Parliamentary minutiae

[c9]

First, House of Commons Procedure and Practice Online, a handy guide to just about everything House of Commons. Added: How Canadians Govern Themselves, 6th Edition, by Senator Eugene Forsey. (also, PDF version)

Second, help! I can't figure out if parliament can be prorogued before opposition days ("supply" days) happen! I'm sure the Governor General's aides do know and would enforce any requirements, but I just want to find the actual standing orders / legislation that covers this.

Third, a great big WTF to our House of Commons. The political geek in me is totally squeeing and having great fun. But I know in m heart this is actually a pretty messy situation that ought to have been dealt with better.

Primarily, the Conservatives / Stephen Harper should not have presented such ideologically-driven ideas in the fiscal update, and should have been more open about the existing stimuli that are in progress and why he thinks they're good.

The Liberal/NDP coalition is interesting, may do good things, may screw things up, who knows. But the optics are terrible and I really think it will damage the Liberals in the next election (unless there's a huge event or change that changes the subject of said election). Most Canadians don't really get the Parliamentary system, and all they see (goaded on by the pretty-much-lying Conservatives) is the losers of the last election somehow cheating the system. It's all legal, but not common, and I think people don't really like the consequences of minority government now that they're here.

I am amused to discover that, in our typical Canadian way, we've found a version of Proportional Representation without actually changing any laws. Same way we've dealt with abortion since the 80s actually. 'Maybe if we just ignore the issue, everything will be fine.' Ha!

Now back to pretending to work while actually surfing Canadian news sites and blogs obsessively.

Comments

[c9.livejournal.com]

To be cynical (but I think correct), it was the political party subsidies that led to the deal. The parties knew, and regularly talked about, the fact that someday the government (Liberal in 2004, Conservative this time) would do something that simply could not be allowed. In this case, pulled federal subsidies in April would have bankrupted at least two parties, and that was what crossed the line. The other issues are significant, but to be honest I think the Tories were just communicating poorly, and the economy really isn't being ignored by them quite so much as the other parties claim.

[primary-suspect.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it was the subsidies that pushed it. I mean MPs are supposed to represent their constituents but in fact almost none of them do, they just vote the party line, no matter what the people in their riding want. Parties are out for themselves, not really to help the people of Canada. Look at the Liberals who were too chicken to vote against bills that they completely disagreed on, because they didn't want to trigger an election instead of doing what they thought was right for the country.

I think the cons were probably a little too arrogant in their fiscal update since they probably didn't see this coming and figured they didn't need to give any more information until the budget update. Whether they actually have a plan or not is up for debate, maybe they wanted to drag things out until the budget to see where things were at or to flesh out a plan.

The GG is probably very excited since for once she will actually have some real power. Too bad it costs $300M for an election, it would be interesting to see what would happen. Either it was infuriate people enough that voter turnout would go higher, or more likely drop significantly.