[ridenrain]

I imagine this is just the start of a long, rich gold mine for political cartoonists.

[Apollo]

Well Canada has become a joke so it's fitting that many will joke about the situation.

I have never been this disappointed to be a Canadian.

[Gunnair]

Streaker wrote:

Gunnair wrote:

Streaker wrote:

Go away. Nobody takes you in the least bit seriously.

There's some irony...

You're pretty grouchy today, too, eh?

Not overly. Disappointed really. Harper made a monumental and amazingly stupid mistake, the opposition are falling over themselves to try and hide years of bitter rhetoric and posturing to form a coalition that has a lame duck leader at its head, and the handful of far left hangdowns such as yourself are fairly glowing that the Harper minority has failed even though it means replacement by a Frankenstein's carcass made from the rotting dregs of the other political parties with lame duck Dion as its brain and Quebec seperatists as its soul.

Ultimately, the coalition will fail, Harper will get punted, and the CPC will find its way after the country tires of Che Jack, the Liberal Leader of the month, and the political wing of the FLQ.

[Shablabar]

JJ, I usually enjoy your cartoons. This one was poor, though, and your ensuing rant almost suggested an ignorance of parliamentary government which I would be tempted to attribute to you were it not for the rest of your website, which is generally well-informed.

Your reasoning seems to be informed by a notion that there must be a correlation between Joe Bloggins' vote and the government in charge. That's not how it works. We don't elect a government, we elect the House of Commons. The Governor General, the Queen's representative, chooses a government from the House that can command its support. Practically, that means the leader of the largest party. But not always. In this case, the Tories don't have the House's confidence. There is a possibility, a very real one, that this new coalition will be able to govern with the House's support. If and when a no confidence motion passes, the Governor General has a constitutional duty to give them the proverbial kick at the can before casting us into another election. There is nothing about this that is 'back door' or illegitimate. It is a perfectly functional, if uncommon, exercise in parliamentary democracy. I never thought I'd need to remind you of this.

I think you may be distracting yourself with your invocation of loaded terms like 'banana republic' and 'meaningless elections'. That's just the flailing rhetoric of a sore loser. A poster above made a good point: many people around the world live in countries with actual instability, actual coups, and actual problems. Canada is most emphatically not one of those countries. Quit all your talk of 'unelected' this and 'foreign monarch' that. I, and you too, could release a litany of unelected Prime Ministers and Premiers in Canada and across the Commonwealth and the world. Canada's monarchy and its procedural trappings are well established and legitimized by the very 'social contract' you conjured in support of your outrage. You may be a republican, and on that issue, reasonable people can disagree. I'm a monarchist. But, really, the extent to which the Governor General even *has* discretion on this call is debatable.

In any case, Harper will likely have the GG prorogue Parliament and let cooler heads prevail in January. Even if he doesn't, I'd be surprised if a quarter of Canadians are as outraged as you assume them to be. Most I've talked to are a mixture of excited, curious, and interested.

(P.S.: I'd think Republican Conservatives would be excited. If anything will ever give them a horse to ride all the way to abolishing the Monarchy, this near or actual constitutional crisis is going to be it.)

[Scape]

Quote:

September 9, 2004

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson,
C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
Governor General
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A1

Excellency,
As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister
to dissolve the 38th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government's program.
We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation. We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.
Your attention to this matter is appreciated.

Sincerely,
Hon. Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.
Leader of the Opposition
Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Also signed by Duceppe and Layton"

[PJB]

Donny..You are amazing. I find it incredible that you are the first to despise the Canadian government when it comes to native issues and yet you applaud a coalition government that will do less for this country than you can! You are a shitraiser that truly has no standing or point to make!

You want Canada broken off into how many 'First Nations' so you can benefit. Federal politics is really not your best subject. Just keep within your native factions!

