Canada governor-general returns to tackle crisis | International | Reuters
RallyforCanada.ca – Protect Canadian Democracy — Can someone explain what is happening in Canada. People are calling the situation a coup d’etat. Yes? No?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, trying to prevent opposition parties from defeating his minority Conservative government in a confidence vote next Monday, could move to shut down Parliament temporarily but needs Jean’s permission to do so.
Jean, who is in Prague, will fly back on Wednesday rather than Saturday. She is the personal representative of Queen Elizabeth, Canada’s head of state.
“This decision has been made in light of the current political situation in Canada,” her office announced.
The opposition Liberals, New Democrats and separatist Bloc Quebecois signed an unprecedented deal on Monday to bring down Harper and create a coalition government that would keep them in power until at least June 30, 2010.
The opposition says Harper is not doing enough to tackle the financial crisis.
Speculation is mounting that Harper — facing his worst crisis since first winning power in January 2006 — will seek to shut down Parliament until a budget the government has promised for January 27.
Ottawa says the coalition deal showed the opposition were twisting the rules of democracy. The Conservatives won a strengthened minority in an Oct 14 election.
first rumblings posted here on the blog.
It’s actually pretty simple and constitutional. Canada’s government is formed by the party that has the most MPs or members of parliament. It’s sort of like have the the party with the most elected senators sends the party leader to be President, but I digress.
Here, Harper has a minority government with around 37% of the seats in the house. The opposition parties are fragmented, so Harper with the most MPs behind him is Prime Minister and his party forms the government. Minority governments are not very stable, because if the opposition parties get together and form a coalition, then can have a non-confidence vote. The Governor General (the head of state -actually representing the Queen of England) then either calls an election, or asks the coalition if they have enough MPs to form a government.
The major problem here is that the Liberals and NPD party, while have enough to form a government, it too would be a minority. It would only be stable if the Bloq Quebecois, the separatist party agrees to play nice – sincce they would hold the balance of power.
Reality check, it is political suicide for a national party even contemplate being responsible for giving the separatists any more power than they have.
Does this help?
Sorry about the typos… also typo-ed my link…
uhm wait, let me get this right…. canada wants to secede from itself???
Correction to previous: the Tories received 37% of the popular vote, but that translated into 143 seats out of
Truth is, the government sits and rules at Her Majesty’s whim, and Her Majesty’s representative in Canada is our Governor General.
In a minority government, (and you have to have a pluralistic i.e. > 2 party system, a minority is always a possiblity) the party that gains Her Majesty’s respect and support can always be defeated by a numerical majority vote of what’s called “Non-Confidence”. At that point, other elected parties can theoretically form some sort of alliance and ask the Governor-General (i.e. the Queen) for permission to become the government. And this is what is probably about to happen.
In actuality (i.e. heretofore) the parties each hate each other with such venom that this sort of alliance has never really taken hold. Now the unthinkable has happened …
And it truly is unthinkable – the parties that have ‘allied’ are not really allies. Two of the three, the Liberals and the New Democrats (the NDP) are centrist and left of centre respectively. The third party is the Bloc, a party that only runs candidates in Quebec, and which ostensibly exists solely to support the cause of independence for Quebec as its’ own soverign state.
Now, the Liberals are the party of the late Pierre Eliot Trudeau, who fought the separatists hand and fist, and who successfully promoted the cause of federalism for several decades. So, for the Liberals and the Bloc to form an alliance is to imagine Dick Cheney moving to a suburb of Teheran.
Italy has a proud history of forming and destroying alliances dozens of times since WW2. Clearly, democracy can survive such an outrage. Canadians just didn’t figure that it would happen here, and no one ever thought that the Bloc would pony up.
There. Feel better?
Non!
The party in power (Conservatives) has lost the confidence of the house of parliament. So two of the three opposition parties (the liberals and NDP) have formed a coalition, and will be asking the governor general (the head of state – a legal figurehead) that their coalition form a new government. The liberal party and the NDP – will form the new coalition government, but will require cooperation from the separatists the third opposition party.
1. In a Parliamentary system the Prime Minister has to maintain the support of the majority of the members of the House of Commons who are elected by the people.
2. More often than not in Canada the Prime Minister’s Party controls a majority of the seats and so does not need to work with other parties to pass legislation and vote supply (spending) bills.
3. In the 40th Parliament the incumbent party won more seats than in the 39th, but still had a minority. The Opposition parties control the House.
4. Last week the Prime Minister introduced a bill that pissed the opposition off to the point that they felt they needed to vote against it.
5. The PM not wanting to lose power, delayed the vote a week.
6. The opposition parties then announced that when the vote is called, they will vote against it, and then form a coalition government.
