News roundup, 3 Oct 2024

- The House of Commons has passed a motion from the Bloc Quebecois that calls on the government to "take the necessary steps" to pass Bill C-319 and ensure it is signed into law. The Conservatives, NDP, and Greens all voted in favour of the motion, as did five Liberal MPs. The actual bill, a private member's bill introduced by the Bloc, would boost benefits for seniors aged 65 to 74; since it involves expenditures it cannot actually be passed without the support of the government. The bill is controversial, with some warning that it is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen.

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew has apologized to the legal community for his comments related to the expulsion of Mark Wasyliw from the NDP caucus. The affair doesn't seem to have harmed the premier's popularity, though.

- Community health services in much of Manitoba could face significant disruptions as CUPE and MGEU threaten to go on strike effective October 8. MGEU head Kyle Ross believes a strike is likely based on the offers from Shared Health.

- As more disasters like Hurricane Helene take their toll, we can expect to see a lot of migration as people leave the most vulnerable areas. And once it starts, it will tend to feed on itself. Not everyone is equally mobile, though, and it's likely that those who don't leave early will be unable to sell their properties. Meanwhile the tax base in the affected areas will collapse, making it harder to cover costs associated with climate change even as those costs keep increasing.

- The US military is testing robot dogs with rifles. They say the robots will only be used against drones. And of course the US military would never lie about something like that, right?

- A Pickering man seems not to have realized that modern cars keep a record of when you overrev them and that manufacturers may not honour the warranty when you do that. You'd think he'd know better, being a student of auto mechanics...

The day after

Well, as you're no doubt aware, the election didn't go the way I expected. For that matter, it didn't go the way most other people expected, including some of the winning candidates. And indeed there are some good aspects to what happened; while part of me would have loved to see the NDP jump from fourth place to government in one fell swoop, it's probably better that these rookie MPs get the chance to learn the ropes in opposition before they take office (I suspect that was a contributing factor to the troubles of the Rae government in Ontario back in the day). I'm not unhappy to see Elizabeth May in the House either, for that matter.

But while this was a hugely successful election for the NDP, it is definitely a Pyrrhic victory, thanks to the Conservative majority. What's odd, though, is the way things played out in the final day or so of the campaign. Nearly all the polls put the Cons in the mid to high thirties, while the NDP's share of the vote is shown as pretty close to what they actually got. So what gave the Cons the boost into majority territory?

It sounds crazy, but one possibility that comes to my mind is the death of Osama bin Laden. Some people seem to see the killing as a vindication of the Afghan war, and if enough people who were right-leaning but had a bad feeling about our involvement in said war had their (obviously limited) minds changed by this, it could have made the difference. Pretty pathetic, but then a lot of Canadian voters are pretty pathetic.

What can we expect now? The Cons claim that they're not going to introduce radical changes... and maybe the government itself won't, but I bet that there will be a lot of private members' bills reopening the abortion and marriage debates. Most of them won't make it far enough to be debated, but those that do get debated have an excellent chance of passing.

And as bad as that would be, there are worse things that could happen. At least if abortion or same-sex marriage is banned it will be easy enough for a future government to reverse the decision. Indeed, if they use the notwithstanding clause to avoid constitutional challenges, such a law would automatically be invalidated unless renewed. On the other hand, if they abolish the Canadian Wheat Board, for instance, NAFTA will likely preclude reversing such a move; it will be gone forever. And that is a bad thing.

The moment of truth approaches

Firstly, my apologies for not updating this blog more frequently. Among other things, I've been working on an actual election campaign (hey, you didn't think I was nonpartisan, did you?). But in any case, as you're no doubt aware, there seems to have been a dramatic shift in the last few weeks. The chances of a Conservative majority seem to be greatly reduced, although it's not impossible that the NDP surge could pull enough votes away from the Liberals to push the Conservatives over the top.

Last week, based mostly on poking around on the Election Prediction website, I came up with the following guess as to seat distribution: Conservatives 138, Liberals 67, NDP 59, Bloc 41, Green 1, Independent 2 (André Arthur and Hec Clouthier). However, the NDP could very well do even better, and indeed some seat projections from the latest polls put the NDP firmly in second place in the seat count. In fact, many of the projections have the combined NDP and Liberal seats adding up to a majority. But what then?

My suspicion is that the Liberals would be reluctant to defeat the government and allow the NDP to take power, because this would greatly diminish the Liberals' opportunity to rebuild their party. After all, once the NDP is out of third place they, and not the Liberals, will be seen as the main alternative to the Conservatives. On the other hand, for the Liberals to prop up the Cons once again, they'd have to swallow a lot of pride, and so it's not impossible that Layton will end up in the PMO. We'll know soon enough...

Also interesting is the race in Saanich-Gulf Islands. I have a sneaking suspicion that Elizabeth May will manage to win that seat, which could be the beginning of a slow ascent for her party. On the other hand, if she doesn't win that seat it may be quite some time before the Greens are a significant force.

