Molly

Ha!!! So... the reason Harper is completely innocent of breaking any law in calling that election is because the Conservatives are incompetent legislators! Feel free to use that defense at every turn!

This is such a cheap shot: ..Yeah! Undeniable evidence of devolution is all around us!

Far better than hitting the reset button to hold another election then, and far, far better than letting those dirty dogs get away with the intentions of that 'fiscal update'. A damned shame that the minority Conservatives were so smugly malicious as to make such an alternative necessary. Those 'other parties' have nothing to be ashamed of in forming it. They should be sheepish about having been so meek as to make the jackals bold.

Won't let it go? They let it go some time ago. How often do you raise the subject that you get any more welcoming response than an eye-roll? It's yesterdays news, flogged to irrelevancy.... just like the fixed term law, and the cynical way in which the very guys who proclaimed it the best thing since sliced bread, immediately thumbed their noses at it, stopping only to piously revise their description of its intent.

That term 'spectre'... it is again interesting that you assume that bringing up the coalition would (only) be a problem for the Liberal party. The premise of the article is that the reminder is likely to be as big, or a bigger problem for the Conservatives. I concur with that much of their assessment. I'd love to fight a campaign with that as the issue du jour. If the Conservatives don't bring it up, the other parties should.

For me, not so very confusing. This strategy shift has changed the dynamic pretty dramatically, even if the press has not directly noted it. Layton has been handed the reins. So long as he had no levers to play with, he could posture as being passionate, principled and relevant ready to make something happen the minute real decision-making opportunity arrived.... but in recieving them, the posture has fallen apart. He looks more like a deer in the headlights, or worse, an irrelevant gnat to be slapped away by the Conservatives. The predictability of the three opposition parties has hurt them all badly, Duceppe the least/ attention particularly paid to the hurt to Ignatief/ but I'm thinking, the NDP has been hurt most of all. From :'if you get the chance, what you think is important' to ' you have the chance, but apparently you are meaningless after all'. Fascinating to me that it happened so quietly, a sort of body language communication, instead of discussed to death.

It is downright hilarious that you would try to disavow his long role in CPC ethics, and very telling that you see the need to do so. ....................................... I don't entirely agree with some of the analysis in that article. Certainly pillorying Quebec horrified many people, but many were more appalled at the Animal Farm-like attempt to redefine the very nature of our system of government. (Any respect I might ever have held for John Baird, in particular, evaporated.) When you pile that misrrepresentation and fundamental disrespect of our parliamentary system, on top of the very vivid attempt to knacker democracy itself by making such an overwhelming, and unfair, change to the way it is achieved... and the timing was the first activity following an election that integrity demanded should not have existed.... No, reviving memories of of that brief period raises hackles far beyond Quebec, and for far more expansive reasons than because a handful of ignorami insulted the Bloc. The sins of the Torys in that period were much greater than the mere sowing of seeds of division, and would be recalled with a shudder, far beyond the province of Quebec.

I daresay if you were there at the time, you'd judge the situation differently. Those were the days of the 'rural/urban split'. The NDP base was entirely urban, and they held just enough of the balance to brutally bludgeon all things rural. Party philosophy had SFA to do with anything; nuance had no place. You were either in favor of shutting down all rural services- of taxation without services- or you weren't. In much of rural Saskatchewan it was simply a matter of survival.... and it was a losing battle. Between the (vindictive) efforts of the provincial government, the shifts in transport and marketing, and the malaise in the agricultural environment in general, the vast majority of not-so-long-ago thriving rural communities are now a wasteland.

"Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the provisions would be aimed at those who had been consistently employed for at least seven out of the past 10 years who "are finding themselves, through no fault of their own, unemployed with limited portable skills." The minister said the "group who have been, frankly, hardest hit by the global recession," such as those in the automotive, manufacturing and forestry sectors, would be targeted for assistance. The new measures follow a series of initiatives launched in May that allow for some long-tenured workers to claim up to two years of EI benefits so long as they use that time to train for new work." This sort of stuff grinds my gears. Just as it doesn't matter where you are unemployed (you are still unemployed), it also doesn't matter whether you were employed for the past 5 years, or the last 7, and it doesn't matter what job you are currently not employed to do..... If you are out of a job and can't find another, then you are bloody well out of a job! It is bad enough that tremendous numbers of people who, in good faith, paid for employment insurance, but don't qualify, but it is tremendously worse that virtually all employment-related programs, whether or not they have any co-funding through EI, are contingent upon first qualifying for EI. By continuing to connect everything through the 'fits our traditional presuppositions perfectly' lens, the true target - the unemployed (and trying not to be)- is missed. One benefit is merely stacked on the last, for the select few.

Oh yes. I had never really thought of Liberals within the Calvert cabinet, because... well... there weren't any. They had not yet faced the electorate when Calvert took over the leadership, but had long since been ejected from the Liberal Party- and that's where I wasn't following the reference. My miss. I wasn't around for that end-game portion of the story, and pretty much dismissed the existence of those guys since their political fortunes ceased to exist the day they took up with Romanow. They weren't just lame ducks- they had chewed off all of their own legs. I do understand that withdrawal from political activity, but for the electorate, though, it really was much more a matter of 'NDP' or 'not NDP'. I attended MacPhersons Liberal nomination (and had to buy a membership to do it), just to see who else would be present. I saw a lot of lifelong PCs , there to support the nomination of an ex-NDP MLA, as a Liberal candidate. They worked his campaign, too. They had just been through a similarly deep, but less spectacular betrayal. Interesting times in that riding.