[CKASlacker]

Shablabar wrote:

Your reasoning seems to be informed by a notion that there must be a correlation between Joe Bloggins' vote and the government in charge. That's not how it works. We don't elect a government, we elect the House of Commons. The Governor General, the Queen's representative, chooses a government from the House that can command its support. Practically, that

I would agree with you on the letter of the law, that yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with what Dion et al are trying to do. I'm no fan of (for now) PM Steve, but I think what JJ was driving at with his comic (and subsequent rant) is that by the *spirit* of democratic election, we'd like the party that wins the most seats in the House to actually drive the proverbial car that is Canada from a governmental perspective. Obviously, with only a minority the other parties can (to stretch the metaphor further) stall the car when they wish -- but they can only do it from the back seat.

Imagine a specific example - let's pretend the new coalition with Dion as its head works, and then Dion decides to pass his Carbon tax idea with (again supposed) help from the Duceppe and Layton. Is that really what Canadians wanted? Canada had a chance to elect Dion and his plan (and much of the election seemed to be around the environment) - they decided otherwise. To now have Dion's carbon tax resurrected from the grave by some weird coalition between NDP, Libs, and separtist Bloc seems very strange and not really what the Canadian voting public intended.

(Personally, from what I read I thought the Dion's plan had some merit -- but that's beside the point).

In any event, it makes for interesting times in Canadian politics. Considering I was *far* more interested in the US election rhetoric that the Canadian one (I think another of JJ's comics summed up my feelings perfectly), it's kinda nice to actually take some notice of the Canadian situation while we wait for W's lame duck presidency to finally end.

Shablabar wrote:

(P.S.: I'd think Republican Conservatives would be excited. If anything will ever give them a horse to ride all the way to abolishing the Monarchy, this near or actual constitutional crisis is going to be it.)

That's a really interesting idea -- I, for one, hope it happens since I'm not a fan of the constitutional monarchy, regardless of the history it has in this country.

[Psudo]

Shablabar wrote:

We don't elect a government, we elect the House of Commons. The Governor General, the Queen's representative, chooses a government from the House that can command its support. Practically, that means the leader of the largest party. But not always.

Name another time that a GG has chosen a coalition government in Canada's history. If there's a historic precedent, the move gains some legitimacy. If not, it loses some.

Hint: The most recent one ended in 1920, and is famous for Anglophones overriding the wishes of Francophones in order to institute conscription to fight in World War 1.

[damngrumpy]

First of all, in a parliamentary democracy, we elect a party not the Prime Minister
The party appoints the leader therefore its the party who puts the name of the Prime Minister forward. This is no a coup, by the way, as the parliamentary system
allows for this procedure. It happend before back in 1926, and is rarely used by
the system. So its a stretch to call this a coup, or to even suggest Canadians
elect the Prime Minister.
People, this is not a republic, its a parliamentary democracy. And in this case,
when the coalition takes over the majority of Canadians will have power, as the Tories were not given a mandate they were given a care taker position and they did
a lousy job.

[Sapio]

Streaker wrote:

Sapio wrote:

Streaker wrote:

we have the option of adopting Keynesian economics to prime the pump during this recession.

Keynesian economics, which we only partly follow, is part of the problem. We need to look to the Austrian school to fix the mess, or just have it happen again.

Keynes hasn't been de rigueur in Canada for quite some time. But he might be making a (hopefully) brief comeback.

Lets hope not. I think Ludwig von Mises would be much better.

[llama66]

Psudo wrote:

Shablabar wrote:

We don't elect a government, we elect the House of Commons. The Governor General, the Queen's representative, chooses a government from the House that can command its support. Practically, that means the leader of the largest party. But not always.

Name another time that a GG has chosen a coalition government in Canada's history. If there's a historic precedent, the move gains some legitimacy. If not, it loses some.

Hint: The most recent one ended in 1920, and is famous for Anglophones overriding the wishes of Francophones in order to institute conscription to fight in World War 1.

The Unionists under Borden in 1917

[Psudo]

llama66 wrote:

Psudo wrote:

Name another time that a GG has chosen a coalition government in Canada's history.

The Unionists under Borden in 1917

Bravo! What else did that instance have in common with this one?

[llama66]

It was formed to over come a crisis (the Conscription Crisis)

[Psudo]

Which modern crisis is the parallel of the 1917 Conscription Crisis?

[llama66]

well the Economic Crisis is it, as this is the premise the Opposition is using to claim ineptitude on the part of the Federal Governing party.