governance

So politicians are knocking on our igloo doors up here in the Great White North. Canada is in the midst of our fourth federal election in the last six-and-a-half years. In between have also been provincial elections and municipal elections. Some of us are, oh, just slightly tired of elections.  Fortunately for me, and now for you lucky people, I’m not one of them.

So how did we get to our fourth election, at a cost of $300+ million per election, in the space of seven years? The fact that the populace up here is sharply divided between four political parties (five if you really must count the Green Party) is a good place to start. As a result, since 2004, no one party has controlled a majority of seats in the House of Commons (our equivalent to the House of Representatives in both the US and Australia). Since the parties can’t just get along, every day brings with it the threat that the opposition parties will gang up and collapse the government by denying it the “confidence” of the House of Commons.

Well last month there was, in the immortal words of cocodeveaux, “a government thingy.” This particular government thingy was an unprecedented one – the House of Commons found the government in contempt of Parliament. The opposition parties (Liberal, New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois) decided that the government had lied to the House about the amount of money it was going to cost to buy our new air force (a planned purchase of sixty F-35s) and how much it was going to cost to build enough jails to hold all the prisoners that were going to be in jail with the new sentencing rules that the government put in place. And yes, it turns out; the government was covering up some pretty serious costs.

In Canada, a finding of contempt of Parliament doubles as a motion of no confidence in the government. This means that once the finding of contempt was made, the government lost the confidence of the House, and off went Canada to election numero quatro (or quatre, if you are of the French persuasion), scheduled for May 2.

Of course, the election campaign has roundly ignored the fact that the government fell because it was lying to us all about how much their big-ticket policies were going to cost. It seems that the public stuck its fingers in its collective ears and started humming to itself. The big story in the first few days of the election was all about the Conservatives chosen bogeyman, the prospect of, horrors, a coalition government. Never mind that a coalition government is absolutely allowed by the constitution, and that every other Westminster-style parliament has at some point been run by a coalition government. Like the Mother-of-Parliaments in the UK at the moment. Can’t have people working together or anything like that.

Since then, two main issues have evolved: the ridiculous bubble-boy campaign that the Prime Minister is running, and support for senior citizens.

Continuing his streak of being rabidly controlling, and shutting down what he can’t control, the Prime Minister took to kicking people who might ask him tough questions out of campaign events. The first one was in London, Ontario. The PM’s staff kicked out a university student for no apparent reason. It later turned out that she was kicked out because she had a picture on her facebook page of her with Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberal Party. The second one didn’t get as much press, but the PM’s staff kicked out an advocate for homeless veterans from a campaign event in Halifax. Homeless veterans. Can’t have their issues brought up to the Prime Minister or anything like that. Conservative staffers denied a third man entry to the same event in London, Ontario as the facebook girl because he had a bumper sticker on his car that said “Don’t blame me, I voted NDP”. Heaven forefend that the PM should have to deal with a little dissent.

The other big issue has been aid for senior citizens. Considering that the country seems to be growing rapidly older, crankier and more obsessed with those damn kids on our lawns, this makes good sense. It hasn’t been very exciting though.

There has also been the occasional ethics issue popping up here and there. For example, the Minister of Industry managed to steer $50 million from a fund devoted to improving infrastructure on the Canada-USA border to his riding (riding is what we call districts). The problem? His riding is a four hour drive (in good traffic) from the nearest border crossing. Whoops. And he did it without following any of the established procedures for allocating that money. Uh, double whoops?

A nice juicy addition is that the Prime Minister hired a fraudster to work in the PMO (the Prime Minister’s Office – basically the equivalent to the President’s political staff).  This is someone who has been convicted of fraud not one, not twice but five times.  Getting a second chance is good, I commend giving second chances. When you are on your fifth chance, not so much.

That pretty much brings us up to the debates, which were held on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, one in English and one in French, i.e. one for almost all of the country, and one for Quebec. The English debate was pretty much a snoozer, even for someone as politics obsessed as me, and since I don’t speak French, I didn’t bother with the French debate. The big moment in the first debate was when the PM flat out lied to the people about how the constitution works and how the government is chosen. That was a warm, glowy, moment and I hope he’s proud of himself for taking advantage of the ignorance of the average Canadian on that one.

Now we are into the last two-and-a-half weeks of the campaign.   This should be when it gets interesting. Canadians who have been hitting the snooze button up until now will probably start paying attention. Stay tuned, boys and girls.