Polls show a lot of volatility

A new poll has come out from Harris-Decima that completely contradicts the Ipsos poll of a few days ago:

The Conservatives and Liberals appear to be ending the year the same way they started it — in a dead heat.

A new poll by The Canadian Press Harris-Decima suggests the Tories have the support of 31 per cent of Canadians, statistically tied with the Liberals at 29 per cent.

The poll puts the NDP at 15% and the Greens at 11%, both noticeably higher than the Ipsos results. The Ipsos poll was conducted between the 7th and 9th; the Harris-Decima one was conducted between the 2nd and the 13th. So it's pretty clear that at least one of them must be wrong. Which one? On the one hand, the Harris-Decima poll has a larger sample size (2,022 respondents vs. 1000 for the Ipsos poll); on the other hand, the Ipsos poll, having been conducted in a shorter time period, might provide a better snapshot (and 1000 is still not an unreasonable size). The moral? Nothing really, except that it's hard to predict how the actual election will play out.

Cons, Liberals almost even: poll

At the start of the summer, the Conservatives had an 11 point lead over the Liberals. Not anymore, according to a new EKOS poll:

The poll gives the Conservatives 29.4 per cent support of Canadians, a drop of three points from two weeks ago. The Liberals are at 29.1 per cent support, an increase of nearly two points from the previous poll.

New Democrats are at 15.7 per cent national support, the Green Party is polling at 13 per cent and the Bloc is at 10.9 per cent. The poll of 3,559 Canadians was conducted between Aug. 18 and Aug. 31; it has a margin of error of 1.64 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Source. They offer a suggestion as to why, as well:

The pollster gives only a small measure of credit to the Liberal Leader for the change in fortunes. “The [Michael Ignatieff] travelling redemption show has brought back MI and the LPC from life support to fully fledged contenders for next government,” Mr. Graves said. “In fairness the new parity is as much a product of Tory largesse to their competitors as adroit action on part of the Liberals.”

The Tory largesse to which Mr. Graves refers is, of course, the census. For weeks now it has dogged the Conservatives, gradually picking away at the party’s support, even with its own supporters.

“This seemingly obscure action has set in motion a chain of responses, which has managed to awaken the erstwhile dormant knowledge and professional classes,” the pollster said. “Virtually all of the shift in the political landscape has occurred with the movement of the highly educated.”

So it sounds like it could be another case of the right saving us from itself. Interesting...

Some words Harper may have to eat

He says there'll be a coalition unless he wins a majority:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, intent on shaping the ballot box question for the next election, is adopting a strategy to gradually persuade voters they have a "stark choice" in the next campaign: a "stable" majority Conservative government, or a "coalition" government of Liberals, New Democrats and Quebec separatists.

From the Calgary Herald. So, Steve, when the next election comes and you still have only a minority of the seats, will you step aside and let the opposition form a government? Can we take that as a promise?

Push poll?

A blogger known as CathiefromCanada reports (h/t pogge) that Harris-Decima called her with some interesting poll questions:

Along with questions about whether I buy store-brand vegetables, there were two questions about the Afghan prisoner/Parliamentary privledge issue.

The first was a scenario I have already heard about, whether I would support MPs signing a confidentiality oath to see the prisoner documents. (And actually, no I wouldn't.)

But the second was interesting -- whether I would support an election being called because the Bloc Quebecois should not be permitted to sign a confidentiality oath and therefore should not be permitted to see the documents.

I wonder who commissioned this?

Liberals and Bloc vote with government on HST

Well, lots of people saw this one coming:

The House of Commons has taken the first step to allow Ontario and British Columbia to harmonize the provincial sales tax and federal GST on products and services.

In a 192-32 vote, the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois supported the ways and means motion amending the Excise Tax Act, one of the steps towards implementing the Harmonized Sales Tax. The HST bill itself is expected to be introduced on Friday.

From the CBC. To be fair, 28 Liberals missed the vote (see Blogging a Dead Horse for a list).

The Bloc rushes in where federalists fear to tread

And justifiably so, in this case:

Wealthy Canadians should pay a special surtax to help slay the deficit, the Bloc Quebecois says.

Monday, the Bloc became the first party in the House of Commons to propose costed measures to eliminate the $56-billion federal deficit, including drastic cuts to the civil service.

“There are people who do not pay their fair share of taxes,” said Bloc finance critic Jean-Yves Laforest.

The party championed a temporary tax on the rich, similar to a plan U.S. President Barack Obama proposed, where Canadians with a taxable income above $150,000 would pay an extra 1%. The measure would affect 450,000 people and add $1.5 billion to federal coffers, according to the Bloc’s estimates.

From the London Free Press. Such a simple and sensible idea, yet the other parties are reluctant to talk about it. News flash -- not all tax increases are bad.

Will Iggy pull the plug on Steve?

