section29 made this comment on
this recent open thread:
That would explain ...
the House of Commons coverage on C-SPAN 2 last night. Other than that, nothing. Good luck finding three out of ten average Americans on the street who have any clue who Paul Martin even is.
Thing is, how much trouble can he be in--does he have any meaningful opposition yet either within or without his party? Last I was aware, Canada was a virtual one-party state.
And is there some way we can work out a trade for Alexa McDonough?
...about the current situation in Canada. Essentially, there's a massive scandal in Canada where the governing party (the Liberals) have been accused of giving free money to Québec firms that supported them under the cover of a grant program to support Canadian unity in Québec. The money is somewhere in the range of 100 or 200 milion dollars.
I started writing a response and ended up with my canned summary about the state of Canadian politics after this scandal broke. It's kind of sketchy, but here goes:
Alexa, alas, is old news, but good for the NDP, since while she was a very good person, she just wasn't what the NDP needed. Jack Layton is where it's at.
Within the Liberal party, the knives are being sharpened. It's evident that Martin had no plan for handling the scandal or diverting it in some way before he came to power. Jean Chrétien was an expert in diversion. The problem is that Martin is trying to bury the bodies by daylight. Chrétien was never that stupid. He buried the bodies at night. Shoot, shovel, and shut up.
Alas, the biggest winners in all of this seem to be the ReformaTories (the absurd merger of the Alliance/Reform party and the Progressive Conservatives, each themselves bizarre creatures, now called the Conservative Party--we have come full circle!). ie, wannabe Republicans, I'm not joking. It's clear that their boost in the polls has been people fleeing the Liberals, not because of ReformaTory policy (nonexistent yet, no leader). Scandals tend to send people into the arms of the right wing.
This is particularly scary, because the Writ is to be Dropped sometime this year (Canadian elections are not held on a fixed schedule but at the whim of the governing party up to 5 years). However, all is not lost for Canadian progressives. NDP support is up, way up, and the party stands to pick up seats. It's just that the NDP hasn't gained anything from the scandal itself. The NDP may lose votes if people decide that they need to vote strategically to prevent a ReformaTory government. Hopefully it won't come to that.
So it looks like it's highly probably that we'll have a Liberal minority government. (A ReformaTory government is still unthinkable. Most Canadians are not stupid enough to give the reins of power to people who would sell off most of the country in a heartbeat.) If so, the NDP may be poised to be the power broker in such a Parliament. If the Liberals ally with the Conservatives to hold onto power in the case of a Liberal minority gov't, then the NDP will almost certainly gain the "left" votes that once went to the Liberals in the election after that. If the Liberals ally with the NDP, the NDP will require a vote on proportional representation, which inevitable favours the NDP in terms of seats.
Jean Chrétien has had the last laugh. All those people who conspired to oust him for so long in favour of Martin are now reaping the reward. Their Parliamentary seats are now more in danger than they have been in ten years. People have been defecting or threatening defections to the right (Conservatives) and the left (NDP). Martin's innocent boy-scout act is disingenuous and does not inspire confidence in his ability to govern. If you're a Liberal, you're expected to be stealthy. It's how they've managed to be in power for most of the last century, with a few exceptions. Like the truly awful Brian Mulroney, Reagan's best buddy--the best argument for Liberal rule at the time of his party's humiliating defeat.