The 40th Parliament

103 Replies to “The 40th Parliament”

1. Slap Shot wrote, “They (CBC) are what’s wrong in Canada, turn them off and Canadians will be proud of themselves.” Considering that almost no one watches/listens to CBC, I think this isn’t likely to make much difference. However, the CBC should go as it refuses to carry out its mandate or even follow its own rules of conduct. Good riddance.
   (lance, I tried to email you privately and it’s not gone through. Re spelling, you asked about the actor: it’s “Pinsent”. There’s also the fine word “corollary”:”colliery” is a coal mine! Cheers.)

2. I’ve got a little list:
   CBC – away ( to this first it’ll make the whining of the Liberal aparatchniks ever so less loud and annoying.)
   The gun registry – away (Replace current laws with something less dumb and more liberal.)
   HRC’s – away. Just GONE.
   Wheat Board -away. Just Gone.
   CRTC- reformed.
   Immigration Reform – do it now.
   Gov Money for all the Quango’s – Away! Cut cut cut!
   And DO THEM NOW so that by next election the doom mongering is shown to be stupid. Get the whining over with.

3. I was watching CTV election coverage and they had Jean LaPierre on briefly to talk about Quebec. He stated that the Tory did not have an effective organization on the ground in Quebec because they were relying on the ADQ support, who he described as “kids”. The Bloc was able to attack PM Harper 3 times a day for the last 4 weeks of the campaign and the Tories didn’t fight back even once. I think he is right and that is the reason the Tories didn’t make gains in Quebec.
   On a different note, it appears that there were shenanigans going on in Elmwood-Transcona here in Winnipeg. The Tories are claiming that there were voting irregularities with a ballot box being left outside and people voting more than once and have filed a complaint with EC.
   http://www.winnipegsun.com/canadavotes/news/2008/10/16/7101251-sun.html
   In Edmonton, Rahim Jaffer has not conceded the elction and is reported to be calling for a recount.
   http://www.edmontonsun.com/canadavotes/news/2008/10/16/7101696-sun.html
   Possibly another case of irregularities? Maybe not, but given the visceral haterd NDP supporters have for the Tories in general and PM Harper in particular, I would not be surprised.

4. Would you guys chill about Quebec’s importance!
   Bear in mind all that’s needed for a majority is five more seats … 10 short of a majority divided by half.
   It is possible to pick up another five seats between Ontario and Atlantic Canada. The seat count in AC doubled this election, from five to 10.
   That’s about as easy as it is to accomplish.
   Five more seats anywhere in Canada, including the real Quebeckers coming to their senses and the majority is there.
   Stop with the gloom and doom already.

5. This all fits in with Harpers incrementalism plans.
   As the population shifts westward so too will new seats. Most should turn Conservative.
   As the Senate ages and is forced to retire Conservative Senators will replace the Liberal Senators.
   The fear factor of the Conservatives becomes greatly reduced as the fear uncertainty and doubt proves to be baseless.
   The “kids” from the ADQ mature into people who have been through the fire and survived. We also solidified our previous gains in Quebec.
   Culture shift in attitudes towards the Conservatives in Ontario have changed. No longer just a “western” party. How long does this culture shift take in Quebec? Is the ADQ the natural ally of the Conservatives and not the Quebec Liberal party? I would like to see more on the relationships between Conservative people and ADQ and Quebec Liberal and see who really is working with whom and who is backstabbing whom. Charest certainly did not help the Conservative cause during the election.

