When I saw Peter McKay coming out of Quantam of Solace on Friday night, I knew things did not bode well for the Conservative party.
Right now, as our Prime Minister is requesting that Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean prorogue (Word of the Week!) until cooler heads prevail, you can't help but wonder whether his fellow Conservatives are pissed off that their leader is behaving like such an autocrat in Parliament and risking their positions at the helm.
The political nerd in me is loving this whole coalition government business. For those Americans (and others) reading this, in Canada we are having a political crisis, due largely to the fact that we have a minority government , which means that if the other parties can legally band together and decide that the ruling party is doing a bad job, the government can fall.
There are many competing versions that explain why it has come to this, but the Liberals and the NDP's - with the backing of the Bloc Quebecois - have decided to form a coalition government to defeat the Conservative, effectively bringing down the government and rejigging the power structure.
Sound like mutiny?
Emma points us to this quote that sums it up pretty perfectly:
Elections don’t elect governments, they elect Parliaments. Parliaments make a government. Parliaments can break a government.
- Nelson Wiseman, political science professor at the University of Toronto,
It is all unfolding now. I can bet that the Governor General never thought she would have so much power in her hands, and I am willing to put money on it that she wishes she didn't have to make this formal decision.
Governors general are expected to take the "advice" of the sitting prime minister on almost every occasion. Should they not, because they feel their obligation to ensure a stable and functioning government supersedes that advice, then the prime minister has no alternative but to resign.
That has happened at least twice before in Canadian history: in 1896 and in 1926 in the so-called King-Byng affair, which provoked an almost violent reaction against the decision of the then British-appointed governor general, Lord Byng.
A fun as this has been, I think most of us wish these men with their swishy trenchcoats and whiney partisan cliques adn kill-or-be-killed attitude would just govern already. We are in a bit of a financial crisis, eh? If you can't stop antagonizing each other, I am turning the car around before we reach Quebec, and then none of you get any poutine, you hear me???
