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    Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

    I have read in a couple of places that the Opposition parties (Liberals, NDP, Bloc Quebecios) are considering getting a vote of no confidence against the ruling Tory minority government and installing a coalition government?

    Now is this just some crazy talk perputrated by the opposition, or do they mean business? Also, if they do get in power, could they get along in government?

    #2
    Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

    See Antonio Gramsci's "Battle Royal in the NPS" thread for recent postings on this.

    Utterly fascinating developments, this business.

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      #3
      Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

      Most recent posts here.

      My 28-11-2008 is where it starts up.

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        #4
        Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

        Thanks, WOM. Intresting read.

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          #5
          Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

          That thread is a couple of days old, and Gramsci's out of country at the moment. But today, the coalition is very much looking like a done deal, with a vote happening next Monday. My prediction (and I'm going to take a good beating over this) is that next Tuesday, we'll all be raising our glass to Prime Minister Michael Ignatieff.

          Caveat: Harper can choose to stand-down Parliament without dissolving it, and then all bets are off. Gonna be an interesting week.

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            #6
            Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

            Fascinating stuff, WOM. The only situation in US which remotely approached this is when a Senator switched parties and handed the US Senate over from the Republicans to the Democrats. The past year has seen some crazy stuff in Canadian politics.

            Unrelated question-how is the Bloc viewed in English speaking Canada?

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              #7
              Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

              Surely Gramsci is only trying to convince us (and the many intelligence services that monitor OTF) that he is in Uganda.

              We all know that he's pulling the strings for the whole thing behind the scenes. Ignatieff better watch his back . . .

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                #8
                Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                As a fairly benign nuisance/fact of life. They're not banging on about separating any more, so I think they're mainly seen as 'wanting to represent Quebec's interests'. They don't run candidates outside the province, so they wear their agenda on their sleeve. I disagree with Gramsci that it would be the kiss of death for the Liberals to align with them in a coalition.

                Linus would have a better take on them, albeit from inside the zone.

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                  #9
                  Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                  WOM - Go listen to some talk radio this weekend that isn't CBC. You'll see. This is utter madness.

                  Mind you, Harper's threat to prorogue Parliament just two weeks after a throne speech so he can avoid a vote on this issue strikes me as equally disastrous from a tactical point of view. To preserve democracy, he'll shut down Parliament? Fuck, why not just invoke the War Measures Act?

                  Here, things are much simpler. Don't fuck with Museveni.

                  Actually, Harper may be chanelling him.

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                    #10
                    Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                    It may be utter madness, but I still think it's going to happen. Rae was on CTV with morning with (eurgh) Seamus O'Regan and he seems to be taking it quite seriously. And Harper seems to be in a real sweat about it.

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                      #11
                      Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                      [moved this from the other thread]

                      The BQ have promised to support a coalition for a year (whatever that's worth.)

                      This is a fucking mess. There's really no good outcome I can see. The three or four headed hydra that would run a Lib/NDP coalition will be less effective than Toro and SSS reaching concensus on a new Pope and Harper doesn't deserve to lead the country after the tricks he's pulled in the past week. The best hope is the other parties continue to use the prospect of coalition as a threat to get him to back off. It's worked pretty well so far but they can only cry wolf once or twice, then he'll call their bluff.

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                        #12
                        Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                        This is turning into a two-threaded monster.

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                          #13
                          Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                          I know, you'd replied, before I could delete my message from the old thread.

                          Thing is, Harper is an economist and - by all accounts - a very smart man. If he had avoided the election funding issue entirely, and personally explained the budget and the reasons for it lacking a stimulus package, it would have been much harder for this whole coalition thing to take root. But given the 'Harper fear' factor, the vote funding looked horribly cynical and partisan, and the stimulus package thing looks like a repeat of his 'good opportunity to buy' faux-pas during the election. Mr Control has now fucked himself twice in two months.

                          He's clever but I'm not sure how smart he is otherwise he'd have avoided the tunnel vision and arrogance that got him into this mess.

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                            #14
                            Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                            Didn't know I'd be eating my words so soon, but it's been announced that Stephan Dion will be the coalition leader until the official Liberal leadership race in March/April. Then it will be PM Ignatieff.

                            If this whole thing goes forward, of course.