6. This was an extremely important election. Harper won – and it was what I call an Internal Win, a win based on a structural shift. Not an emotional win where people are upset about something or angry at the other party (the 2006 win).
   This win showed that the infrastructure has changed. Not only more ridings are Conservative but those that were firmly Liberal have almost collapsed their Liberal support. This acknowledges that Harper’s mode of governance, which is incremental and decentralized, is working.
   The Liberals, the party of Big Central Govt focused around Ontario-Quebec, the welfare state, the Nanny Govt, are out of touch with modern reality. Canada’s modern reality is no longer Ontario-Quebec. There’s the West; there’s Nfld, there’s the NORTH. The Liberals don’t get it and retain their old structure of centralism and denying these other areas more self-govt. Harper acknowledges and enables this changed structure.
   As for Quebec, allowing it to have its own political party, denying universal suffrage to that party, was an error. But you can’t go back. We in the ROC feel that Quebec is part of Canada. Quebecers feel that the ROC, Canada, is a foreign country. They feel no filiation with it. Indeed, they view it as handy: they want money and services from it. They have nothing to offer it. In this sense, they’ve become, rather than self-governing..Quebec has become parasitic.
   We should NOT try for more votes in Quebec. Instead, Harper should focus on building this decentralized structure further – in the West, in the North, in the East. Don’t pander to Quebec. No more special funding. Ignore it.
   The allocation of more seats to the West will nullify Quebec’s role. Then, Quebec will have to decide. Does it want to join the Federation of Canada? Yes? Then, participate, put in money, stop being a parasite.
   Quebec has no choice. It set itself up, structurally, as a parasite. It has no infrastructure of self-organized economic production, relying on massive federal subsidies (including the ‘arts’ which it claims as its own). So, it will have to join and be constructive.
   But it’s up to us, the ROC, to insist that our govt stop pandering to Quebec. It’s our money. We reject a parasite in our midst.

7. lookout, thanks. Oops. Fixed corollary.

8. Jay:
   New Canada will prevail.
   Alberta/B.C. population is more than Quebec’s right now, yet Quebec has 75 seats and Alberta/B.C. only has 64.
   Whenever the next redistribution happens (last one was in 2004) will be enough to accurately reflect the wishes of the populace.
   Populations have always shifted throughout the course of history as people seek better lives for their families.
   Saskatchewan’s population will also increase, since it has now escaped the marxist yoke. It’s a tide that cannot be stopped and the guardians of Old Canada will become increasingly desperate in their redistibution tactics and demonizing those who actually produce the wealth Canada enjoys.

9. To put things into perspective:
   The libs have no money. They must pay back their leadership debt. They must pay back their election debt. They must pay for a new leadership convention. They must save enough to pay for a new election in a few years time. They get less public subsidy. They will have fewer donations (no one backs the “weak horse”.) Add to that their lacky shill at Election Canada’s mandate must be up soon and will be replaced by anyone else.
   Duceppe is retiring (at least he said he was. Frenchmen have a way stabbing you in the back.) If he does, it’s unlikely that the Bloc will have a leader 1/10th as effective.
   Greens get more money to run next time. More vote splitting. Every conservative should be sending 1/10th of their political donations to the Greens as they cost the Libs votes.
   In a few years the economy will be in recovery mode and Harper will be able to claim credit (even though people who aren’t half-wits know that the economy rarely rests on the government, there are a lot of half-wits…)
   Bush will be a dinstant memory turned into stories told to scare children into behaving themselves.
   Obama will have driven the US into the toilet and his “luster” will be tarnished.
   The conservatives upward trend will continue. That means Majority next time.

10. I have mixed feelings about PR. Majority governments tend to have less spending and regulation than loose coalitions, but as it stands now, Quebec has us forced into a perpetual minority situation even without PR.

11. Speaking of voter turnout, what was the liberal voter turnout in the last session of parliament?
    Seems they sat on their hands 43 times instead of voting.
    Maybe they were busy and had to wash their hair.
    Or perhaps they were too busy with their ongoing project of trying to find a way to steal Jesus off the Cross.
    They grabbed pretty much everything else that wasn’t nailed down.

12. PR means Eurosocialism.
    There are more people willing to whore their vote for other people’s money than willing to work for a living. Every whiner and loser with their hand out (and that includes corporate and union deadbeats as well) will be falling over themselves to get their piece of your pie.
    PR means Lib/NDP coalitions forever.

13. After looking at the popular vote percentage the next big push will be for a proportional voting system. Then watch for the rise of the lunatic fringe parties to disrupt an already circus act parliament. At least first past the post elects a majority with the same train of thought, proportional allows the goofus groups to align and vote against that majority then nothing in the rational sphere is ever accomplished.

