Wow do I love the Senate Republicans right about now!!! They actually managed to grow a pair and vote down the auto industry bailout. And their line of reasoning was rock solid: no government money until the UAW agrees to wages that approach sanity. Currently, you see, UAW workers earn 1.4 - 1.5 times as much per hour as Toyota workers (source). This includes benefits, etc. So there’s PLENTY of room for wage cuts. Plenty. And there’s simply no reason why US taxpayers should hand GM a pile of money for overpaying their workers and underinvesting in innovation. If Toyota makes better cars more efficiently at a lower cost to you and me, the conclusion is simple: they should be in charge of making cars.
My favorite part about the whole thing is that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are calling it “irresponsible” to pass on the bailout. You know, because the Republicans are going to “let” all these workers “lose their jobs.” Wrong place to put the blame, there, babe. It bears repeating: the UAW was offered and rejected a deal whereby they would agree to an immediate wage cut to the level of Toyota workers. It is the UAW putting American workers out of jobs by refusing to be rational - NOT CONGRESS for refusing to force taxpayers like you and me to fund GM’s mistakes.
What I want for Christmas: the biggest Chapter 11 hearings in national history. Baring that: mass unemployment in Detroit and Ontario.
Yes, no doubt Rae had an actual shot should it have gone to voting. Not as good as Ignatieff’s, mind you, but let’s call it 30%: respectable. Still, as went Dion, so goes Rae. The salient difference between Rae and Ignatieff - the only one likely to be a major consideration after the events of the past two weeks - is that Rae was a vocal proponent of coalition and Ignatieff was not. Rae wants to take Harper down as soon as possible and at apparently any cost. Ignatieff favors a more measured “wait-and-see” approach. Ignatieff’s approach is the right one - both morally and strategically. Morally it’s just sort of irresponsible to replace an already not-ideally-stable government with an even less stable one, especially with means as questionable as these. Strategically it’s not clear what the Liberals would gain from going in guns blazing at this point. Dion led them to one of their worst federal election defeats ever and then compounded the problem even further by staging his barely legal “coup.” The first move from here has got to be to suck out the poison and go to work regaining credibility. When you’re down, you dust yourself off and get up to fight another day to be sure - so consider this the dusting off. Dion’s been axed - so there’s that taken care of. Now with Rae graciously declining to drag out the infighting everyone is so tired of, the party can actually get back to work.
Ignatieff is the best choice not only for restoring party credibility, but also for going toe-to-toe with Harper. It’s exactly what the Conservatives were NOT hoping for (and what they indeed used under-the-table tactics to prevent in the leadership race of 2006), and I guess I should be disappointed now for that reason. But I think everyone is glad to see the situation stabilize.
I mean sure, given how decisively Dion’s ass was handed to him on this latest toe-to-toe with Harper, it’s clear to everyone that he needs to resign sooner rather than later. The last thing the Liberals want at this point is Dion across the bench from Harper on January 27th when the new budget is on the table. Nothing drives home the urgency of limiting the damage Dion is doing to his party better than the unpopular Harper’s 20-point lead in the polls. And of the two remaining choices (the other being former Ontario PM and NDP provincial faction leader Bob Rae), Ignatieff is clearly the right choice. Why? Put simply, because while Bob Rae was a vocal supporter of the coalition with the NDP (no shock there - Rae is former NDP himself), Ignatieff was always skeptical. Given that the public isn’t a big fan of the deal, that indeed the unpopular Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are leading the Liberals by 20 points at the moment as a result of its failure, probably the Liberals will be able to regain some face putting a coalition skeptic and moderate like Ignatieff in the driver’s seat over the left-leaning agitator Rae.
The “bad news” bit of it is, of course, that Ignatieff is a worthier opponent. He’s smarter, more even-tempered, and generally less politically connected than Rae or Dion. I assume that if Ignatieff wins the situation with the Liberal Party is finally settled, and I’m really not so sure Harper can win a fair fight in Canada. Against Bob Rae - sure. Against Ignatieff? Well, maybe, actually. Ignatieff is a essentially a college professor, a relative newcomer to politics, having first stood for election in 2006. So maybe Harper can trip him up on general lack of experience and familiarity with domestic politics. It’ll be interesting to see whether the general lack of Liberal Party connections is a blessing or a curse. It could be a blessing in that it finally ends the feud between the Chretien and Martin factions. But in a party as patronage-addicted as the Liberal Party, it’s got to have its downsides as well. If hard to see anyone sticking around for very long who doesn’t know exactly which palms to grease.
