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I am not, by and large, a part of the American Liberal Cult of Canada.
You know the one. You've heard from them for years. They're the ones who hold up Canadian Health Care as the epitome of Health Care Done Right (as a side note, it's not). They speak of Canada as the land of Equal Rights, of Socialist and Liberal policies executed flawlessly. Of tolerance and warmth and friendliness and funny television mostly performed by Newfoundland natives.
And of course, no matter how bad things got here, under Bush or whoever, Canada always glowed warm on the horizon for the ALCC. As bad as things got... they could always pull up their stakes and move. They could move... to Canada.
(Show of hands -- how many of you know someone who made that assertion sometime in the last eight years? Yeah? Wow. Now, how many of you know someone who actually moved from the United States to Canada during that time? Even one? And if there is one, did he or she go out of disgust with the Bush Presidency, or for some other unrelated reason?)
The thing is? I grew up on the Border. And for a couple years I travelled up there all the time to see Weds, before she was allowed to cross over and be married and now she lives here. And I know that as nice as Canada may be, it's not perfect. Not by a long shot. They have the same liberal versus conservative pressures. They have longstanding arguments and prejudices and points of shame, along with their admitted virtues. They are, by an large, a country. And like all countries, there's stuff they do well and there's stuff they do poorly. Oh, and everything costs more and there's not as much variety. Except in snack foods. Man, do they make a lot of snack foods and put a lot of crap on their chips.
Well, they had an election just before we had ours here in the U.S.A. And Steven Harper and his Conservative party won more seats in Parliament than any other party, as they had the last time. They even closed the gap on getting an actual majority in Parliament, though they failed to do so. Which means that if you add the Opposition Parties up -- the Liberals (who are a lot like our Democrats), the New Democratic Party (who are a lot like actual Liberals), and the Bloc Québécois (which is a lot like if the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wyoming and Wisconsin all banded together, spoke mostly Norwegian, elected representatives who promoted their interests before any others, and occasionally threatened to secede) -- there were more Opposition party members than there were Conservatives.
Now, there's a crisis going on right now. It's global and it's economic. And Canada is being affected by it as well -- though perhaps not as badly as some countries (like, say, my own country). and Steven Harper and the Conservatives released an Economic Update that... well....
Well, let me put it this way. It would have looked perfectly natural coming out of the Republican National Committee's party platform committee. In 2004 or 2006.
And, what was even better, it proposed to save money by ending public financing of political parties -- which coincidentally would have eviscerated the Liberals and the N.D.P. -- and proposed to rescind the right for pubic servants being abused to strike, which is a major Bloc hot button issue.
Emotions were high. People were angry. And Steven Harper managed to achieve a rare first in Canadian Politics -- he managed to actually get the Liberals, N.D.P. and Bloc Québécois so monumentally pissed off they would actually agree to work together rather than let the Minority Government have its way. When the vote is taken on this plan, it will almost certainly fail. And as the vote has been made a Confidence Vote, it will cause the Harper government to fall. Then, the Governor-General can either dissolve Parliament and have another election... or she can allow the Opposition to form a Coalition and have that Coalition Government take power.
The Liberals, the Bloc and the N.D.P. have signed a letter of intent to do the latter, and have petitioned the Governor-General to allow them to form that Coalition Government. When they take power, the Liberals will get the Prime Minister's seat and many Cabinet posts, the N.D.P. will get several other cabinet posts near and dear to their heart, and the Bloc, while not directly participating in the government, will support the government for at least 18 months.
Harper and the Conservatives, continuing to run the pre-2008 American Republican playbook, are declaring all of this antidemocratic and the Opposition's way of subverting the will of the voters... which is patently stupid given that A) the Conservatives voted into office will keep their seats and B) the reason the Coalition can do this is because the Voters voted more of them into Parliament than they did Conservatives.
This right here is something special to watch. Honest to god Coalition governance, with N.D.P. cabinet ministers (someone no one expected in our lifetimes), and the Conservatives being invited to have some seats right there on the Back Bench, their power stripped.
What happens next? I dunno. No one does. As I said at the top, Canada's no Nirvana, no matter how much American Liberals might wish it to be. The Liberals have choked under pressure before.
On the other hand, they have also done great things under pressure before.
Regardless, this is all really cool stuff. And honestly, it couldn't have happened to a nicer censorious arts-and-culture-slashing homophobe than Steven Harper. One hopes he will enjoy his time in the Shadow Cabinet, at least until such time as the Conservatives dump him in favor of the next bright young luminary.
