There seems to be little in the US news media about it, though there is an AP story. It seems to be a major constitutional crisis. (Canadian) Mark Steyn explains.
[Thursday afternoon update]
Has the coup failed? It seems to have at least been postponed:
…the decision to suspend Parliament only gives the Tories a reprieve until late January, when they plan to table a budget that could set them up for a no-confidence vote.
Well, in this case (unlike that of GM), it’s probably better to buy time.
[Mid-afternoon update]
The putsch attempt is collapsing:
Within an hour of Prime Minister Stephen Harper winning a two-month reprieve, some Grit MPs were pulling back from the idea of trying to replace the Tory regime with a Liberal-NDP coalition propped up by the Bloc Quebecois.
Toronto MP Jim Karygiannis says the coalition idea is finished and is calling on Stephane Dion to resign the Liberal leadership sooner rather than later.
Dion is scheduled to step aside as Liberal leader once a successor is chosen May 2 but many Liberals remain uneasy about the prospect of ensconcing him in the prime minister’s office even temporarily.
Good.
I don’t get Steyn’s commotion. The Canadians follow a parliamentary system in which the head of state, the Queen or in this case her nominal designee (whoever this Jean woman is) offers power to the party that has the most seats. The conservatives, although only a plurality, got to form the most recent government because the oppositions parties couldn’t unite. Now they have united, and want to form a majority coalition. This sort of thing happens in parliamentary systems modeled after Britain (the only difference is that they have Presidents instead of Queens) such as Italy and Israel all the time. What’s different about Canada?
Schadenfreude bonus: If it does happen, Americans can preach to Canadians, who’ve lorded their supposed political stability over us since 2000, that they’re a silly banana republic, where the unelected representative of the Queen of their colonial master chooses who runs the government in clear contravention of the will of voters.
I love it.
I have found the political situation in Canada this week to be completely enthralling.
The easiest way for Americans to following the situation is to go to Google News, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Canada – English” option. You can then see a wide range of headlines as the developments unfold.
My favorite part of each online newspaper article is the comment section — Canadians are up in arms about this, and according to one report I saw, there are an order of magnitude more comments than usual on any political story. They’ve split on partisan lines, and, sadly, the conservatives rant and rave along with their prime minister about it is a “coup” and “treason” and “undemocratic”, all of which shows that they didn’t understand that they were not voting for a PM 6 weeks ago. Sad.
Here’s a link to help Americans get up to speed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Canadian_political_dispute
I can’t wait to see what the Governor General does, but it seems clear to me that even if somehow a new Governor General was selected, it wouldn’t matter: Any GG can only suspend Parliament so long – when it reconvenes, Harper will still lose a vote of confidence. If the GG does call for a new election, six weeks after the old one, it won’t matter – Harper can’t create a majority. And I predict that the GG will allow the NDP-Liberal-Bloc coalition to form a government without a new election – a completely lawful and democratic move carried out by the elected representatives of the Canadian people. If Harper’s fate wasn’t already sealed, he sealed it tonight, just now, with his grim speech which alienated the Quebecois while offering no alternative vision for Canada.
We in the USA have this wonderful opportunity to see what life would be like if the Democratic party had split into three parts (left and left-center, and leftist regional) and then were forced to be the opposition to a Republican party led by Rush Limbaugh. Can the Left overcome their differences to throw out a buffoon? Yes they can.
Finally, computer programmers might enjoy this view of the Canadian Crisis, which explains “the critical paths involved in an unplanned change of government in a Westminster-type constitution.” (nicked from James Nicoll)
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010837.html#010837
It goes back to the fact that like Britain, Canada has a government that is a representative democracy in practice, but a monarchy on paper. People have just assumed for so long that the practice was protected, that the thought that they might suddenly lose it–and revert back to something, well, undemocratic–is shocking.
What I’m unclear on is why the GG is needed. Doesn’t Parliament have the ability to call a vote of no confidence at any time and pull down the government, forcing new elections? Why couldn’t they do that, instead of going to the *very* un-democratic route of using an unelected appendix of the former Empire to make the rules up as they go along?
