I'm taking the "well it could have been a LOT worse" tack here. Steven and the Harpies Tories have got a smaller minority than the Liberals had, and they have no natural allies in the house. Financially, the Liberals are closest to them. Socially, no one is particularly close. And Steven was very rude about votes in parliament enabled by the Bloc "not legitimate coz they're separatists". I hope this comes back to haunt him.
The new election financing legislation is now in full swing -- parties will get $1.75/voter/year from federal coffers, and individuals are limited to $10k political donations, and $zero from corporations or trade unions. That will actually cost the Liberals most - they had deep pocket individuals supporting them, and no more, and don't have as good private-citizen-fundraising abilities as the tories and the ndp.
I just hope the Tories are there long enough for the right-wing loudmouths to surface and remind the electorate what social dinosaurs conservatives they are.
The first votes in the new parliament will be on Federal Accountability Act -- all the opposition parties campaigned on how dreadful the Libs were and thank heavens for the auditor general and so on. So he'd have no problem at all getting an anti-corruption bill through, and it will make a nice showpiece bit of legislation.
beyond that, who knows? cutting the GST? - Tories were the only ones to campaign on that. Others will want social programmes instead of taxcuts.
child care? Tories wanted a $100/mo baby bonus for all under 6yr olds; all others wanted something more organised - daycare. the BQ were very clear about him not undermining their (quite good) daycare programme, and it is, in fact, provincial jurisdiction.
Then there's the gay vote. I'm less concerned about that than I was before the election. There were about 30 Liberals who voted against bill C-38, and some of them didn't get re-elected, so lets say 25 antigay Liberals. That still leaves about 80 prohomo liberals, and NDP+BQ (who were pretty solidly pro homo) are now 80 in total. That's 160, which is a majority. So a resolution would, by these back-of-the-envelope calculations, fail. Maybe Steven was proposing the resolution to play to his rightwing - and they'll go through the motions, "see, we tried but we were defeated, sorry". It won't come early in the term, but I'm less concerned. Even IF the initial resolution passes the Commons, it would then come back as a bill to repeal the Civil Marriage Act. That would have legislative hurdles, first in the Commons, and then (this is my strongest hope) the Senate. The red chamber passed C38 by a 2-1 majority, and the membership hasn't changed. They don't often block commons legislation, but the last time they did was back in the 1980s, on restrictive abortion legislation (back when Kim Cambell was minister of justice). (after that there's litigation, and it'll be a real bore to have to boil that cabbage twice, but there you go. Hopefully it'll never get that far).
Re: Jack and Olivia - no, they're the second husband/wife team. The first was Gurmant Greywal and his wife, in neighbouring Tory seats in the Vancouver area in the last parliament. Gurmant, you may recall, made allegations that the Liberals had tried to bribe him with a Senate seat so that the government would not fall on the budget. Those allegations turned out to be groundless, and when the Mounties investigated, he had decidedly suspicious looking riding association finances himself. He decided not to run this time (did he fall or was he pushed? who knows). His wife was re-elected on Monday. I suspect Jack and Olivia are a bit more on the ball than that.
As (I think) Trudeau rather cynically remarked (I think it was after the Joe Clark minority was elected in 1979), "the conservatives are like measles - you have to have them once a generation".
It's still going to be embarrassing to have Doris Stockwell Day as Foreign Affairs minister - this is the man who thinks the Niagara River flows north to south, and who thinks the Flintstones is accurate history (dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time). Or Vic Toews as minister of justice Scary.
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to quote [life of] Brian, "look on the bright side of life"
Date: 2006-01-25 04:30 am (UTC)HarpiesTories have got a smaller minority than the Liberals had, and they have no natural allies in the house. Financially, the Liberals are closest to them. Socially, no one is particularly close. And Steven was very rude about votes in parliament enabled by the Bloc "not legitimate coz they're separatists". I hope this comes back to haunt him.The new election financing legislation is now in full swing -- parties will get $1.75/voter/year from federal coffers, and individuals are limited to $10k political donations, and $zero from corporations or trade unions. That will actually cost the Liberals most - they had deep pocket individuals supporting them, and no more, and don't have as good private-citizen-fundraising abilities as the tories and the ndp.
I just hope the Tories are there long enough for the right-wing loudmouths to surface and remind the electorate what social
dinosaursconservatives they are.The first votes in the new parliament will be on Federal Accountability Act -- all the opposition parties campaigned on how dreadful the Libs were and thank heavens for the auditor general and so on. So he'd have no problem at all getting an anti-corruption bill through, and it will make a nice showpiece bit of legislation.
beyond that, who knows? cutting the GST? - Tories were the only ones to campaign on that. Others will want social programmes instead of taxcuts.
child care? Tories wanted a $100/mo baby bonus for all under 6yr olds; all others wanted something more organised - daycare. the BQ were very clear about him not undermining their (quite good) daycare programme, and it is, in fact, provincial jurisdiction.
Then there's the gay vote. I'm less concerned about that than I was before the election. There were about 30 Liberals who voted against bill C-38, and some of them didn't get re-elected, so lets say 25 antigay Liberals. That still leaves about 80 prohomo liberals, and NDP+BQ (who were pretty solidly pro homo) are now 80 in total. That's 160, which is a majority. So a resolution would, by these back-of-the-envelope calculations, fail. Maybe Steven was proposing the resolution to play to his rightwing - and they'll go through the motions, "see, we tried but we were defeated, sorry". It won't come early in the term, but I'm less concerned. Even IF the initial resolution passes the Commons, it would then come back as a bill to repeal the Civil Marriage Act. That would have legislative hurdles, first in the Commons, and then (this is my strongest hope) the Senate. The red chamber passed C38 by a 2-1 majority, and the membership hasn't changed. They don't often block commons legislation, but the last time they did was back in the 1980s, on restrictive abortion legislation (back when Kim Cambell was minister of justice). (after that there's litigation, and it'll be a real bore to have to boil that cabbage twice, but there you go. Hopefully it'll never get that far).
Re: Jack and Olivia - no, they're the second husband/wife team. The first was Gurmant Greywal and his wife, in neighbouring Tory seats in the Vancouver area in the last parliament. Gurmant, you may recall, made allegations that the Liberals had tried to bribe him with a Senate seat so that the government would not fall on the budget. Those allegations turned out to be groundless, and when the Mounties investigated, he had decidedly suspicious looking riding association finances himself. He decided not to run this time (did he fall or was he pushed? who knows). His wife was re-elected on Monday. I suspect Jack and Olivia are a bit more on the ball than that.
As (I think) Trudeau rather cynically remarked (I think it was after the Joe Clark minority was elected in 1979), "the conservatives are like measles - you have to have them once a generation".
It's still going to be embarrassing to have
DorisStockwell Day as Foreign Affairs minister - this is the man who thinks the Niagara River flows north to south, and who thinks the Flintstones is accurate history (dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time). Or Vic Toews as minister of justice Scary.