Harper is safe now, Iggy is coalition loser and strategic dunce

My prediction is that, given the political deftness (sarcasm!) with which Ignatieff handled the coalition parties last winter, the next election will be held in 2011 or 2012.

The only reason it would be earlier is if Harper recovers in the polls, and it looks like the Libs will be crushed, in which case, that's when it will happen.

It's even possible to imagine that Harper may set a record by serving a record 5 years as a minority PM if he wants, since his unwilling defeat would require all the opposition parties concurrently agreeing it's time for an election sooner, which seems rather unlikely, given how he has alienated them.

I also fearlessly predict that next December, when the one-year later thumb-sucker media assessments on the coalition get done, that Iggy will be portrayed as a big loser and strategic dunce for failing to oust Harper when he could have done so.

I think Iggy will reap what he has sown last winter, and may never become PM as a result.

- B

More annoyed than glum. My annoyance is that media seems to think Iggy has the power to pull down the government whenever he wishes. I think he clearly lost that power when he rejected the coalition and basically handed the power stick back to Harper.

That certainly makes me glum, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

The Bloc and NDP don't want an election now apparently, so they'll have to vote with the govt to keep it going. Liberals could vote no, though.

And it wouldn't surprise me to see Harper pull another 'dare' routine, and bring up something so outrageous that the Opposition votes together. Harper seems to have a death wish sometimes.

The Libs will move a motion on EI, the NDP will add an amendment they know the Libs will vote against, the NDP will then vote against the main motion because it doesn't include their amendment, and Harper will live to screw up the country for yet another day.

This nonsense could go on indefinitely. I'm guessing Iggy will end up realizing that his best shot at power may have been the one he blew last winter when he junked the coalition agreement.

- B

but it's unlikely the GG would ever have gone for the Coalition anyway.

They would only force an election if they thought they'd get an outright majority, because Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal leader, is from the most conservative possible wing of the "Liberal" Party(and wrote an article in Harper's in 2003 calling for the U.S. to embrace imperialism in its Middle East policy), he doesn't want to have to get the support of the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois, the parties that actually OPPOSE the policies of Stephen Harper. If Ignatieff did get a majority, we can assume he'd be even further right than the last "Liberal" government of Jean Chretien, the government that all-but-destroyed Canada's unemployment compensation system and fatally compromised Canada's sovereignty by accepting the right-wing NAFTA treaty it had been elected to repeal.

And the Liberals pretty much forfeited any real right to call themselves "The Opposition" when they kept the Harper government alive by through at least 50 votes on reactionary legislation, none of which any Liberal government in the future will repeal.

The only worthwhile Liberal government would be a minority government, because that's the only kind that could actually be different from the Harper regime. The Liberal Party, on its own, isn't ever going to be progressive again.

And we can also assume that the Liberals, in a minority, will never vote to repeal any of the reactionary legislation they allowed Harper to pass by abstaining on over 50 no-confidence motions.

or whatever you do in Alaska, and see where THAT gets you.

I would vote NDP, and proudly.

If the Liberals have allowed Harper to pass all his horrible stuff now, you know they won't repeal any of it later. And I hope you'd agree that Ignatieff was criminally wrong to save Harper by torpedoing the coalition proposal in December.


You aren't really saying that Canadians should settle for nothing better than Ignatieff, a man who can't be different from Harper?

And in Western Canada, the Liberals are dead in most places so why even BOTHER voting for them there? The NDP is stronger than the Liberals in B.C., so there can't be a good reason to vote Liberal instead of NDP there. In Saskatchewan, the Liberals aren't going to win any more than the single seat they hold now, so why vote for them there?

You would agree that only a minority Liberal government could be worth having, based on the Nineties, wouldn't you?

And I'd never vote NDP.

Liberals will repeal pretty much all that Harper has done. And they will have a majority to do it with.

Ontario and Quebec are Liberal, and that's all that counts.

They repealed NOTHING that Mulroney did. And they cut social services even further(when the voters elected them to STOP the cuts).
And they cut EI, which even YOU would have to agree was unforgiveable and has made the recession much worse for poor and working-class Canadians. The Liberals stopped BEING Liberal in the Nineties, and Ignatieff is to Chretiens's right.

Without a strong NDP presence, the Liberals will be just as worthless now as they were in the Nineties. Remember Chretien strangling the protestor? That's what an Ignatieff majority would be like.

The best Liberal government was the 1972-74 Trudeau minority, when they were made to create single-payer health care and PetroCan.

There's no good reason Canada should have to settle for just a trivial change.

P.S., why do you NOT want pr?

Canada was deeply in debt, and had a massive deficit as well. Any govt coming in would have had to make major cutbacks, and it fell to the Liberals that time.

I find the NDP rigid and out of date, and so do most Canadians apparently, because they haven't been voted in as even Opposition much less govt, in over 60 years.

Ontario got stuck with them by fluke some years ago, and it was a disaster. I doubt Ontario will ever give them another chance, and certainly not at the federal level!

I don't want pr, because I don't want a 'pizza parliament'. It's dysfunctional enough now with the Tories in there, so the last thing we need is 20 different parties all breaking up the vote, as nothing but arguing will get done.

Israel and Italy are prime examples of this.