Harper is the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh? Who knew?
Just superficially, I thought this was a rather Limbaugh-like move on Harper’s part:
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/CanadaWorld/2008/12/02/7610191.html
(I think you’ll find it funny even if you admire both Limbaugh and Harper.)
But I will withdraw the comparison if it is distracting — there are a lot of interesting Constitutional issues here, and I would hate for my comment about Limbaugh to distract from that.
What I’d like to see: Queen Elizabeth herself gets involved and tries to settle things. Technically she still is sovereign of Canada.
This situation reminds me how silly parliamentary systems are. Give me a stable system with a separate execuitve and legislature and elections at fixed intervals.
Big D, No one is making up the rules as they go along. Harper is choosing to put the power in hands of the GG, and she is entitled by the rules to make a decision. I agree that the GG could be replaced with an elected official, but for that matter, Canada could dump the Queen as head of state…
I recommend reading this article “The ugly side of Jean’s job”: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/politics/story.html?id=1023610
My favorite quote from the article: “These are things that the governor-general or monarch can do without advice of prime minister,” explained Ned Franks, a noted constitutional expert. “In other words, 99.99% of the time, the things a governor general does in a constitutional-legal sense is on advice of the prime minister. We’re in 0.001% territory.”
Interesting. I think Harper should resign and recommend to the GG that she ask the coalition to govern. They’ll fuck that up right quick, of course, as the Left uniformly and universally does. And furthermore whatever misery is coming Canada’s way can be laid at their feet.
Then, in the next election, Harper can ladle all that on their heads, plus hammer home that what really got under their skin was his threat to cut them off from the public teat. I mean, really, these political parties of the left are supported by tax revenue? That’s disgustingly corrupt.
Time for some regime change and nation building,close to home.
Since I’ll be in Ottawa (the Federal Capitol) for a few months starting in a couple of weeks, I volunteer for the Brenner-equivalent job of running things. Before Obama has his chair broken in I’ll have things fixed in the former Canukistan.
First thing: A wall around Quebec, and no more federal money going there or Quebecers pretending to work in Canada. They want independence? Fracking-A, they can have it.
The particular point here is that the three parties campaigned on the explicit promise that they wouldn’t form a coalition. The Liberals said that a deal with the Bloc Quebecois was “out of the question”. There’s a generally accepted way of resolving this impasse — call a new electon. The coalition doesn’t want to do that, so they’re trying a trick. The other problem is that the GG is supposed to be impartial here, but she was a creature of the Liberal Party so if she accepts the coalition concept she has undermined any credibility she may have had. Italy and Israel allow governments to switch without a new election — Canada doesn’t have that custom. Must be why Italy and Israel are so well-governed.
The particular point here is that the three parties campaigned on the explicit promise that they wouldn’t form a coalition.
What, and people believed them? Surely Canadian voters are not such twits.
Andrew Steele of the Globe and Mail makes the point that the coalition is not anti-Conservative; it is anti-Harper. Harper could step down, and any of several replacement Conservative leaders could, in Steele’s opinion, find enough non-Conservative votes to keep the Conservatives in power.
The opposition contends Harper has not come up with a solid plan for dealing with the global economic crisis.
LOL… Pardon me if I don’t think these people seriously.
Oh, I must make the point that Andrew Steele is the Director of Strategic Research and Policy and in that capacity is a primary advisor to the Ontario Liberal Party. Where some liberal nutjobs claim Limbaugh is a shill for the Republican Party; Andrew Steele actually is a shill for the Liberal Party. Again, pardon me if I don’t take Steele’s comments, or those who believe his comments, seriously.
With Canader in disarray, this is an optimal time to invade and sieze the central provinces with their rich oil fields and natural resources. They’ll make excellent Red States. Let Canadians keep Vancouver, Quebec and the economic laggard Eastern provinces. Bush needs to get the old neocons back together quickly and make this happen before Jan 20th.
