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And they're off!
Nov. 28th, 2005 08:09 pmThe government fell about an hour ago, in the first-ever straight non-confidence motion. No one is surprised, and if anyone was upset, they certainly weren't acting it on t.v. Paul Martin was trying to get the press gallery to do the wave right before the voting started. (They didn't.)
For the record - 171 Yes votes were cast against 134 No votes. There are 308 seats, though the Speaker only votes in a tie and therefore didn't vote this time. There are two vacant seats (including that of the BC MP who kept the government in power last spring; he died of cancer since then) and one Bloc MP missed the vote.
The political pundits were all talking about how we're likely in for a long string of minority governments, for several reasons:
1) Regionalized voting. with 75 seats in Quebec and fifty of them currently going to the Separatist Bloc Quebecois party, the actual number of seats up for grabs in Quebec is about 25. Take fifty seats out of the running in a 308-seat race, and then try to get the 154 seats to form a majority - it gets harder. Before 1984, the Liberals could usually count on most of the Quebec seats. Then Mulroney swept Quebec for the Conservatives, which was followed a few years later by a split in the Conservative party resulting in the formation of the BQ. Now neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have any hope of many seats in Quebec. (The right-wing vote is going to the Bloc at the moment.) In the West, particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Conservatives have most seats pretty wrapped up; it's less clear in BC but still a substantial number. That's about 75 seats that the Liberals can write off.
That leaves two battlegrounds - Ontario and the Maritimes.
The Maritimes are likely to vote against the Liberals this time, because of the attempted turnaround on oil revenues after the last election; if there's one thing Maritimers have going for them, it's their long memories. I'm predicting the Conservatives and NDP will pick up a few seats each from the Liberals down east.
Ontario, then, is the place to win. With one hundred seats all on its own, a party that sweeps Ontario is almost guaranteed a majority government. Lately, Ontario has been pretty Liberal, keeping the Liberals in power almost on its own for thirteen years. That shifted slightly in 2004; several seats went to the Conservatives, and several went to the NDP, but the bulk of the province remained Liberal.
2) The first-past-the-post system. This is the system that lets someone win a riding if they have one vote more than the runner-up. It's not uncommon in Ontario, at least, for people to win with under 40% of the vote in their riding due to a nearly-even three-way split with a few votes siphoned off by the Green Party or an independent. In 2004, there was less than a 10% difference between the leader and the runner-up in most ridings, and practically nobody gets elected with an actual majority of votes anymore. This is the reason I don't trust national polls of decided voters. If the voters polled for any one party are heavily concentrated in one region, that means every other region has fewer people voting for that party, giving other parties a much, much better chance of overtaking them. Most national polls don't divide up their numbers by region, so they're unreliable as a measure of how many seats each party will get - and that final tally is all that matters.
Changing this system would change the entire framework of the political machine in this country, and to my mind, that would be an excellent thing. It would be nice if more than 40% of the vote in most ridings actually went towards electing somebody. I've never had an MP for whom I voted. How much do they really represent me, if I never vote for the guy who wins? We could maintain a measure of regional representation and still manage to assign seats based on percentage of the vote won. The system would be more convoluted, but Canadians can handle it.
3) The non-confidence motion was well-founded. The fact is, nobody has any real trust in any branch of politics today. The common refrain is, "They're all crooks, each as bad as the next." We're not likely to hand a majority government to one party for four years when we don't trust any party.
All of this leads to one of two likely scenarios, depending on how the campaign goes.
Option A: The Status Quo. Another Liberal minority government, hopefully with fewer Liberal seats and more NDP and Conservative seats, but a Liberal minority nonetheless. If that happens, I hope the balance of power sits with the NDP.
Option B: A Conservative minority government, where the balance of power would likely rest jointly with the Bloc and the NDP. Imagine the right-wing idealogues having to make nice to the origional Socialist party in Canada in order to keep power. The image warms my heart. As for cozying up to the Bloc - well, they're more likely to be socially liberal than the Conservatives are.
I don't think either one of these options will make a lot of difference, frankly, especially if the balance of power ends up being the NDP. Without a majority, the Conservatives won't have the power to push through their more socially-regressive agenda. They'll try to hold onto power for as long as they can, keep their noses cleaner than the Liberals did, and slip things through the socialist noose as often as they can - which won't be often, because Jack Layton is smart and savvy. They'll spend their time in government posturing to convince Canadians that they're worthy of a majority the next time around. If the Liberals get another minority, Harper will resign as leader of the Conservatives and the following race will be much more of an open book.
In any case, tomorrow morning Prime Minister Martin will pay a visit to the Governor General, Michaelle Jean, at Rideau Hall. He will ask her to dissolve Parliament and drop the writ for an election, probably scheduled for January 23rd. Meanwhile, every MP will be catching a flight back to his or her own riding, even as winter starts to close off some Northern communities almost entirely for the next several weeks or months.
