While the so-called 'conservatives' down here scheme on a government shutdown in an effort to hurt Obama by hurting America, the Canadian Parliament has had enough of the Canadian George W Bush...aka Stephen Harper.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government is headed for defeat Friday afternoon, with opposition MPs saying they'll vote to show they've lost confidence in the Conservatives.
From my preliminary research, this is the FIRST government in Canada's history to be held "in contempt of Parliament".
After reading a couple of news stories and comments from Canadians on a forum board, I went over to wiki :
On March 9, 2011, Peter Milliken made two rulings on contempt of parliament and found that a Conservative Party cabinet minister, Bev Oda, could possibly be in contempt of Parliament.[4] The second ruling also found the Cabinet could possibly be in contempt of parliament for not meeting opposition members of parliament's requests for details of the cost of proposed crime bills.[5] Milliken ruled that the matter must go to committee and the committee must report its findings by March 21, 2011; one day before the proposal of the budget. On March 18, 2011, opposition members of parliament said they still thought Oda was in contempt of parliament, despite her testimony that day.[6] On March 21, 2011 the committee tabled a report which found the conservative party in contempt of parliament. [7] As such, a motion of no confidence is being filed for the government to fall. [8]
--see comments for a liveblog link to the vote h/t ' tapu dali'
Ignatieff said the government stonewalled for months on providing cost estimates that were being asked for by the opposition and that is what eventually led to Friday's motion of non-confidence.
He said the Liberals have no doubt that the Conservatives have broken the rules of democracy and, "it is time to change Canada's direction."
"The House must speak with a clear voice and it must say that a government that breaks the rules and conceals the facts from the Canadian people does not deserve to remain in office," the Liberal leader said.
"After five years of Conservative government, it is time to say enough is enough," Ignatieff said.
------------updates---------
I really love the truthful framing that Yahoo news is using:
Canadian government set to fall over waste, sleaze
It's a Reuters story, so that's the title for a whole bunch of media publications.
---------------
Stephen Harper's Conservative Govt, we hardly knew ye:
The people of Canada find themselves with an accountability act that is little more than a watered down perversion of its original promise. The Conservative government that has yet to implement all of the actions set out in its own legislation. The PMO has made it standard practice to scapegoat government employees for any and all failures in its own administration and allegations of bribery, by none other than Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself, are now beginning to surface.
In a recently released biography of late federal MP Chuck Cadman, an independent in the House of Commons, his widow alleges the Conservative party leadership offered Mr. Cadman a $1 million dollar life insurance policy shortly before his death. The offer was made on the condition that he vote with the Conservative party and help them topple the sitting government in an undercover coup of sorts.
Cadman’s widow and daughter both say that two Conservative representatives made a $1-million life insurance offer to the dying MP, who was suffering from terminal cancer at the time, in return for his support on a May 2005 confidence motion.
To set the stage, at the time of the vote on implementation of the federal budget, Mr. Cadman had been ill for some time and was a mere weeks away from death. The Liberal government of Paul Martin was a beaten and battered shadow of its former self after the sponsorship debacle had nearly played itself out. Hanging in the balance were, among other things, the survival of the Liberal government and the long awaited implementation of the hard fought Atlantic Accord contracts between Ottawa, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador, contracts that would later be unilaterally undermined by the Harper government after taking office.
Sadly Mr. Cadman died of cancer two months after the critical vote, a vote in which he refused to side with the Conservative party.
In not supporting the Conservative cause Mr. Cadman’s lone vote allowed the bill to pass, the government of the day survived, for a short time at least, and the Atlantic Accord contracts become a reality.
Now, his widow, Dona Cadman, a Conservative candidate herself, claims that shortly before his death her husband told her and her daughter that he had been approached by members of the opposition Conservative party with the offer to buy his vote in Parliament.
Dona Cadman has since told reporters that her husband was livid at the alleged offer.
Updated by change the Be at Fri Mar 25, 2011 at 10:50 AM PDT
WHO ELSE THINKS THIS IS A brilliant IDEA ?!
[CREATE IMAGES OF POLITICIANS PHOTO-SHOPPED TO SHOW WHO THEIR CORPORATE SPONSORS ARE.....i KNOW THAT 'DOOD ABIDES' USED TO DO A LOT OF PHOTOSHOP, MAYBE WE HAVE OTHERS.
http://www.reddit.com/...