The NDP and Bloc are thoroughly dissatisfied with the budget, as we know. Not without good reason I think; here are some of the NDP's reasons. The folks at the Progressive Economics Forum have some more points. Here's something that's worth noting:

The infrastructure investment overall is very modest in size and falls well short of what the cities and environmental organizations were looking for. At about $5 billion per year the total package, if spent, might create only 50,000 jobs.

The Budget does not remove or limit the current costly and time-wasting mandatory requirement to actively consider P3s to access the Building Canada Fund, and the launch of the P3 Fund combined with required city support for new projects will likely give yet another boost to P3s moving forward.

The second point is critical. If a municipality wants to access the infrastructure money, they have to accede to the Tories' ideologically driven demand that they look at the highly questionable "public private partnership" model, presumably so that Harpo's buddies get their share of the cash.

So will the Liberals vote for it? Probably. Ignatieff is likely nervous about whether the Governor-General would allow the coalition to take power, and also is probably reluctant to become prime minister at a time when the economy is just starting to tank. Expect the Liberals to pass the budget "with reservations".

Harper shuts down Parliament to avoid non-confidence vote

A lot of people say Canadian politics is boring. The events of the past week certainly give the lie to that belief, though. Our current political crisis is attracting substantial attention from the international media; interestingly, they're a lot more upfront about the situation than our own news outlets:

Canadian Parliament Closed in Bid to Keep Prime Minister in Power (New York Times)

Canada's PM clings on to power as parliament suspended (The Guardian)

Canadian PM suspends Parliament to avoid defeat (People's Daily)

It's pretty obvious to foreign journalists what Harper's real motives are. Of course, the domestic press wants to seem impartial (except the Sun Media papers; Winnipeg's example had the screaming headline "NO! NO! NO!" the other day).

The Economist has a nice piece on this. It's a reasonably fair summary; if I have any quibble it's that their treatment of the Bloc is a bit one-dimensional (yes, they are sovereigntists, but there's more to them than that).

Meanwhile, Sean in Ottawa, with a bit of help from josh, has this to say on babble:

Stephen Harper wants to shut down Parliament just because he does not agree with it.

Some say this is unprecedented.

In fact, Harper is following parliamentary tradition. Consider the following precedents:

1629: King Charles I in England
1799: Napoleon in France
1913: Victoriano Huerta in Mexico
1933: Adolf Hitler in Germany
1936: Fransisco Franco in Spain
1939: Benito Mussolini in Italy
1973: Augusto Pinochet in Chile

1975: Indira Gandhi in India

1999: Perez Musharaff in Pakistan
2008: Stephen Harper in Canada.

Maybe Harper should consider what happened to many of those leaders. In a similar vein is this video, courtesy of The Harper Dictatorship:



My suspicion is that over the holidays the Cons will temper the budget a bit, and the Liberals will get nervous and chicken out come the resumption of Parliament in January. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; the budget will be less harsh than it would otherwise be, and the Cons will thus be in power just long enough to be blamed for the hard economic times that we're in for.

Canada isn't the only country facing a parliamentary crisis, though:

Politicians in Australia’s most populous state could be breath-tested for alcohol before voting on laws after a series of late-night incidents that have embarrassed the centre-left government.

New South Wales state lawmaker Andrew Fraser resigned from his conservative opposition frontbench role after shoving a female colleague at the Christmas party celebrations.

“Breath test this mob,” said a front page headline in Sydney’s mass-selling Daily Telegraph newspaper. State police minister Matt Brown was dumped from his portfolio in September after allegedly “dirty” dancing in his underwear over the chest of a female colleague after a drunken post-budget office party.

Conservative opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell said he would support alcohol breath tests for drunkenness for lawmakers before they entered parliament, while Green MPs John Kaye and Lee Rhiannon also backed the plan, along with the parliament’s speaker.

From the Times of India.

Skeletons tumbling out of Tory closets

The pot has been calling the oregano green yet again, it seems:

The separatist Bloc Québécois was part of secret plotting in 2000 to join a formal coalition with the two parties that now make up Stephen Harper's government, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.

The scheme, designed to propel current Conservative minister Stockwell Day to power, undermines the Harper government's line this week that it would never sign a deal like the current one between the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc.

Bloc officials said that well-known Calgary lawyer Gerry Chipeur sent a written offer before the votes were counted on election day on Nov. 27, 2000.

From the Globe and Mail. No big shock here. The Tory apologists, though, are getting desperate, as evidenced by some of the comments:

Why can't people understand the difference between making contingency plans and actually putting those plans into action?

Secondly, I don't see what the relevance is of plans made by the former leader of a now defunct party.

Right. The "defunct" party has nothing to do with the present party - it changed its name when it took over the PC party! Why can't the "liberal media" see this? And Stockboy is just a cabinet minister now, not the head honcho! Well sure, whatever you are inclined to believe I guess...