— Musings —03.25.2011 01:31 PM
Historical post
NewsAlert (FedElxn-NewsAlert)
Source: The Canadian Press
Mar 25, 2011 14:21
OTTAWA – The federal Conservative government has been defeated on a confidence vote in Parliament, setting the stage for a May election.
(The Canadian Press)
INDEX: NATIONAL POLITICS
[And note this: WTL: According to the BBC, this is the first time in Commonwealth history that a government has been held in contempt. #CndPoli ]
Certainly the press are having more fun with the contempt issue rather than the budget, so the Harper “found in contempt” Government attempts to change the channel ahead of their defeat have failed.
Whether any of this is remembered a week from now is another matter.
Fuck Stephen Harper and the horse he rode in on.
I think you got the word order a bit jumbled there
Not where I come from 😉
“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
William Shakespeare
Classy.
How can you support a government found in contempt of parliament?
You can’t.
It’s a no brainer.
well, ‘cuz too many of the ones who support this gov’t have contempt for brains, too.
The only time they have any use for the “elite experts” is if they support tax cuts and the ill-chosen stealth bomber fighters or trash the gun registry.
Funny how the CPC completely discounted the literally hundreds of independent organizations who opposed them decimating the long-form census, but have seized on the partial endorsement of a handful who’ve supported the boutique tax credits or token new spending programs in the new budget as though they’re infallible sages.
Just watch us!
Yeas 156 and Nays 145.
On March 25, 2011, the Government of Canada was found in contempt of Parliament – the first time that has ever happened anywhere in the Commonwealth – and fell on the motion of non-confidence.
And that folks, is that, the end of the 40th Parliament and the beginning of the restoration of Parliamentary democracy in Canada.
That’s what the opposition just did. They let the dogs out.
Smooth move Ex-lax!
Three totally left wing parties find a right wing minority government in contempt of them and their eternal partisan nonsense.
Gee, who’d have thunk, eh?
We and our economic/financial stability are the envy of pretty much every country in the western world worth mentioning. Our debt to GDP ratio, even post meltdown, is a mere fraction of most, if not all, of those nations. (US – 100%, Japan – 225%, most of Europe – somewhere in between, and Canada – 34%) Taxes are at the lowest level in living memory, our economy is rebounding reasonably well, and corporate Canada is investing heavily in upgrades and expansion. In essence, Canadians just got through the worst recession since the ’30s better than just about any other nation/society/peoples in the world.
Nevertheless, we’re now into our fourth…count ’em all…fourth election in just seven measly years.
Because this government, we’re told, doesn’t know what it’s doing, and doesn’t care about Canadian families.
Right.
I guess all that’s left now is to run this one by voters and see what they think of this very arguably sorry excuse for an election.
Definitely gonna get interesting.
I don’t know if I would label the Liberals as a left wing party. I think that there are quite a few with left wing views in the Bloc.
However, I don’t think that this is a left wing versus right wing conflict anyway.
I figured that the original ‘populist’ Reformers had some decent, and workable ideas. So did the Progressive Conservatives.
But I do not see contempt of parliament and corruption as valid political stances, by left, centre or right.
We did weather the recession but no thanks to the Conservatives, they take the credit but literally did nothing.
A previous Liberal government resisted bank deregulation that conservative minded politicians would probably have endorsed, thus no bank meltdown.
A previous Liberal government put us in a surplus financial position that the Conservatives blew off quite quickly but it perhaps ensured the hole wasn’t as deep as some other countries.
So perhaps by getting rid of a useless do nothing government our economy will actually improve.
So an election costs 300 million. That totally inept handling of the United Arab Emirates issue by the Harper government cost our military over 300 million to relocate to a base further from Afghanistan. At least election spending is all in Canada and people make money in various areas from advertising to working at the polls and it contributes to our economy.
Maybe we aren’t in such good financial shape as Harper claims. Just saying…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/daily-mix/canada-a-bastion-of-fiscal-responsibility-maybe-not/article1953365/
Al,
The same government you are giving nothing but praise to for supposedly steering our country through the recessionary waters of 2008, 2009 and 2010 is the same government – that same leader – that same supposed economist, Stephen Harper, yes that fellow who called an “unnecessary election” while literally Canada and the rest of the world stood on the on stood on the precipice of economic collapse not seen in more than half a century.
His words at the time were something of the order “Oh, I don’t foresee a collapse, it’d have happened already if it was going to”. This was the same fellow who during Election 08 exclaimed that he’d “never” entertain “deficit financing” even though his government was already doing just that and would go on to grow Canada’s debt burden by tens of billions of dollars at a historically record pace that was by all measures off the charts. All this was going on yet he couldn’t see it.
Post election, suddenly his eyes were clear and the spigots opened in Canada, just as they did all over the world in advanced / modern economies — hardly new.
