In my last post I wrote that I would discuss the implications of the Canadian election. That was almost a month ago, and not a word from me. I have no good excuse for this, I have begun my adult life as a corporate cubicle dweller. I do not loathe this new existence, it has however served to limit my motivation to do anything other than channel surf on my leisure time. I will now try to remedy this.
In the late hours of Oct. 14 concerned citizens across our fair nation sat riveted to their television sets as the election ballots were tallied and reported. Granted, their television sets probably weren't tuned to the election coverage, more likely to the latest Hero's episode, waiting to see what Milo Ventimigilialgalaalaa's next move would be. It would be hard to blame our nation for their disinterest in this election. The Prime Minister called the election almost a year early, contradicting his own calls for set term elections. People's attention was turned to the American recession, and little cared about replacing a government which had done nothing good nor bad for the last 3 years. As far as elections go, this one was placed at a terribly uninteresting time, the only story to follow was whether or not the Liberals could recover from a terribly ill timed and poorly presented 'Green Shift' strategy. The Canadian election of 2008 was about as exciting as watching C-Pac on voiceprint.
We can lament the elections mundane pointlessness, but for the sake of this blog I'll add some commentary to the days events.
.....Alright, that previous part has been sitting in my draft box for a little while now, and to be honest, i dont feel like I have much to say about the election. Perhaps this attitude reflects the election itself. Stephen Harper picked up a handful of extra seats from the weak liberals, this helped him create a stronger minority government. This is of course the equivalent of creating a faster pinto...that is to say that a strong minority is worth little more than a weak minority. The fact that Harper was limited to a minority government quite surprised me. I even went so far as to tell Winnie that Harper was essentially guaranteed a Majority, I guess thats why I'm writing here, and not on a panel at the CBC.
The Minority for Harper essentially signals another 4 years of Status Quo operation, Harper has not been given a clear mandate to implement any major changes and has not been given the power to do so. With such a weak response from the electorate Harper is unlikely to attempt to call another early election because the electorate is already bitter at having to go to the poll's unnecessarily, to change essentially nothing. This means that it is up to the opposition parties to dissolve parliament by voting down key legislation, triggering another election. It is not likely that any of the opposing parties want to run another campaign anytime soon, especially not until the Liberal's have sorted out their leadership mess. That said, I believe that this time around, the smaller parties will not allow as many right wing bills to pass through out of fear of an election. This was the problem with the last term, all of the opposition parties were so worried that they would lose seats in an election, that no one wanted to vote down any legislation. I believe that this hesitation will not be as strong this time, the NDP have shown that they have some backing, and Jack Layton's pitbull/car salesman attitude will surely have him using the NDP's new found strenght to leverage some concessions out of Harper.
Essentially I believe that we are in for another uneventful status quo turn from the Harper/Conservative government.
But remember, I also predicted a conservative Majority as being a lock, so my track record on predictions isnt exactly stellar. I guess we will all just have to wait and see what kind of boredom the next few years will bring.