But I expect most actual Canadians see this as a good thing. The unsettled nature of politics up there has got to be making everone a little nervous - especially with the world economic situation being what it is. Most Canadians would probably rather put all the Liberal leadership questions behind them and let the government get back to functioning … however it is that it functions.
Dion is expected to resign on Wednesday - for real this time. January 27th is plenty far away for the Liberals to sort out their leadership situation now that it’s down to two popular candidates. Whichever way they decide, things just got harder for Harper. If it’s Bob Rae, though, we can probably expect more of the same, just with a higher level of general competence. Since it’s the approach that’s wrong and not - as many commentators would have it - the communications angle or Dion’s superior attitude to party infighting, I guess Rae wouldn’t be too difficult for Harper to fend off. But since Ignatieff understands that the coalition is wrongheaded and that the Liberals are just going to have to ride out another year or so of Harper government, he’s an easier opponent in the short-term but a much, much more difficult one in the long term.
Ignatieff winning means Harper’s here to stay until at least October, I’d say. But it also makes me wonder whether he’ll make it through the next election. Ignatieff, like Obama down here, is a great unknown. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
To hear the press tell it, Canada’s Governor General made a “controversial” and “unprecedented” decision in agreeing to prorogue Parliament until late January. I think this is both true and misleading. On one level, it’s true that anything is “controversial” about which people argue, so in that sense the decision qualifies. But it’s disingenuous to imply that it’s really all that controversial among constitutional scholars. The press has taken pains to quote those scholars who disagree with it, but a more even-handed view is that precedent would suggest she’s right. A similar line of reasoning holds for “unprecedented.” It’s true enough that this decision is “unprecedented” on the basis of a lack of comparable past examples. But it’s the situation that’s “unprecedented” more than the Governor General’s decision. Calling her decision “unprecedented” without mentioning that there weren’t really any available precedents for her to follow isn’t the most honest telling of the story.
What opponents of prorogation need to sit back and consider is the Governor General’s job and the choices she was offered. Without calling an election, her choices came down to these. In one corner, there is Stephen Harper, who is tested in office, heads the largest faction in Commons, and who recently stood for election and won an increased mandate. In the other corner is a coalition of two parties plus one hanger-on that “gives its word” to support the coalition on confidence motions, but hasn’t actually signed any papers to that effect. The two official members of the Coalition add up to fewer seats than the Conservatives. With the unofficial member they have more - but stop and think who that unofficial member is. It’s a separatist party that runs candidates in exactly one of the ten provinces and represents no national constituency. To add insult to injury, the man who is supposed to keep this super-shaky alliance in order so that the country can function has already resigned the party leadership under pressure and will be replaced by someone as yet unknown in May.
Now consider that the Governor General’s job description is ensuring the stability of the Confederation. She is not supposed to make policy decisions, she is simply there as a final arbiter to make sure the government functions. If national stability is your main concern, can anyone maintain with a straight face that a maybe-two-maybe-three member coalition with uncertain leadership will be preferable to a single-member efficient voting block with a tested and competent leader? What else was she honestly supposed to have done? Granted, she could have called an election, and maybe she should have. But opinion polls suggest that it would have been a waste of time: Harper’s support has grown over this, not abated. More to the point, constitutional precedent does suggest that on having his prorogation request denied, Harper would have been expected to stand down anyway.
The Governor General is obligated to first meet with the Prime Minister and overrule his requests only when they threaten national stability or are unconstitutional in some way. Whether or not she likes him personally, Harper is a capable leader in charge of a disciplined caucus which had recently successfully stood for election. In addition, his prorogation term is reasonable. He’s only asking for an extra week’s recess all told, a suspension of activity for just over a month, which is a plausible amount of time to take care of the job at hand: putting together a budget the Opposition can stomach. The idea that she is supposed to have said “no” and turned around and handed government to the coalition of two, no three!, no two! opposition parties lead by Dion someone not yet chosen rather than give Parliament an extra week’s worth of a cooling off period is just crazy.
Yes, she could have called an election. It wouldn’t have been a popular decision, but at least there’s an argument there. I don’t really see an argument that her duties would have permitted her to hand power to an unelected and soon-to-be-replaced Dion.
The most disingenuous argument of all is the idea that Harper has somehow sidestepped the confidence motion. Wrong. The very first thing Parliament will do when it reconvenes is hold exactly this confidence motion. Harper is due to present another budget the failure of which will most definitely - and rightly - be interpreted as a vote of no-confidence, triggering elections. He hasn’t sidestepped it, merely postponed it - which is only fair, really, given that the alternative was to hand a shaky coalition of last election’s losers control of government.
