http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,176952,00.html

Canada's Government Toppled

Monday, November 28, 2005

TORONTO — A corruption scandal forced a vote of no-confidence Monday that toppled Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government, triggering an unusual election campaign during the Christmas holidays.

Canada's three opposition parties, which control a majority in Parliament, voted against Martin's government, claiming his Liberal Party no longer has the moral authority to lead the nation.

The loss means an election for all 308 seats in the lower House of Commons, likely on Jan. 23. Martin and his Cabinet would continue to govern until then.

Opposition leaders last week called for the no-confidence vote after Martin rejected their demands to dissolve Parliament in January and hold early elections in February. Monday's vote follows a flurry of spending announcements in Ottawa last week, with the government trying to advance its agenda ahead of its demise.

Martin is expected to dissolve the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper joined with the New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois parties to bring down the government — prompting the first Christmas and winter campaign in mostly Christian Canada in 26 years. Recent polls have given the Liberals a slight lead over the Conservatives, with the New Democrats in third place.

The same surveys suggest the Bloc Quebecois would sweep the French-speaking province of Quebec, making a majority government unlikely no matter which party wins the most seats.

Harper would become prime minister if the Conservatives receive the most seats in Parliament. He favors tax cuts and opposed Martin's successful bill to legalize same-sex marriage throughout Canada.

The opposition is banking on the public's disgust with a corruption scandal involving the misuse of funds targeted for a national unity program in Quebec.

An initial investigation absolved Martin of wrongdoing, but accused senior Liberal members of taking kickbacks and misspending tens of millions of dollars in public funds.

The government ran into peril this month when it lost the support of the New Democratic Party, whose backing earlier this year helped Martin escape a previous no-confidence motion by a single vote.

New Democrat leader Jack Layton said he hadn't received enough assurances the Liberal Party would fight the increased use of private health care in Canada. Martin made the deal for support from Layton's leftist party last spring by pledging $3.6 billion in social spending and promising to delay billions in corporate tax cuts.

Martin appears prepared to take his chances with a holiday campaign and blamed his opponents for any inconvenience to the predominantly Christian electorate.

He had promised to call an election within 30 days of the release of a follow-up report on the corruption scandal. The document is expected Feb. 1, which would have meant elections in the first week of April, a time that suits Canadians better than the bitterly cold and busy holiday season.

Although no formal agreement is in place, all the parties are likely to agree to a pause in the campaign around the Christmas and New Year holidays. The campaign is expected to start Tuesday, after Parliament is dissolved.

Grace Skogstad, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said she believes Canadians will pay little attention to the election until after the New Year, so Martin's opponents are unlikely to face a backlash for forcing a holiday campaign.

"It's going to be those last three weeks after Jan. 1 that are going to matter," said Skogstad, who believes the Liberals will win another minority government. "For the Liberals, they are going to try to put all the focus on the economy which is doing phenomenally well."

Unemployment in Canada is at a 30-year low and Canada runs a budget surplus.

Andrew Stark, a political science professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, also maintained that the campaign would not be decided until the final days. Stark, however, believed the Conservatives will win a minority government if Canadians view another Liberal and New Democrat coalition as being unaccountable with tax money.

The last time a Canadian political campaign coincided with the holiday season was in 1979, when Joe Clark's minority Conservative government was toppled just weeks before Christmas. That vote was delayed until February, however, when Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals took back Parliament.

The latest collapse comes 17 months after an election that turned a Liberal majority into a fragile minority on June 28, 2004.

I'm getting myself an NDP sign again. I like jack but the candidate around here isn't too great.

Oh, those crazy Canadians are at it again! How cute!

Good job by the opposition parties: dissolve the Liberal minority and initiate a campaign that will yield a new House that won't look much different than it did as of 6.30pm today.

A waste of time and money.

If anything, Harper and the Conservatives have the most to lose; the NDP has the most to gain.

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Damn, I still have work leftover from the last election campaign. It's easy to let things slide when you're working for a party/candidate with no hope in hell of getting elected. heh

I hope those aren't from British Columbia or their passports might be revoked.

Yeahhh... please look away rest of world.

Exactly.

Besides the Bloc picking up maybe 2-4 seats in Quebec, I really can't imagine that the new House will be any different than the one elected 18 months ago when very little has changed in that time. The economy is still good. The sponsorship scandal is still there. Many people west of Thunder Bay vote Conservative. Few people east of Thunder Bay, and certainly nobody east of Cornwall do.

I'm voting Bloc.

Yay, another fucking election.

According to a recent poll, we can expect the exact same minority government we had 24 hours ago.

So, what exactly is a minority gov't in parliamentary terms?

It means they won the election by having more seats than any other party, but they don't have the 51% of the seats in the house needed for a majority. Meaning that the opposition parties can form an alliance and bring down any bills, etc being passed in the house. It's a very difficult way to run a country.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_government

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_governments_in_Canada

Hm, I thought if your party only had a plurality, you'd have to form a coalition with some other party to get over 50% and form a government, like all the trouble that Germany went through recently.

Check that second link. It's got some great info on the history of minority governments in Canada, and specifically the most recent Martin government. I snipped this blurb from there:



Martin's government lasted just over a year and a half.

OK, so I could be way off base here, but it sounds like a minority gov't is where the plurality party makes an agreement with another party (in this case, Liberals with NDP?) but doesn't agree to form a coalition gov't, and in this case, the NDP ended that agreement by joining in on the no-confidence vote?

I think that would be it in a nutshell. For whatever reason (and i'm not 100% up on my Canadian politics, so somebody feel free to step in here) there are no "official" coalitions formed with the leading party. There are informal alliances that benefit the mutual goals of the parties involved, otherwise nothing would get done.
Beyond that you have to get into the whole reason behind the motion of non confidence, which is a whole other huge can-o-worms.

Great. Now we can vote in our second election in 18 months, form the same type of government and do it all again in another year. The best thing I could hope for out of this election is that the conservatives form the minority government. Though that's extremely unlikely with a leader as charismatic as Mr. Harper.

I'm sure most Canadians will reward the liberals for stealing our money.

The Liberals are up against change. After being in power for 12 years that would normally be a tough opponent. However, I can't see the alternatives doing anything (especially the Conservatives under Harper) to make themselves appear more appealing.