14. Thumbs down for proportional representation for precisely the reason Western Canadian articulates.
    All we need is another dozen lunatic Lizzie Mays forcing themselves into our faces.
    As for Quebec, would you people please chill on the issue?
    Redistribution, with more seats in Western Canada will take care to those ingrates.

15. I do not have enough information on what Harpers plans for dealing with Quebec is. He may not have one which would be a gaping hole in his strategy. this seems unlikely.
    Keep in mind that not too long ago the Reform party was demonized as a rascist, american, western party. Despite the shrill protestations of he left, Harper has successfully moved that view to the Conservatives being a center, inclusive party. The ethnic votes attracted by the Conservatives have notably not been the radicals that are voting for the Liberals and NDP.
    Quebec is in play. The fact that despite the huge outcry in the press and polls against the Conservatives, they still held on to last elections gains. This is a fairly solid base to build on. Not using the established political machinery too means that we can build from the ground up. From a westerners point of view Charest is right up there with Joe Clark. The ADQ seems much more in line with Conservative ideology. If by building the Conservative machinery develops the ADQ machinery provincially, this seems like a two for the price of one deal.
    Why can’t Quebec culture change too? Who says the staus quo is permanent there? I think this is part of Harpers incremental change.

16. Well done Lance.
    It’s good to review the facts and circumstances that led up to these events and a rational evaluation of the results.
    Notice that the leftards and the MSM are now whining about “Proportional Representation” now.

17. I’m completely opposed to Proportional Representation. The reason is, because the MP is no longer accountable to his electorate. He’s chosen by a political party!
    So, the choice of an MP is no longer in the Hands Of The People..but it’s been politicized. It’s in the control of the whims and favours and hates of a political group in a political party. The people have lost all control of their MPs.
    They couldn’t, as they have done now, vote out Garth Turner..if Garth was chosen by his friends in the Party. He’d have made sure that those friends would ‘owe’ him; that he’d have dirt on them that he could expose. No, PR totally removes the power of the people and puts in the hands of a political cabal. It’s like the Liberals stacking the Senate with their friends.

18. ET,
    True. That and PR has worked so well for Italy…

19. “So, the choice of an MP is no longer in the Hands Of The People..but it’s been politicized. It’s in the control of the whims and favours and hates of a political group in a political party. The people have lost all control of their MPs.”
    FYI, BC-STV addresses that particular concern rather cleverly.
    Regardless I have to agree with Warwick that there are far too many people willing to whore their vote out for other people’s money. It’s sickening. PR *sounds* like a good idea, but it has some rather nasty unintended consequences. (At least from a libertarian perspective.)

20. DUUUUH Helloooo! “WE THE PEOPLE” do have a constitutional right to end minority governments. If four guys are playng Monopoly at the kitchen table, does the winner have to have more points than the other three combined to win the game?? Who ever conceived the principle of minority government?? WAKE UP CITIZENS!!!

21. I do not believe that Harper was gunning for a majority. He got exactly what he was shooting for which is a strong minority and second mandate.
    Harper is no dummy. He will have been looking for the maximum bang for his buck and a majority was not it.
    While a majority would have guaranteed Harper the ability to pass any legislation he wanted, it would have allowed the opposition – particularly the Liberals – to establish the national narrative against the Conservatives for the next 4 years (amplified by the MSM) and to be able back that narrative up by showing up in full force and voting against every peice of Troy legislation.
    There would be no chance of toppling a majority govt, so the Libs would happily rebuild and refill their empty coffers.
    Their rhetoric, which they would be able to stand behind would resonate with disaffected Lib supporters, would give them a strong rallyig point.
    So a Harper majority would seem to me to most benefit the Liberals – and I don’t think Harper is that stupid.
    A strong minority ensures means a renewed mandate, but it also means that the Libs will held accountable for their votes in Parliament.
    Should they choose to oppose Tory legislation it will come with a steep price – another election that the broke Libs simply cannot afford. Think this campaign was bad for the Libs, imagine the next one fought with zero dollars.
    So they now have no choice but to support every single peice of Tory legislation,or face certain ruin. In doing so they will lose what little support and credibility they currently have – bit by humiliating bit.
    Doesnt that sound like a much more effective plan to
    1) advance a Conservative agenda, and
    2) to destroy the current LPC, which will virtually guarantee a Con Majority next election.
    The above could not be accomplished with Majority, only with a strong minority.
    Harper never did talk about a majority, but he sure was happy to let the opposition and media scare the voters from allowing that to happen. Also happy to have the opposition spend every cent they had trying to stop it.
    In the end he forced everybody to overplay their hands and help him get exactly what he wanted in the first place – the ability to govern unobstructed and a tighter noose around the oppositions (particularly the Libs) neck.