7. The PM is now in a tight place. He does not want to call the vote he knows he will lose, but he also knows the coalition proposal from the opposition is going to be at best awkward and at worst widely hated by Canadians.
8. While there is a popular perception that the people elect the Prime Minister, what they actually do is vote in 308 little ridings that send representatives to the capital. Whoever can secure the confidence of a majority of those members is the Prime Minister and forms the Government.
9. That brings us to who gets to choose. The Canadian system includes two House’s and the Queen as part of our Parliament. The Queen of Canada is represented by the Governor-General who is our day-to-day head of state and the commander-in-chief of the military since the Queen is busy with the fifteen other countries who share her in similar systems like the UK, Jamaica, Australia and New Zealand.
10. If the PM where to lose the vote, he would have to give the governor-General his resignation and would ASK her for new elections. However, since we had election just 6 weeks ago, it is within her discretion to do so OR see if another party can win the support of the House of Commons. In this case, there seems to be another party that could via this coalition.
11. This is a politically sensitive issue though because the idea that unelected person who is the representative of the Monarch would use the Royal Prerogative to change the government against what the people had selected is a difficult one for many. Though this is only perception because we don’t elect the Prime Minister. The Governor-General picks the Member of Parliament who can command the House.
12. Also the coalition as presented would have to rely on a party who has in its agenda the desire to secede from Canada through democratic means.
13. The other option -and the one I think is most likely now- is that the Prime Minister rather than have the vote, will ask the Governor-General to prorogue the House. That means everyone goes home and no vote will be called. They can then call another session of Parliament later on and try this all over again.
14. Far from being undemocratic, this is Canadian democracy at work. The Governor-General, and the Office of the Queen actually, are conceived to be apolitical umpires of the system sitting outside of partisanship and presumably beyond bribery. They are entrusted with the constitutional fire extinguisher as well as all those ‘rally around the flag’ type symbols so that politicians cannot use patriotism as the excuse to crush their opponents. Even during WW2, Winston Churchill with nearly complete dictatorial powers had to maintain the confidence of the House, and had he ever lost it, the opposition could have turned to the King who commands the Armed Forces, to ensure that a constitutional government is always in place.(Though Churchill I think would have stepped down with grace out of love of from King and Country, but the point being that even if he did not there was an ‘out’ that was constitutional) Our system is not wholly about a written law, but is also an understanding among living people to all play nice.
I certainly hope the GG sends canadians back to the polls, rather than let the Bloq have any actual power. They haven’t had any in the 20 years they’ve been there, just sitting in perpetual opposition with no desire to ever be part of a functioning government. Certainly not time to give them any…Their actual campaign slogan was ‘present’. They certainly aim high!
I voted Tory in the last election and I will vote against them if this comes to election, because frankly this situation is Harper’s fault. I mean come on, trying to take away a major source of funding for all the opposition parties? Everyone with an IQ over 70 can tell you that this will bring down the government. I’m hoping that the Tories get booted out of this government, come to their senses and choose a leader who isn’t a shortsighted ex-reform nutjob, and then i’ll be happy to vote for them again when the coalition government fails which with egos like Duceppe, Layton and any of the potential Liberal leaders is almost a certainty.
At this point though, i’d give anything for just a stable majority government..period. We’ve been in minority government way too long.
Awww…. they rallied to do something when the Tories threatened to end campaign financing. How noble.
No coup d’etat. Harper has a minority government, but he acted like he had a majority and was an idiot. It’s a self inflicted crisis. The opposition parties called his bluff and now he’s maneuvering with a possible prorogue parliament which could be kept for sitting for up to a year. In reality, it probably wouldn’t last that long.
The BQ has signed on for a coalition government with the Liberals and NDP under promise to not discuss or promote Quebec sovereignty for 18 months. Actually the BQ, NDP, and left leaning Liberals are a natural coalition.
BTW, I’m from Tory blue Calgary. It’s parliamentary politics and everyone is playing the game. And, did anyone hear Deborah Grey rip Stephen Harper a new one today? It was great.
I haven’t seen Canadians this riled up since the ’72 Summit Series. For an outsider (non Commonwealth country) this whole thing makes about as much sense as a “best of 8 games” hockey series. Take it for it is, great entertainment and everyone is waiting for Rick Mercer and Rex Murphy’s take on the whole thing.
P.S. I had some nice Wikipedia links in the post about coalition governments, prorogue parliaments, and the ’72 Summit Series. Unfortunately it was flagged as spam so you’ll have to use the InterGoogle thingie to look them up yourself.
It was fun in Geography class to color in Canada as a Monarchy and Lebanon as a democracy. haha
I stand corrected, Rick Mercer has ranted! Yee ha!