You know the one. You've heard from them for years. They're the ones who hold up Canadian Health Care as the epitome of Health Care Done Right (as a side note, it's not). They speak of Canada as the land of Equal Rights, of Socialist and Liberal policies executed flawlessly. Of tolerance and warmth and friendliness and funny television mostly performed by Newfoundland natives.
And of course, no matter how bad things got here, under Bush or whoever, Canada always glowed warm on the horizon for the ALCC. As bad as things got... they could always pull up their stakes and move. They could move... to Canada.
(Show of hands -- how many of you know someone who made that assertion sometime in the last eight years? Yeah? Wow. Now, how many of you know someone who actually moved from the United States to Canada during that time? Even one? And if there is one, did he or she go out of disgust with the Bush Presidency, or for some other unrelated reason?)
The thing is? I grew up on the Border. And for a couple years I travelled up there all the time to see Weds, before she was allowed to cross over and be married and now she lives here. And I know that as nice as Canada may be, it's not perfect. Not by a long shot. They have the same liberal versus conservative pressures. They have longstanding arguments and prejudices and points of shame, along with their admitted virtues. They are, by an large, a country. And like all countries, there's stuff they do well and there's stuff they do poorly. Oh, and everything costs more and there's not as much variety. Except in snack foods. Man, do they make a lot of snack foods and put a lot of crap on their chips.
Well, they had an election just before we had ours here in the U.S.A. And Steven Harper and his Conservative party won more seats in Parliament than any other party, as they had the last time. They even closed the gap on getting an actual majority in Parliament, though they failed to do so. Which means that if you add the Opposition Parties up -- the Liberals (who are a lot like our Democrats), the New Democratic Party (who are a lot like actual Liberals), and the Bloc Québécois (which is a lot like if the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wyoming and Wisconsin all banded together, spoke mostly Norwegian, elected representatives who promoted their interests before any others, and occasionally threatened to secede) -- there were more Opposition party members than there were Conservatives.
Now, there's a crisis going on right now. It's global and it's economic. And Canada is being affected by it as well -- though perhaps not as badly as some countries (like, say, my own country). and Steven Harper and the Conservatives released an Economic Update that... well....
Well, let me put it this way. It would have looked perfectly natural coming out of the Republican National Committee's party platform committee. In 2004 or 2006.
And, what was even better, it proposed to save money by ending public financing of political parties -- which coincidentally would have eviscerated the Liberals and the N.D.P. -- and proposed to rescind the right for pubic servants being abused to strike, which is a major Bloc hot button issue.
Emotions were high. People were angry. And Steven Harper managed to achieve a rare first in Canadian Politics -- he managed to actually get the Liberals, N.D.P. and Bloc Québécois so monumentally pissed off they would actually agree to work together rather than let the Minority Government have its way. When the vote is taken on this plan, it will almost certainly fail. And as the vote has been made a Confidence Vote, it will cause the Harper government to fall. Then, the Governor-General can either dissolve Parliament and have another election... or she can allow the Opposition to form a Coalition and have that Coalition Government take power.
The Liberals, the Bloc and the N.D.P. have signed a letter of intent to do the latter, and have petitioned the Governor-General to allow them to form that Coalition Government. When they take power, the Liberals will get the Prime Minister's seat and many Cabinet posts, the N.D.P. will get several other cabinet posts near and dear to their heart, and the Bloc, while not directly participating in the government, will support the government for at least 18 months.
Harper and the Conservatives, continuing to run the pre-2008 American Republican playbook, are declaring all of this antidemocratic and the Opposition's way of subverting the will of the voters... which is patently stupid given that A) the Conservatives voted into office will keep their seats and B) the reason the Coalition can do this is because the Voters voted more of them into Parliament than they did Conservatives.
This right here is something special to watch. Honest to god Coalition governance, with N.D.P. cabinet ministers (someone no one expected in our lifetimes), and the Conservatives being invited to have some seats right there on the Back Bench, their power stripped.
What happens next? I dunno. No one does. As I said at the top, Canada's no Nirvana, no matter how much American Liberals might wish it to be. The Liberals have choked under pressure before.
On the other hand, they have also done great things under pressure before.
Regardless, this is all really cool stuff. And honestly, it couldn't have happened to a nicer censorious arts-and-culture-slashing homophobe than Steven Harper. One hopes he will enjoy his time in the Shadow Cabinet, at least until such time as the Conservatives dump him in favor of the next bright young luminary.