22. a long slow squeeze to the neck of the lieberal party.
    Harper you magnificent bas tard!
    the lieberals go out not with a bang but with a wimp.

23. I doubt that we will ever see PR. ET presents one good argument. However, there is another. It is a much more pragmatic argument and it comes from the math. Because of its simplicity, Canada will not have PR. To get PR, we have to ask, who will vote for it?
    The CPC just got 37.5% of the vote and 46.4% of the seats. They have no interest in voting for PR which would reduce their seat count to 116.
    The Liberals just got 26.2% of the vote and 24.6% of the seats. PR would have allowed them to increase their seat count from 76 to 80 seats in this election – not much change. However, they have bigger ambitions – they want to be in the CPC position in some future election so they also have no interest in voting for PR. The 4 seat “reward” that they did not get this election is a small price to pay for what they hope to be a majority in a later election.
    The BQ got 10.0% of the vote (42.9% of the Quebec vote) and 66.7% of the seats in Quebec. We could argue over whether, under PR, the BQ should get 10% of Canada’s seats (31) or 42.9% of Quebec’s seats (32). Either way, it is quite a drop from the current count of 50. So the BQ will not support such a proposal.
    Only the NDP and parties that do not have a seat in Parliament (Greens, et.al.) gain under such a system. PR will not happen because it is a system that only benefits interests that do not have the political power to make it happen and it punishes those interests who do have the political power to make it happen.
    The discussions about PR only indicate a slow news day. They are not indicators about coming constitutional change.

24. ward – exactly right. A majority now would be bad politics.
    First, you don’t want to win a majority or any election only on emotional factors. The 2006 Harper win was emotional – the voters against the Liberal corruption.
    But emotional wins are open to emotional losses. You need a structural win.
    And that’s what Harper did this time; the win was structural. Voters like his policies and are voting for them..as part of the structure of govt.
    But after generations of Liberal Big Govt and nanny statism, changing the infrastructure takes time. It has to be done slowly and incrementally. And non-emotionally. That has to be a larger minority win now.
    and exactly, perfectly, as you point out, a larger minority win now, means that the Harper govt isn’t pushed into an emotional situation where the opposition can rant and scream but fail to bring down the govt only because of their low numbers.
    In this situation, they have to help the govt; they can’t afford an election. And they can’t push the public into an election only for their own political gain. Now, we have a govt that can work. The last one was constant bashing, silly motions (Kyoto) and Senate stonewalling.
    It’s a perfect strategic win.

25. Unfortunately there is no way Harper can acknowledge the above scenario, so the media will be allowed to continue to play the “failed majority” canard. I don’t imagine Harper really cares though, as table has now been set.
    Game, set and match for Harper.

26. ward:
    That’s an interesting hypothesis. I have entertained the idea myself but wondered if Harper could actually be that precise. If this was the design, it certainly required an almost surgical precision to achieve the desired results. While not entirely persuaded, I confess to at least giving serious consideration to the idea. Frankly, it is the only strategy that explains why he (a rather masterful strategist) almost deliberately tossed Quebec away in what appeared on the surface to be some poorly thought out remarks.
    If your hypothesis is correct, then I think one of his main goals is to be able to convince the electorate that the Liberals are going to support his non-hidden agenda in the incremental move to the right of the policies of the nation.
    That this incremental move is proceeding at a glacial pace is beyond dispute. Too bad we do not have global warming – the glacier would move at a quicker pace.