The only people who are upset at the prospect of a coalition government are the 37% that voted for the Conservative party and were looking forward to disproportionately high representation. The coalition supported by the Bloc will represent more of the population than the Conservative minority.
The best governments we have ever had in this country have all been NDP/Liberal minorities. For example, that is why we have medicare and old age pensions.
The worst governments we have ever had have all been majority Conservative governments. For example, RB Bennett (the great depression), Diefenbaker (killed the Canadian aviation industry), and Mulroney (brought in the GST, gave away Air Canada, Canadian National, and Petro Canada, signed the (anything but) Free Trade deal with the US, and ran up the largest deficits in Canadian history, to name a few).
So an NDP/Liberal coalition supported by the Bloc, representing over 50 percent of Canadian voters in the last election, would probably be the best bet to come up with policies that will minimize the impact of the imploding economy on ordinary Canadians, while the Conservatives would play their traditional role of cutting taxes for the obscenely wealthy so they could “trickle down” some of their savings by increasing spending on luxury goods. I think the average Canadian would rather get their economic boost directly, not filtered through the pockets of the wealthy elite.
No coup d’etat, as there is no force involved. Basically the opposition parties are so sick of Harper and his always fooled 30% (not too unlike the USA) that they are casting aside their differences just to get rid of him. Remember, Stephen Harper eats babies!
10 people in Toronto are laughing right now, trust me.
Anyway, far more a coup de grace than a coup d’etat; they are just putting the Conservatives government down, out of mercy for themselves.
You’re welcome to apply for US statehood at any time. I’m looking forward to a 60 star flag.
This happened in Australia back in 1975 and boy did it piss off (and wake up) the average Aussie who though Aussies got to run Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis
At the current rate of US fiscal spending, the US will be applying for province-hood sooner than that will happen. . . .
@ #18
Ron it is not the same thing, in 75 the Gov General actually kicked the gov out, here the PM wants the GG to supend parliment for a time.
Still a crisis, but quite different in detail.
A lot of people dis America’s two-party system, but at least it avoids crap like this.
20,
You want to make savings you make big ones. You don’t push a completely partisan agreement through that cuts funding to the opposition and maintain your own funding. That’s not a smart thing to do. I guess you enjoy it when you’re boss says “it’s tough. I’m cutting your salary to zero. Mine? Well, I’ll just add yours to it.” But, that’s how Americans like it apparently. And that’s why Wagoner refused to take a symbolic $1 salary when his total compensation for the year is $15 million, of which $1.5 million is his base pay. Yes, Wagoner said $13 million is not enough.
Looks good on Harper. He was acting like he had a majority Gov. But he forgot, he didn’t. Now he is paying the price for that poor judgement.
A little on the funding cuts proposed by the Conservatives…
Not long ago, federal legislation was passed that allowed for taxpayer funding of federal political parties. This funding was based on the number of votes each party received in the previous federal election (between $1 and $2 per vote). This was motivated by evidence that special interests (think: lobbyists) were beginning to have an inordinate amount of influence (think: $$$) over MP’s and federal parties. The scheme to replace special interest funding federal parties with taxpayer funding was simply a method of reclaiming the political agenda for the benefit of the citizens and not for industry, unions, religious associations, or whatever. It is seen by many to be the lesser of evils.
“Can someone explain what is happening in Canada.”
Yes, Canada has not quite taken over the reigns of government from the UK. So, the Queen, via the Gov General has to monitor the gov and make sure they don’t screw up too badly.
At some point, when Canadians feel ready, they will declare independence. 😉
The real crisis here is lack of leadership in the major political parties. Looking back on the last election Gilles Duceppe won the French debate and Elizabeth May the English. That should tell you something right there.
Dion would be an interim PM which is crap. Harper is a political moron. Jack Layton is just plain weird. So we could get a government which is focused on Quebec’s south shore and the UAW. Great.
All because Stephen Harper hates Stéphane Dion.
I didn’t vote for any of these idiots. I vote Green Party, and it doesn’t matter, because they never get any votes, but at least they don’t have the mentality of five year old children. I watch Parliament on public television, and all I ever see is a bunch of children bickering and whining and accusing each other back and forth. They do so little work. Assholes. I vote no confidence in ANY of them.
Let’s invade. Wecan offerQuebec independenceif theydon’tfightback,and maybetheWestwill support us.
I’m not entirely sure what is happening or it’s one of those things only a Canadian can understand. Either way, CHANGE can come to Canada too, eh!
I certainly can understand how getting rid of the conservative party is a good first step and urge my norther friends do it by force if you have to.
#32
Dion is not CHANGE so much as spare change. But he’s better than the robot that we have in office currently, not much better however
How can I introduce chad into this process. I am looking for a big laugh.