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale.

"It can't be Dion because Canadians so massively rejected him," said one senior Ontario Liberal.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/546135

Frustrated Mess wrote:

That statement demonstrates the deep ignorance behind Conservative thought. Taxes pay for all of the serviices including police and military and the hardware little Conservative minds liove not to mention bailouts for profitable banks. Conservatives are the very people always demanding that free lunch on the dime of the people who do pay taxes - the middle-,  and working-classes.

You are absolutely correct!

Moreover, if we are talking oil company profits, or natural gas profits, or any other resource extraction profits, we are talking about profits made off of the exploitation of Canadian resources. To which, in my mind, they do not have the right to  make excessive profits off of, in the first place, let alone have those profits become essentially, tax free.

That is saying nothing also, about the use of publically funded  infrastructure that they use to make their profits from, but apparently have no desire to support and sustain.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

gram:

Interesting idea! ....But bad for two reasons:

1. political calculation of the Bloc will not be to just install the best PM, it would be to install the best PM FOR THIER PURPOSES. Whomever they see as more of a threat, as an election draws near, would be  Duceppe's tactical calculation not "who's best leader for the the country", which could be either/or and would depend on the Govm't popularity.

2. OPTICS. The Cons will get some but (I bet) very little milage for saying the Coalition has the support of separatists as they will not be a formal part of the of the coalition. HOWEVER, giving them the discretion of picking the PM is a completely different story.

mojoroad, You're right, it was just a thought of the moment, to help keep the BQ support...

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http://www.gandhiserve.org/information/questions_and_answers/faq7/faq7.html

KenS wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out the logic of what they had in mind. Clearly they were bullying again and way overplayed their hand this time. But I still cannot figure what was supposed to work.

The best I could come up with is that they planned all along to just say that the party financing cuts would be part of the confidence vote and then say they weren't. That would be assuming that the Liberals were going to cave on the economic update... and catch them in the headlights when as the Libs changed their story about how they would vote when the part financing was no longer part of the package.

Makes sense, and that's what it looks like. And it has never seemed possible the Cons thought the Liberlas would vote for cutting the party funding even with a confidence vote. But....

It doesn't really make sense. Because that assumes the Liberals were going to cave on the economic package. Not an unwarranted assumption given their performance to date- not to mention Dion's indications he was going to keep doing it.

My hypothesis on this, for what it's worth at this stage, is that the Conservatives somehow believed the NDP would implicitly or quietly support them, or at least not oppose them so forcefully as to prevent it passing.

I think the Conservatives had convinced themselves that the NDP would conclude that it could survive without the funding while the Liberals and Greens couldn't, and we would see that as a worthwhile enough strategic objective to try and achieve.

Where that went wrong is that (i) philosphically, the NDP is the most wedded to the concept of public financing of the political process to keep private interests out of it, and (ii) practically, the Conservatives presented a fiscally dishonest and ideologically vicious statement that the NDP could never support on either score.  Harper forgot that the D in our party's name stands for "democrats".

And in general the Conservatives made it pretty clear that the talk about unprecedented cooperation across the floor was nothing more than the usual BS talking point, meaning that the writing was on the wall in terms of what we could expect from them going forward.  It was clear they were going to try and use the economic crisis to advance conservative ideological makeovers of the Canadian state and political culture, and that was just a bridge too far for Layton and the Caucus, one that had to be stopped in the interest of the country.

Anyways, that's my take on it.

Frustrated Mess wrote:

KenS wrote:

It occurs to me that in all these threads over the last few days, I can't remember seeing a comment from any of the long time Green partisans. [With the possible exception of WCG, whose comments do not always have something to do with the GP].

It also occurs to this might be because the coalition being considered will shrink the political space for the Green Party.  Especially for May, considering all her proclivities and past pronouncements?

??

May supports a coalition. Sorry to burst your irrational partisan bubble.

I'm aware May supports the coalition. Duh.

And you didn't answer my question. Although it was addressed to Green partisans, or someone who wants to guess what they think. You are not a Green partisan, and you said nothing about what they are thinking/doing.