27. I am not optimistic of a majority next time. It will still be many year before BC and Alberta will get enough additional seats to make a difference. Also, in 2004, when BC/Alberta got 5 new seats, Ontario got 3 and you can bet they were in the GTA which is still Lib country, so our net gain was only 2 seats.
    I looked at the results of the election and identified only about 6 or 7 seats outside Quebec which the CPC has a chance of making gains. Even if the Tories took them all, lost none of their current seats and even managed to get Bill Casey and Andre Arthur into the caucus, they’re still a few seats short. Harper could kiss up to Danny Millions and gain back the 3 seats he lost in NL, but then we’re still looking at the barest majority and that assumes absolutely nothing goes wrong.
    Throw in a better leader for the Liberals (and really, could they do any worse?) and a majority is impossible without some significant change of Conservative fortunes in Quebec.

28. Correction: BC/Alberta got 4 additional seats in 2004, while Ontario got 3, so a net gain of only one seat for the West.

29. You’re most welcome, lance! “Corollary”‘s a great word, isn’t it?
    (You notice I didn’t say, “No problem”: IMO, what dumbed down, ungracious bafflegab.)

30. RM:
    The demographics of New Canada will eventually win.
    Alberta, with a population increase of 200,000 since 2004, is already in line for two more seats and that’s with totally unfair representation.
    Alberta, B.C. and Ontario’ s average constituency is more than 100,000 per riding. At the other extreme, PEI has one MP per 32,000 population.
    Outside the GTA, Ontario is going anti-Liberal, NDP in the north and Conservative in other areas.
    Atlantic Canada has returned twice the members of Conservative MP’s that it did last time.
    The era of the fearmonger is drawing to a close.

31. “PR will not happen because it is a system that only benefits interests that do not have the political power to make it happen..”
    Bingo!!

32. There is a another winner in this last election that has not been mentioned. That winner is Preston Manning. For those of us who were early Reform Party members, this is a subdued victory, but it is a victory that was birthed by the Reform movement. We remember the early days when the supporters were vilified as racist, dinosaurs, and other such terms. Not everyone remembers the very early days when the charges of racism and other derogatory remarks came from inside Alberta itself such as from the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal. Alberta and BC did not stay long in this mode, but then Saskatchewan and Manitoba needed to be won over. Saskatchewan was persuaded first and then Manitoba became more comfortable with the idea. The party changed names and did soften some of its policies (hence the subdued in subdued victory) but there was a time when Ontario simply would not vote for the same party where Alberta conservatives (and especially social conservatives) were running for public office. I see this last election as the first time in my life where Ontario has become comfortable with Alberta conservatives. Alberta is a place where social conservatives can run and hold office. The electorate (even in Alberta) do not want them making major modifications in social policy but they are not wildly socially progressive either. Albertans have learned that these people often possess ethics and integrity to a greater degree than what is often found in politics.
    Most Westerners consider the Mulroney Conservatives as people who were representing Ottawa’s policies to us and were not representing our policies to Ottawa. The old PCs were only a mechanism to vote not-Liberal but we could never really think of the PC Party as being our own. Politics is, unfortunately, a compromising exercise. Reform/Alliance/Conservative has been moderated since the Manning days. However, Ontario has moved as well. What we saw this week was hoped for but not possible 10 years ago. Even the low voter turnout tells a story. The MSM has still tried to copy the early claims of the Herald and Journal (racist dinosaur has been replaced by scary hidden agenda) but the effect is wearing off. It took Alberta the least amount of time to become comfortable with the son of a Premier who governed well for 25 years; the other provinces in the west took a little longer and Ontario has taken even longer. However, those voters who did not vote have indicated that they do not view Harper as scary – even if they are not yet persuaded to vote for him. Had the MSM been successful in convincing the electorate in regard to their charges against Harper, the voter turnout would have been much larger. Danny Williams, the MSM, and other ABC types failed.
    It will take a few more years for most of Ontario to actually trust Conservatives but Ontario no longer fears Conservatives of the Alberta variety. This is, itself, a big victory. That the Conservatives are not really conservative qualifies the victory as a subdued victory. Finally, Canadians certainly made the best choice when all the options were considered.