Seems to me in the past when something like this came up the natural reflex was to punt it back to the voters: “Keep electing Parliaments until you send Her Majesty one that can govern for longer than two months.”
The particular point here is that the three parties campaigned on the explicit promise that they wouldn’t form a coalition.
Plus, while still a minority, the Conservatives increased their seat totals. The coalition wants to install as Prime Minister a guy, Stephane Dion, who lead his party to historic lows of seats for his party, whose agenda was soundly and thoroughly rejected by the electorate, who’s lost the confidence of HIS OWN PARTY, and who will be stepping down as leader of the Liberals in May. The fact that this ‘crisis’ was triggered by the Conservatives calling for parties to stop leeching off the public purse and do their own fund-raising (which would have had the benefit of cutting off the vast majority of funds to Quebec’s separatist party), plus the support the cabal will need from that separatist party to get and stay in power, makes this a particularly odious power grab. Sure it’s legal. It’s also the work of a bunch of petulant incompetent numbskulls who literally can’t even produce and deliver a five-minute broadcast-quality video.
The Conservatives in Canada are roughly equivalent to the more liberal Democrats in the US.
The Liberal Party is further to the left. They considered their leader to be an inept loser even going into the last election, which they then lost. He plans to resign in a few months.
MUCH further to the left we have the have the unabashedly socialist NDP. They want to do things like spending huge amounts of public money to manipulate the national economy, and nationalize or take a large financial stake in banks and some large corporations. This makes them roughly equivalent to the current Republican-led US government.
Then there’s the Bloc Québécois – a party representing only French separatists in Quebec. It wants to break up the country, but hasn’t actually done much to that end beyond collecting pay-cheques from Canadian taxpayers
The Governor General – who BTW is a French citizen – may today hand over power to this new coalition with the balance of power held by the Bloc’s separatists, making the head of the Liberal Party – who BTW is also a French Citizen – and who will still resign regardless this spring – the new Prime Minister.
Which is when the Western Canada separatist movement gets going.
Quick correction: the GG renounced her French (dual) citizenship before she became GG. And she just granted Harper’s request to suspend Parliament until the end of January.
The Western Canada separatist movement is already going. The issue that most people miss, including eastern Canadians (Ontario and Quebec), is that Westerners see the current Conservative party as their voice in Parliament. Also ignored by easterners is the fact that the Conservative party is largely fiscally conservative and socially libertarian, social conservatives have little traction within the party.
Bob,
Sorry; I didn’t know that she had renounced her French citizenship.
SSFC wrote “The Canadians follow a parliamentary system in which the head of state, the Queen … offers power to the party that has the most seats. The conservatives, although only a plurality, got to form the most recent government because the oppositions parties couldn’t unite.”
SSFC, that’s technically correct. In practice, however, that’s not the way that Canadians vote. We theoretically vote for our representatives in the House of Commons, but you’ll find very few people who’d say “I voted for Ujaal Dosanj of the Liberals because he’s a good representative” rather than “I voted for the Liberals because I want Stephane Dion to be Prime Minister.” In theory we vote for our Members of Parliament. In practice, we vote for a candidate to be Prime Minister. That’s where a coalition of opposition parties falls short on legitimacy.
We had a similar constitutional crisis in Australia in 1975 under the same rules as Canada has. The Prime Minister (Labor -socialist party)had a money bill held up in the Senate and wasn’t going to be able to pay public servants amongst other things. The opposition(Liberal-conservative) party had the numbers in the Senate. The Governor General managed to fire the Prime Minister and call for a new election before the PM could have the Queen remove him (he is appointed on the advice of the PM)and the opposition leader was installed as PM but only as a caretaker until the election which was held within a month, not 18 months later when due. The conservatives won in a landslide but the whole thing seemed fairly dodgy and the conservatives never had to face the complaints from their constituents if the government money had actually stopped.
It’s time for the Danes to sneak in there and seize Ellesmere Island. A few Norsemen should be enough.