In 2008 our financial system was in the shape it was not due to any particular action of Harper or Flaherty but because it was the product of many decades of policy decisions – by PC and Liberal governments – leading up to that point, plus a good dose of traditional Canadian common sense.
If you want to give this Harper government big props for getting the recovery right then you’ve also got to lambaste them for completely missing the meltdown as he claimed to have been taken by surprise in 2008. Yeah, right.
I don’t believe they missed the meltdown at all; like anyone paying attention … all the way back to 2007 in fact, but certainly by early 2008, it was clear the world was going to hit the brakes very hard and that some of the larger economies were really going to suffer. I’ve always maintained — before the election was called — that Election 08 would be called in advance of a painful meltdown so Harper could try to get his majority, much as I suspect Chretien decided to go to the polls a might bit early in late 2000 before Canada fully hopped on the dot bomb bust train which had already taken the U.S. economy south earlier that year. Best to get a campaign going before things go to hell, right? Too bad Harper had to break his own fixed election law, the one designed to take away a PM’s ability to call an election at any ol
opportune time.
At least this time he got the opposition to call the election he really wanted anyway.
Ditto!
You don’t get paid for your blog posts if the cons lose?
Do they need a majority or just to form a gov’t – you guys should hammer out the terms ASAP if you haven’t!
Start counting, Gord
http://hccabinet.com/img/web/piggybank.jpg
With $1000 a Liberal bonvivant can buy 108 bottles of Chardonnay 2008 and throw a hell of a party 🙂
I think Harper plan to move to live in Libya
if he is not elected as PM.
BTW if Harper is going I mean he is leaving I mean he resign
who is going to continue Middle east shows jet fighting
we can put croise control with fake plastic Harper driver of jet
pretend still Harper is there
are you telling us now we must say sorry to Qaddafi if Harper changed??!!!!
Sic Semper Tyrannis!
You forgot the rest of quote;
“small dead animals: Game On
25 Mar 2011… assertive foreign policy with a respectable martial capacity and a focus on improving peace of mind for ones person and property OR …”
This is the 3rd time I’ve seen this today. Was it in the daily talking points email?
I laughed as soon as I saw Gord’s post too. I had seen this earlier in the day and wonder just how long it would take Gord or one of the other con-bots to re-post it over here. I certainly hope Gord draws a pay cheque for all his AstroTurfing and re-posting, otherwise it moves from being a bit of a laugh, to being really sad.
Wow! – 11 votes. Tell you what – let’s take the “separatists”, who hold the entire Country of Canada in contempt, out of the equation and have a recount. The government didn’t fall on contempt of Parliament – it fell as a result of a well-choreographed gong-show and the faux-outrage was merely a pathetically shallow subterfuge perpetrated by a bunch of poltical opportunist carpet-baggers in order to clean house on the tax-payers dime.
@Harry Are you back? WK needs a better spam filter.
Gord,
This is the only time I’m going to tell you this: STFU with the coalition nonsense. It’s obnoxious, annoying, and you guys can do better. Seriously, no one will believe you, and you’re going to annoy Canadians right back into a smaller minority government, and maybe right out of office.
One, Iggy distanced himself from the coalition as soon as he took power. You’re completely misleading the public about the intentions of the LPC. You have no proof of your statements, making you liars. Two, as WK points out, King Harper was more than willing to enter into a coalition with the socialists and separatists when it would have satisfied his lust for power. You’re condemning one thing that you have previously supported. Making you hypocrites.
If you can’t win without resorting to being liars and hypocrites, then you don’t get to run the country.
smart move
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/961837–mcguinty-will-not-campaign-with-ignatieff
I think his Mom is smarter – and maybe, just maybe – he’ll listen to her!
In the end, most people won’t give a crap about the “contempt” charge, etc. it will be about the economy, people vote with their wallets.
Or maybe this time they don’t. Instead they vote out the most corrupt federal government Canadians have ever seen. That would be the only one held in contempt of Parliament in the Commonwealth or Canada. Ever.
Bingo.
It really is laughable to label this Conservative government as small government when the bureaucracy has actually ballooned under them. They are hiring tens of thousands of temporary consultants to do the work of actual government employees, and it ain’t cheaper either, government under Harper is more expensive and expansive than ever. Harper likes big government, it takes a lot of employees to dismantle the system while gerrymandering it out to Conservative special interest groups, and especially so when the government is continuously campaigning.
What is contemptible is that the coalition trashed this Parliament for what is widely regarded as partisan expediency. This is a political albatross that can only hang around one neck. The fall-guy is Mr I – but he doesn’t get it. Should the train run off the tracks Jack and Gilles can come down from the Hill with their pail of water unspilt. Michael, however,………..