I'm glad I'm working full-time during this campaign. If I weren't, I'd feel obligated to volunteer somewhere during it, and a winter campaign in Canada is no picnic.
For the record - 171 Yes votes were cast against 134 No votes. There are 308 seats, though the Speaker only votes in a tie and therefore didn't vote this time. There are two vacant seats (including that of the BC MP who kept the government in power last spring; he died of cancer since then) and one Bloc MP missed the vote.
The political pundits were all talking about how we're likely in for a long string of minority governments, for several reasons:
1) Regionalized voting. with 75 seats in Quebec and fifty of them currently going to the Separatist Bloc Quebecois party, the actual number of seats up for grabs in Quebec is about 25. Take fifty seats out of the running in a 308-seat race, and then try to get the 154 seats to form a majority - it gets harder. Before 1984, the Liberals could usually count on most of the Quebec seats. Then Mulroney swept Quebec for the Conservatives, which was followed a few years later by a split in the Conservative party resulting in the formation of the BQ. Now neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have any hope of many seats in Quebec. (The right-wing vote is going to the Bloc at the moment.) In the West, particularly Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Conservatives have most seats pretty wrapped up; it's less clear in BC but still a substantial number. That's about 75 seats that the Liberals can write off.
That leaves two battlegrounds - Ontario and the Maritimes.
The Maritimes are likely to vote against the Liberals this time, because of the attempted turnaround on oil revenues after the last election; if there's one thing Maritimers have going for them, it's their long memories. I'm predicting the Conservatives and NDP will pick up a few seats each from the Liberals down east.
Ontario, then, is the place to win. With one hundred seats all on its own, a party that sweeps Ontario is almost guaranteed a majority government. Lately, Ontario has been pretty Liberal, keeping the Liberals in power almost on its own for thirteen years. That shifted slightly in 2004; several seats went to the Conservatives, and several went to the NDP, but the bulk of the province remained Liberal.
2) The first-past-the-post system. This is the system that lets someone win a riding if they have one vote more than the runner-up. It's not uncommon in Ontario, at least, for people to win with under 40% of the vote in their riding due to a nearly-even three-way split with a few votes siphoned off by the Green Party or an independent. In 2004, there was less than a 10% difference between the leader and the runner-up in most ridings, and practically nobody gets elected with an actual majority of votes anymore. This is the reason I don't trust national polls of decided voters. If the voters polled for any one party are heavily concentrated in one region, that means every other region has fewer people voting for that party, giving other parties a much, much better chance of overtaking them. Most national polls don't divide up their numbers by region, so they're unreliable as a measure of how many seats each party will get - and that final tally is all that matters.
Changing this system would change the entire framework of the political machine in this country, and to my mind, that would be an excellent thing. It would be nice if more than 40% of the vote in most ridings actually went towards electing somebody. I've never had an MP for whom I voted. How much do they really represent me, if I never vote for the guy who wins? We could maintain a measure of regional representation and still manage to assign seats based on percentage of the vote won. The system would be more convoluted, but Canadians can handle it.
3) The non-confidence motion was well-founded. The fact is, nobody has any real trust in any branch of politics today. The common refrain is, "They're all crooks, each as bad as the next." We're not likely to hand a majority government to one party for four years when we don't trust any party.
All of this leads to one of two likely scenarios, depending on how the campaign goes.
Option A: The Status Quo. Another Liberal minority government, hopefully with fewer Liberal seats and more NDP and Conservative seats, but a Liberal minority nonetheless. If that happens, I hope the balance of power sits with the NDP.
Option B: A Conservative minority government, where the balance of power would likely rest jointly with the Bloc and the NDP. Imagine the right-wing idealogues having to make nice to the origional Socialist party in Canada in order to keep power. The image warms my heart. As for cozying up to the Bloc - well, they're more likely to be socially liberal than the Conservatives are.
I don't think either one of these options will make a lot of difference, frankly, especially if the balance of power ends up being the NDP. Without a majority, the Conservatives won't have the power to push through their more socially-regressive agenda. They'll try to hold onto power for as long as they can, keep their noses cleaner than the Liberals did, and slip things through the socialist noose as often as they can - which won't be often, because Jack Layton is smart and savvy. They'll spend their time in government posturing to convince Canadians that they're worthy of a majority the next time around. If the Liberals get another minority, Harper will resign as leader of the Conservatives and the following race will be much more of an open book.
In any case, tomorrow morning Prime Minister Martin will pay a visit to the Governor General, Michaelle Jean, at Rideau Hall. He will ask her to dissolve Parliament and drop the writ for an election, probably scheduled for January 23rd. Meanwhile, every MP will be catching a flight back to his or her own riding, even as winter starts to close off some Northern communities almost entirely for the next several weeks or months.
I'm glad I'm working full-time during this campaign. If I weren't, I'd feel obligated to volunteer somewhere during it, and a winter campaign in Canada is no picnic.