Not that I know of. In 1999, under Romanow, the NDP came out short of majority. The Liberals had 3 elected, and one dead heat down in Wood River, Huyghebaert (SP) vs. MacPherson (formerly NDP, until Wood River was raped by the NDP slash and burn cuts-- crossed the floor to the Liberals). Without waiting for MacPhersons results, or consulting with party executive they formed a coalition with the NDP, placing two of those three in cabinet, and the third as speaker. All three were ordered by the party to withdraw from the coalition, refused, and were ejected from the Liberal party. MacPherson withdrew from the by election, and, to the best of my knowledge, the Liberals haven't elected a member of the legislature in that province since then. I had quite a few friends who were organizers/executive for the Liberal party at the time. Every last one of them either went immediately to work for the Sask party (which, in its early days, was a Liberal/ PC coalition) or ended their political activity entirely-- very, very bitter. IMO, there hasn't been so good an opportunity for the Liberal party since Ross Thatcher-- assuming they can get their act together. That leadership choice has to have the NDP irreparably fractured. In Saskatchewan, the reality has been the NDP vs. everyone else ever since the days of Ross Thatcher. The three way splits are what gave Romanow that much power for that long. The Sask Party fortunes are a direct result of the demise of both the PCs and the Liberals.

Why just the leaders of the opposition? Especially since they all need to be 'bitch-slapped', and especially since the opposition leaders not the ones who set this tone of non-co-operation, non- consultation? Opposition members and parties have every bit as much responsibility to represent the folks who elected them as do Conservative MPs. That's why we bother to send them; that's why they get paychecks, and are expected to attend. To be honest, we voters are the ones answerable for this mess. We chose hyperpartisans, instead of parliamentarians... and if we send hyperpartisan fools with greater loyalty to their parties than to the national interest, then that's what we get: no compromise, high-risk showdowns, and election after election until we, the voters, make some better choices.

I figure the Conservatives ARE calling the tune. They could easily set a tone of co-operation-- by consulting, compromising from time to time. Minor civility to the NDP, and the smallest of (popular) concessions would easily ensure the stability of this government, just as one example. They choose, instead, to be confrontational, obstructionist, and to 'play chicken', full time. I have no respect for that approach. I think it's extraordinarily poor governance. It's unresponsive to national desires/interests, places 'partyinterest' ahead of ' national interest'.

LOL So which day did the Saskatchewan Liberal Party die? Was it the day the good doctor joined Romanow's NDP for the chance to be in cabinet, or the day that the disaffected remainder of the party threw in with what was left of the Conservatives to make the Sask Party? (Here's a hint: Sask Liberals figure it's the former.)

This is addressed to the Opposition since they have the means and intent to bring down the government rather than work with it and solve the issues facing Canada. It takes two to tango. Conservatives don't dance.

I don't believe that coalitions are popular-- but I believe they should be. Their usual outcome isn't so much the happy acceptance of one or the other of the participants as it is the erasure of the one seen to have capitulated/turncoated to the enemy. That's a shame, because the country desperately needs the pendulum to swing back to a much more co-operative, mutually respectful approach to lawmaking. I would welcome a coalition-- honestly any combination-- over this stupid internicene warring to the death. All of the parties have some valid perspective to offer; all of them represent some number of the people and should be heard accordingly. It's a coin-toss whether we will end up with an election or not. It's particularly asinine that we might end up with one, and if there was even the faintest modicum of compromise, respect and statesmanship on the hill, we wouldn't be contemplating the question in any seriousn way..... but we have a minority governing party that conducts itself like a pack of feral dogs instead of as the crew of the ship of state. If we do have an election, I've got all sorts of time available to campaign.

Perhaps it's time Aileen Carroll weighed in on this one, anyway. The political price can rightly fall on more heads than just the councillors of Simcoe county.

If the concern was a lack of senators (which it wasn't), or that they should more validly represent regional interests instead of partisan hackdom, then it would have been more in keeping with the spirit of reform to ask the provinces to propose apropriate candidates. The fact that no deference to the provinces was chosen means that 'the spirit of reform' is as insubstantial as a ghost, compared to the partisan knife-fight.

http://www.acsa-caah.ca/Portals/0/Member/P...ationcanada.pdf

"Hard, but filled with opportunity." Sounds like a perfect description of both, and it's good of you to point out a similarity, even while labelling it difference. I wonder how far north your travels have ever taken you. The entrepreneurial spirit- the pioneering spirit- is vividly alive among transplants to the north.

8-year terms would do very little except guarantee that every government will face a senate appointed almost exclusively by its predecessor (and opposition)-- basically destabilize it to even greater partisan excesses than the HoC. That's not 'reform'. That's just stupid.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/...rb0834_13-e.htm

If they had checked her claim there would be no problem. The issue here is that they did not check her claim; they just denied it without anything close to adequate investigation.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." I'd say the lady has proved herself capable of setting appropriate priorities. Besides... if it's a small item on the list, and the principals co-operate fully, then it'll take no time at all, and then she can move on quickly to address your priorities, instead of having her time and efforts wasted trying to get her hands on the books she thinks need a peek.

And... if they'd just get out of the way and let the Auditor General- whose job it is to check out such things- do her job and look it over, then we'd all know whether it was justifiable spending or not.... now wouldn't we? Seems to me that anyone interested in accountability, and with nothing to hide, should just be happy to hand over the books without hesitation, any time she was inclined to ask for them.