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                              #15
                              Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                              That'll be great. Bob and Iggy will be running around the country drumming support for their leadership campaign, leaving things in the hands of Mr Bobblehead and The Moustache That Walks Like a Man. Oh joy.

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                                #16
                                Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                Maybe this is what Dion meant when he kept saying he loved it when people underestimated him. Wouldn't it be great if he then called off the leadership race in the name of stability 'for the good of the country'.

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                                  #17
                                  Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                  I kind of like Ignatieff. As a columnist.I mean, some chunks of what he said were bollocks, but tihs is true of almost every columnist. I thought he had a lot of useful things to say about nationalism in the early 1990s, especially.

                                  I got called in to a "brainstorming" session with him during his last run at the leadership (I know a couple of the young'uns in his entourage). I liked the session. He was engaged, reasonably engaging himself, and he's undeniably quite bright. But he ran it like a seminar. I just could not fathom how this guy thought he could run anything , let alone something as unwieldy as a government.

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                                    #18
                                    Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                    One gets the sense that he's entirely lacking in charisma. Fair?

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                                      #19
                                      Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                      I think he's like Dalton McGuinty in the sense that his charisma is inversely proportionate to the number of people in the room. In small groups, he's great. With lots of people, he comes across as wooden.

                                      Mind you, he also gets better with preparation. he can deliver an OK stump speech. Not a barn burner, but not terrible either. Unplanned scrums are the worst.

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                                        #20
                                        Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                        WornOldMotorbike wrote:
                                        Maybe this is what Dion meant when he kept saying he loved it when people underestimated him. Wouldn't it be great if he then called off the leadership race in the name of stability 'for the good of the country'.
                                        That would be awesome. I'd much rather have Dion as PM than Iggy. AG, how can you like Ignatieff in light of his strong support for the Iraq War? we woul have definitely been taking casualties by the dozen and spending billions on that horrible colonial enterprise had he been the PM a few years ago.

                                        The future parties to a coalition governement are very disparate, but the prospect of being a part of the federal government, something that the Bloc and NDP could only dream of under normal circumstances, must be enticing enough to keep them in line for a year or two.

                                        WOM, yes indeed, it's kind of hard for me to assess how the Bloc Quebecois is perceived in English Canada, being within Quebec.

                                        This is a really interesting time in Canadian politics, to say the least. It's good to see no adverse impact of all this turmoil on the currency so far, I thought the Loonie was going to further tank this morning but it is stable so far.

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                                          #21
                                          Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                          The TSX isn't though, down over 860 points at close.

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                                            #22
                                            Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                            It's just following the Dow; down on the news of the US recession being official.

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                                              #23
                                              Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                              The Iraq argument about Ignatieff doesn't move me very much, to be honest. As I said, I don't agree with everything he said and it's not obvious to me that how he acted and spoke as a columnist has much to do with how he will act and speak as a leader of a political party. There are far more constraints on you in the latter situation. Your Quebec caucus, for one.

                                              Playing with the Bloc is dangerous. The Liberals are laying the fate of the country in the hands of people who want to destroy it. People seem to be under the impression that it's acceptable to speak to the Bloc about a coalition because they are "progressive" (a description I'd have a hard time applying to their rural caucus) and because there's no prospect of independence any time soon, so they're "tame".

                                              This, of course, is bullshit. Don't think for one moment separatism is dead. It's just resting.

                                              It's also strategically naive on the Liberals' part. One of the few things holding their appeal to the centre-left is the idea that the NDP is too wacky to ever gain power. Just by signing this deal, even if the coup doesnt come off, they've flushed that one down the drain. I think the Liberals may actually already be dead as a party.

                                              Apparently Roger Gibbin of the Canada West foundation is floating the idea that the Governor General should "Just Say No" - no election, refuse harper's resignation...just tell him to go back and make a serious good-fatih effort to find a compromise. I think this would probably be the best solution. The Prime Minister would be chastened, we wouldn't have an election, and we would not let the Bloc anywhere near the levers of power.

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                                                #24
                                                Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                                What are the bounds of the GG's powers? And to whom is she officially accountable?

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                                                  #25
                                                  Intrigue in the Canadian Parliament

                                                  Some hardcore PQ separatists are incensed over the Bloc being a part of the federal government, perhaps because this would further weaken the separatists position.

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