Again, I can see the case that she should have called an election. But there is simply no convincing argument that Dion et al should be in government come Monday.
If this Globe and Mail article is to be believed, Bob Rae is using the Liberal Party’s disarray over prorogation to muscle his way to the front. The leadership battle apparently now comes down to positions on the coalition. Rae is very much in favor of it, while it seems Iganatieff is not and was, in fact, the very last prominent Liberal to sign the letter that Dion sent to the Governor General opposing prorogation.
Since the public seems pretty disgusted with the Liberals’ tactics of the past week, I’d say this gives Mr. Ignatieff the long-term advantage. Bob Rae may be jockeying to be Dion’s snap-judgement replacement, but if cooler heads prevail (and they will - Parliament is closed until late January after all) it’s becoming increasingly clear that Ignatieff is the better choice. Which is too bad, really, as I think Harper will have a harder time with him than with Mr. Rae.
Now and then real poetic justice does happen. Stephen Harper is riding high in polls after the Coalition’s failed attempt at a power grab. However letter-of-the-law legal it may have been for last election’s three runner-up parties to propose they be allowed to govern instead 7 weeks after these decisions were made official, the general public - and here’s a novel concept - isn’t too keen on the idea of a change in government without an election to certify it. Polls show the Tories fully 20 points ahead of the Grits - and well over the 40% mark generally necessary to win a majority government.
Analysts are saying the lead will vanish before Parliament resumes in January, and they may be right. Popularity spikes like these don’t tend to last - and I’ve yet to see the kind of alchemy that would make someone like Stephen Harper permanently popular in a country like Canada. I imagine the public’s opinion of him is pretty much what it’s always been: competent, icy, inhuman - the kind of guy they want managing their hedge funds, not necessarily their welfare state government.
Still, I wouldn’t bet on the analysts being right this time. It’s true enough that Harper isn’t personally popular, and when all is said and done the Canadian public by and large still thinks like the Grits. No other western country can boast so close a match between a political party’s general position and what the public wants than that between Canada and the Liberals. But if Harper is mildly unpopular then Stephane Dion is congenitally so. And let’s not forget why Paul Martin isn’t Prime Minister. The Liberals are in time out right now for general corruption - a treatment they get every 20 years or so. A display of party unity behind a charismatic outsider - a la Trudeau in ‘68 - would instantly solve all their problems. But of course, Dion is a weak compromise candidate who is no one’s idea of Prime Minister material, and the only reason he’s still around at all is because the party so obviously hasn’t resolved all its infighting issues. This was absolutely the worst time imaginable to stage the kind of oily gamble Dion and Layton just pulled. Now, things are worse.
So yeah, on the one hand, popularity spikes are temporary by nature, and it would take more than this to endear Harper to the public. On the other hand, the fundamentals of the Liberals’ problems are unchanged, and the crisis will only have reminded people why they didn’t vote Liberal in October. So while I can see the case for a drop in Tory popularity ahead of January, I wouldn’t care to put money on it.
Stephen Harper is unusually crafty and even-tempered for a national leader. I don’t think they’re spending “every waking minute” between now and January 26th hammering out the world’s most perfect budget like they say. What’s going on in those cloistered meetings is the Tories scheming a way to wrangle a new election out in January - or at least some time before the Liberals can hold their leadership conference in May. I sincerely hope they come up with something good. And given that it’s Harper we’re talking about, I won’t be surprised at all if they do.
You want media bias? I got yer media bias. Right here.
Under the charming title “Canadian Prime Minister Shuts Down Parliament to Keep Power” comes this quote from the AP:
Less than two months after winning re-election, Harper successfully asked the unelected representative of the head of state for the power to close down Parliament until Jan. 26, hoping to buy enough time to develop a stimulus package that could prop up the economy.
Yes, let’s just completely neglect to mention that that same “unelected representative” would be necessary to certify the proposed new coalition government, which would, of course, assume power without an election.
Governor General Michaelle Jean, who represents Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, granted the unusual request to suspend parliament. Had she refused, Harper would have had two choices: step down or face a no-confidence vote Monday he was sure to lose.
Harper would not offer details on their conversation.
Did anyone ask her?
“He’s trying to lock the door of Parliament so that the elected people cannot speak,” Layton said. “He’s trying to save his job.”
