Canadian Federal Election Now In Progress (kinda, sorta)

[bjarvis]

The Liberal minority gov't has lost a non-confidence vote introduced by the opposition Conservatives by a vote of 171 to 133. The official election campaign will start tomorrow morning as soon as the prime minister visits the governor-general to formally request the dissolution of the House of Commons and announce the date of the coming election.

By law, the election date can be no earlier than 36 days from dissolution but otherwise at the discretion of the prime minister. January 16 or 23 are the probable dates; I'm betting on Jan. 23.

I'm a big politics junky... I absorb electoral, procedural and parliamentary trivia & statistics like others absorb sports stats. This is my version of the World Series. The only way it could be better is to actually be in Canada at the moment, immersing myself in the middle of it all. *sigh*



This is the first time a minority gov't in Canada has been defeated by a clear non-confidence vote. Prior historical defeats were done by defeat of a budget or money bill which acts as a proxy for non-confidence.

This is also a rare winter election. Most politicians are usually bright enough to avoid campaigning through snow banks & blizzards, not to mention avoiding pissing off the voters by campaigning across the xmas holidays.

This vote is also a little bizarre on the surface: the opposition parties which have forced the election are behind the Liberals in the polls, albeit not by a lot. Further, the leader of the Conservatives is trailing his own party's popularity in the polls, and most polls indicate the current prime minister is the best liked for the role of all of the party leaders. Go figure.

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[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

By law, the election date can be no earlier than 36 days from dissolution but otherwise at the discretion of the prime minister. January 16 or 23 are the probable dates; I'm betting on Jan. 23.

well, actually, it's at the discretion of the Governor-General. And once he hands in his resignation, she's not bound by his advice.

he can request a dissolution, and recommend an election date, but it is up to Mme Jean. It's her job to ensure that the country has a government, and the obvious way is to dissolve parliament and have a general election. And, to be fair, that's probably what will happen.

But she could accept his resignation, and ask someone else -- say, Mr Harper -- to form a government. There are those who recoil at that idea, and initially, I was one. But look at it this way -- it puts him in a bind. He says he wants to be PM - so how can he decline? But it would be interesting to see how long THAT government would last. People would see a Conservative government (you're right, no real relation to the party of Sir John A, or Joe Clark for that matter) in action, recoil in horror, and not vote for HIM again after a few months.

Prolly wouldn't happen. But I would like to see Michaelle Jean show 'em who's boss.

Apparently there's some tacit agreement to no campaigning Dec 23 - Jan 3.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

This is another area in which we're similar -- I love watching Canadian politics, even though I no longer have a direct stake in it. It's a wonder the Liberals have been able to hang on so long despite the obvious decadence and corruption -- in any party-oriented system, there has to be some regular turnover to keep the parties honest, and unacceptable aspects of each of the alternatives to the Liberals have kept them from being turfed out. Despite my brush with Jack Layton (who I'm sure was cruising me at TO City Hall during Convention), the NDP would be a disaster as idealists crash into reality, while the PC has elements easily painted as right-wing and dengerous, and of course the PQ wants to break up the country (when they're not taking bribes for relenting.)

Fun, fun! :-)