Of course the coalition is a good thing. But they are quiet. even the Green blogs have had little to nothing to say on this.

Harper has set a nice trap for the opposition, and the NDP is about to fall into it with the other parties.

The Harper Conservatives know there is nothing they can do to stop the economic crisis that is only just beginning to be felt in Canada, and for which they bear a large part of the responsibility. They would rather let the opposition parties try - and fail, as they ultimately will - to "fix" the economy while the Harperites stand aside and criticize.

When the next election rolls around, the  voters will be ready to hand Harper his majority. After all, there will be no other alternative to the coalition than a Conservative government.

I suspect that we hear nothing from the so-called Greens because they are 100% irrelevant to what is going on. In order to have any role whatsoever to play in this drama - you have to have representation in parliament - and the Greens don't - so who cares?

on top of that it must be driving EMay nuts to see the NDP - the party she hates with all her heart - playing such a major role in dumping the Tories. She is like a child with her nose pressed against the glass window of a candy shop watching all the other parties having fun - while all she can do is watch. In this case "green" means green with ENVY.

I am waiting for the ratchet up of rhetoric by the Conservatives over the next week. I think we have only seen the very begining of a full court press.

I am begining to wonder if it isn't Stevie who will be making the trip to see the GG thus plunging us into an election based on his abhorrance of our parliamentary democratic system.  Stevie really wants to be President, but we don't have one.

He can't go see the G-G unless his government falls. And if it falls, it will either be with a coalition ready to go (in which case the G-G will select the coalition) or not (in which case there will be another election). Either way, it would appear that he no longer controls the outcome here.

Oh, and remember "fixed election dates" LOL?? Mme Jean may be enough of a lackey that she agreed to the October election (which she didn't have to do) - do you think she's been well-enough paid to grant Harper a second wish contrary to his own lying hypocritical law?

Probably...

Stockholm wrote:

it must be driving EMay nuts to see the NDP - the party she hates with all her heart - playing such a major role in dumping the Tories. She is like a child with her nose pressed against the glass window of a candy shop watching all the other parties having fun - while all she can do is watch. In this case "green" means green with ENVY.

You don't read anything you haven't wrote yourself, do you? No wonder political discourse in this country borders on the infantile.

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

I am begining to wonder if it isn't Stevie who will be making the trip
to see the GG thus plunging us into an election based on his abhorrance
of our parliamentary democratic system.  Stevie really wants to be
President, but we don't have one.

Even if he does, the GG can still ask the opposition to try and form a government.

The magnitude of Harper's childish blunder must finally be coming home to him. He has set in motion wheels not easily stopped.

Nonsense of course, mspector. You do not know that they will fail, nor do you know how big the fall out will be once the cooked books of the Cons are exposed.

Moreover, Canadians might like the coalition framework, and thus PR would be a go.

I see your arguments as that of arguing for status quo and for the continuation of FPTP, and those 2 issues continuing is unacceptable. It seems, to me, that you would rather sit on the side, and be able to complain bitterly about the current system's failures, than you would try to create positive change.

Moreover, there would be no difference in allowing Harper, to govern as if he had a majority, than if he actually had one. Just to be able to say "I stood on my principles" is not good enough.

Harper, seriously fucked up, do to his hubris, petty personality and his being out of touch with the majority of Canadians. It as nothing to do with a "trap".

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"watching the tide roll away"

so... they want to bump up the budget up to January? 

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/30/politics.html 

those CON posts are a real psyops campaign. 

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why is it that polling booths look like cattle chutes?

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

I think the Conservatives have backed themselves into a corner and are now in desperation mode.  Nothing fights harder than a pig blocked off from the trough.

Yes, I agree, but this fighting back might actually turn people off, as you can bet those muzzled MPs, will not remain muzzled. Moreover, the majority of Canadians voted against Harper, and they/we are not going to change position, to one of acceptance, when they can see the ugly face of the Harper Cons really exposed.

 Harper's fighting will only consolidate his already consolitdated base. And a lot of swing voters may be really turned off. They expected calmness and non-partisanship.

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"watching the tide roll away"