(NOTE: ‘Layton’ refers to Jack Layton, head of the NDP - Canada’s Socialist party.) Wrong. Harper asked you guys to call an election, which is, after all, the normal procedure after you defeat a sitting government in a confidence motion. Why not simply agree to hold elections after the confidence motion? Had you done that publicly, the Governor General wouldn’t even have agreed to meet with Harper in the first place, and proroguing parliament would not have been an option.
The Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, which together control a majority of parliament’s 308 seats, signed a pact agreeing to vote this coming Monday to oust Harper and setting the structure for their proposed coalition government.
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be that any single party aligned with the Conservatives would “control a majority of parliament’s 308 seats.” Yet another way of looking at it would be to mention that the second-place Liberals have roughly half the number of seats the Conservatives have, and that the third party in this coalition doesn’t even run elections outside of Quebec because its only agenda is to break up the confederation.
Analysts said a governor general has never been asked to suspend parliament to delay an ouster vote when it was clear the government didn’t have the confidence of a majority of legislators.
Analysts also said that this was the only time in Canadian history that anyone has tried to form a new government without an election. But it wouldn’t be fun to quote that bit, eh?
What really kills me about this article is that there isn’t even a single mention of the Conservative side of things anywhere to be found. And there really should be - if for no other reason than recent polls show 64% (that’s a majority, in case the AP hasn’t noticed) of Canadians disapprove of the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition takeover attempt. At the very least, the AP should mention that if an election were held tomorrow - which is an option in this Westminister system nation - that the Coaltion would lose on account of public outrage.
Crisis averted. Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean, after meeting with Stephen Harper for two hours today, has approved Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament. This is an unusual measure that puts the government on ice temporarily. Parliament will close until January, when Harper and the Conservatives will be expected to table another budget.
For those of you not following this (by which I mean, roughly speaking, the entire world) - budget issues are always confidence motions. If a government fails to pass a budget, it stirs up all kinds of constitutional issues, sometimes triggering new elections. Since the budget announcement, the opposition parties (of which there are three in Canada) have been threatening to band together to form a coalition government to replace Harper. The math works out such that no two of them can do it, but if all three sign on, they have more total seats than the Conservatives in Commons. Upon failure of the budget, they could (and were threatening to) ask the Governor General to hand the government to them without an election. Stephane Dion - current but temporary leader of the Liberal Party - would’ve become Prime Minister in Harper’s place.
The reason they can kinda sorta get away with this without an election is because Harper and the Conservatives don’t technically have enough seats to form a government. Generally, you need an absolute majority - either from your own party or in a coalition deal with some other party. The Conservatives have what’s called a “minority government,” whereby they don’t have enough seats to pass legislation without help from the Opposition. Since Harper’s government doesn’t have a clear victory in the last election, it’s not technically ouside the law for a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition to ask the Governor General to nullify the last election and let them form the government instead. In fact, they had that option at the end of the last election and neglected to take it - mostly becuase by tradition the party with the most votes gets the first chance at forming a government, and Harper and the Conservatives had formed the last government with fewer seats than they have now. It’s hard, under those circumstances, to deny the Conservatives a second mandate.
It must be stressed: contra to what Harper keeps claiming, everything the Coalition is doing is perfetly legal. It’s just that it’s unorthodox and doesn’t show much inclination to let the Canadian public have a say.
I think that given the circumstances, the Governor General has made the right decision. Parliament is closed until January, meaning the confidence motion coming on Monday that would’ve toppled the government and given the Opposition the chance to form a coalition government without an election to replace Harper will not take place. Meaning that Harper is still Prime Minister until at least January 27. Meaning, more importantly, that everyone has time to cool off and sort things out rather than resorting to melodramatic, legally questionable, and in any case undemocratic power grabs. If Dion and Layton (and Duceppe, but no one cares) have concerns with the federal economic policy in general and Harper’s leadership in particular, they now have a chance to air them publicly. And the government has a chance to address those concerns. This is the right choice: take your finger off the trigger for a minute and think about what you’re doing.
This isn’t at all how I expected things to turn out. GG Jean, it seems pretty clear to me, is no Stephen Harper fan. It’s to her credit that she passed on the easy opportunity to oust him and instead opted for a cooling off period. That, in other words, she did her job.
As charges of media bias become more commonplace, you have to get sophisticated to maintain credibility if you’re making one. So a common charge one hears these days - a favorite of Glenn Greenwald’s, actually - is that the media can be biased by reporting from a neutral standpoint on an issue that doesn’t really have one. Here’s a good example of the technique:
According to an Angus Reid poll for CTV, 64 percent of Canadians do not support Stephane Dion becoming prime minister in a coalition government, but 53 percent are against the Conservatives’ current economic policy.
