Jan 24 2006
A minority Conservative government…
Well there you have it. The Conservatives picked up 124 seats to the Liberals 103, with the Bloc and the NDP grabbing 51 and 29 respectively.
A minority government, I’m sure Canadians are wondering just how long it will be before we are back to the polls.
Congratulations Mr. Harper, goodbye Mr. Martin.
Swell … another lame duck government. Harper’s 124 seats (Liberal minority at dissolution was 135) leaves him worse off than Meighen in 1925 (adjusting for total seats in the House), when Meighen’s Conservative minority lasted four days (the Conservatives losing the resulting election).
Even with a 135-seat minority in 1979, Joe Clarke’s Conservatives barely hung on to power for nine months (a cautionary tale for Harper?) and lost the resulting election.
I suspect that there remain too many latent internal ideological issues within the Conservative party for Harper to manage the kind of results Pearson produced in his sixties minorities. The internal dynamics of the current Conservative party may well be similar to those which cuased Diefenbaker’s 1962 minority government to self-destruct (and lose the resulting election).
My prediction for the 39th Parliament: nasty, brutish, and short.
I was contemplating this last night while watching the results coming in.
Of course there will be no shortage of experts, polls and assorted talking heads taking up all sorts of media space on this topic for as long as the government lasts.
I doubt anyone is expecting the government to last very long. The question seems to be is the recent performance of the Conservatives evidence of a continual errosion of support for the Liberals, or just the swan song of the Conservative party?
I’ll leave the predictions to those far wiser in the political arena, only time will truly tell.
The way I see it, the days of replacing one majority government with another are still a-ways ahead of us. As such, the process had to be one in which the Liberal majority was weakened to minority status, following which a Conservative minority would replace them, and only then would contemplation of a majority government be possible.
What I really despise was all the “hidden agenda” babble, for that is where all the real sneakiness came in; if interest groups didn’t want Harper to touch a given issue after his being elected Prime Minister, all they would have to do would claim that he had had a hidden agenda to touch that issue after getting elected, effectively tying his arms and limiting his ability to act as a Prime Minister.
To illustrate: if a certain special-interest group, say, the Canadian anti-firearm lobby (yes, they do exist and are frightened to death about confronting a real pro-firearms lobby group like the NRA, as oppose to what is effectively an organization of shooters like the NFA) wanted to restrict Harper from rectifying terrible Liberal moves regarding firearms, all they would have to do would be to say “Stephen Harper has a hidden agenda to proliferate firearms in Canada”. In saying this, they would easily be able to pounce on Harper for any post-election move he would make vis-à-vis firearms laws in Canada, including even the sensible scrapping of the abomination that is the long-gun registry (the one that didn’t/couldn’t do a thing to keep a .338 long-gun out of the hands of the demented fellow who murdered the poor Quebec police woman).
Let me just say this: each candidate for the Prime Minister’s spot had one agenda and one agenda only - to lead the country. Nothing more, nothing less. To restrict a Canadian Prime Minister from moving in a certain direction SOLELY because such an action has also been taken by a country like the U.S. smacks of fear-mongering and close-mindedness, qualities that really did define the ousted Liberal government.
Joe
I’m not sure if any of the parties are looking for election any time soon. They’ve all fought two hard fought elections in a short period of time. The Liberals especially are stone cold broke, have no leader and the prospects to take over from Martin are at best…thin.
The only way that I can see another election would be if Harper dared the NDP/Libs to collapse the government within 6 months, then getting his majority by demolishing the Liberals as they eat each up during the process of selecting a new leader.
Harper can literally play brinkmanship with his minority by putting forward things that the NDP/Liberals have to oppose(Ex.Harper tries to add property rights to the Charter). Since the only card they can play is bringing down the government, they won’t do that unless they think they can win. Hard to do that when you’re broke.