Earth to CP: opposition to the government’s economic policy does NOT equate to approving of coups!
Flashback to October 14. There was a legitimate election. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives won - gained seats, even. True, not enough for a majority government, but let’s have a look at the numbers:
Conservatives:
143 seats (+19)
37.65%
Liberals:
77 seats (-26)
26.26%
Bloc Quebecois:
49 seats (-2)
9.98%
NDP:
37 seats (+8)
17.48%
In what way is this not a Conservative mandate? If people had wanted Stephane Dion to be Prime Minister, they wouldn’t have handed his party its worst defeat since 1984. Those 26 seats didn’t vanish for no reason.
Now - granted that Canada isn’t the western world’s model democracy. The NDP polls 8% higher than the Bloc and still ends up with fewer seats because…the game is pretty obviously stacked. So I guess some caution is in order any time you talk about a Canadian election result as though it had very much to do with public opinion. Still - whatever you think about the Tories’ standing after the last election, it’s clear the Liberals lost. No party can post a 26 seat loss in a second-place finish and plausibly claim a mandate.
Things have changed since October - that much is true. If the opposition wants to put the government to a confidence vote, that’s certainly their right, and given the economic situation far from beyond the pale ethically. But they need to then hold an election to let the people they govern in on the deal. I realize that the Governor General’s duties don’t technically include deciding when elections will be held, but I think it’s possible for her to make it a condition of dissolving Parliament. That is in fact what she should do. Yes, Canada just had an election. Yes, it was poorly attended. Yes, it was the third one in four years. Yes, people are getting tired of things not being settled. But I can’t imagine anyone prefers the naked and corrupt power grab that the Grits and the NDP are proposing as an alternative.
And so I had to chuckle when I read the CP equating “opposition to the Conservatives’ current economy policy” with “not supporting Stephane Dion becomming Prime Minister.” It would sound harmless enough to anyone who didn’t understand that Stephane Dion’s “bid” for the PM slot was a brazen and only barely constitutional power grab that completely disregards democratic tradition, if not quite the letter of the law. The two questions aren’t even in the same league.
Come on.
UPDATES (2008-12-04):
Here’s Stephen Harper’s national address last night.
And a less oily version of the same speech given as a statement to the press earlier yesterday:
And just because it’s funny - here’s Stephane Dion not 7 weeks ago during the election explicitly rejecting the coalition he now proposes to form:
Wow. Revolution in Canada. ALL the opposition parties (even the Bloc) managed to come together and agree to form a coalition headed by DION. For those 6billion of you who aren’t Canada junkies like me, this is stunning because Dion, the “head” of the Liberal Party, has actually already stepped down as party leader. He was to be replaced at the party conference in the Spring after having resigned (under pressure) for getting throttled in an election the Liberals probably should have won (given that they could’ve exploited the burgeoning financial crisis - still in its infancy at the time, to be fair, but definitely on the horizon), or at least come in at a more respectable second (they’re at their second-lowest total number of seats in modern times - the lowest being the historical, and richly deserved, drubbing of 1984). Obviously this is over concerns that sitting PM Stephen Harper hasn’t been taking the financial crisis seriously enough. The Liberals and the NDP would love to throw a bunch of money at it. Harper, however, notes that Canada’s banks are much sounder than anyone else’s and doesn’t see the need. But this is Canada, so they don’t wanna be left out of the worldwide inflation party. I mean hell, they might actually fall behind on the Government-as-percentage-of-GDP curve! And THEN what would it mean to be Canadian, eh?
Yeah, I think it’s stupid. Canada doesn’t have to fall into this hole with the rest of us because it’s been running a tighter banking system. No doubt the crisis will hit it too (something like 80% of its exports go to the US, where consumer confidence is hitting rock bottom after all), but not in any systemic way. All they have to do is ride it out - and maybe even pick up some foreign holdings bargains in the process, who knows? Their budget has been in surplus for some time, they already have the generous unemployment insurance system in place (for what will no doubt be soberingly high unemployment levels for a couple of years up there, let’s not kid ourselves where this is headed in that unions’ utopia), all they have to do is run a deficit for a couple of years - something they have a LOT of experience with. In short, Canada’s in for some rough bumps with the rest of us, but UNLIKE the rest of us they can afford to weather it on autopilot. There is absolutely no need for all this drama.
Stepehn Harper was the last credible voice for capitalism on the national leadership scene. I’m very sorry to see him go.