33. Set You Free: Eventually, perhaps, but you’re talking about decades. The Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act calls for a review every 10 years. We won’t see another readjustment until 2013 or later. The soonest BC/Alberta can hope to catch up with Quebec in seat count would be 2023.

34. RM:
    We’re in 2008.
    Review and change scheduled for 2014. That’s six years away.
    So, we have to get through at least one more election and by that time the tide will already be turning thanks to financial disparities among the parties.
    Liberal supporters are notorious cheapskates. They’ve never had to actually take any money out of their pockets. Their party funding, obviously, was done through kickbacks on fake contracts with their buddies.
    More details are due to come out during this term.
    This Conservative Party, with its strong Reform roots, and the NDP are used to surviving on small donations.
    They’ll be fine.
    One more thing. When the Cadman lawsuit gets to the court, that will totally bankrupt the Liberal Party.
    Have I missed any negatives that would outweight any of these points I’ve articulated?
    Hold your head up high. Western Canada has shown the way to the future and Old Canada will have no choice but to follow.

35. SYF,
    Even if the CPC wins its lawsuit against the libs (and that isn’t guaranteed) the liberal judges won’t give the CPC their friend’s money.

36. Warwick:
    It’ll be interesting to see how the lawsuit plays itself out.
    Parties make all kinds of deals we never hear about.
    Harper’s assertion of ‘financial considerations’ meant the party’s support for Cadman in an election should he cast the vote that brought down the Liberal government of the day.
    To allege it was a million-dollar insurance policy would be a literal impossibility, since no insurance company would issue a policy on a man who had terminal cancer.
    Maybe that’s the way the Liberal Party does business with their corporate buddies … I dunno.
    What I do know is that Harper is confident enough in what he meant and what he said that he has a good chance to win the case.
    If there were some shenanigans, why would the lawsuit still be alive today? It was used as a smear during the political campaign, but a court of law is much different than the court of public opinion.

37. SYF,
    I’m not saying the case has no merit. I’m saying the judge they argue it in front of most likely owed their job to Chretien after services rendered to the Liberal Party.
    Since when has the law stood in the way of a judge’s preferences?

38. SYF: To get technical, the review will take place in 2012, after the results of the 2011 census are compiled. Then it takes a minimum of one year for the changes to be verified and then they come into effect at the time of the next election. So, the earliest we would see new seat allocation would be 2013, but it could take longer depending on when the next election is called, so it could be 2014, 2015, even 2016.
    Now, realistically, BC and Alberta can expect 4 to 6 new seats with each readjustment. Since we are currently 11 seats behind Quebec, we won’t get there in one census period. It will require at least two, so it won’t happen until sometime in the 2020s and that assumes our population boom will continue indefinitely.

39. RM:
    In the meanwhile, would it be good politics for Old Canada to continue biting the hand that feeds them?

40. Interesting thought about the BQ preventing a majority and raising the ire of the CPC supporters here….
    Without the split on the right, the Liberals probably feel quite similar feelings about the West.

41. Why does Quebec get all the fun? Its high time we had a referendum in the ROC on whether we really want Quebec to stay in Canada instead of the other way around? The French can sit this one out, won’t cost the4m a penny. If they can’t act like adults boot them out! Why the hell should we pay for a federal separatist party. A provincial one I can understand, but to corrupt our election with a 75 seat lock with a steadily declining population is stupid. Why should there votes mean more than ours, to a party that hates this country?

42. Agree with Brent Weston.,..and I am an Ontario Reformer since 1993…still have my Reform lapel pin …as a reminder!
    During this current campaign, I was working for CPC candidate in Mississauga-Erindale…Bob Dechert, third time running…won by a squeaker! Now the only Tory MP in Mississauga…
    My scrutineering partner, also a Reformer, pointed out that the trend for ‘real conservatives’ has been upward since the ’90s, from 1 seat, to 55, to 99 to 125, to (now) 143.
    There is a strong trend line that supports what Brent has said…the rest of Canada is beginning to accept conservativism from a western Canada base.
    Let’s move on…this election WAS a victory!

43. ET: “And that’s what Harper did this time; the win was structural. Voters like his policies and are voting for them..as part of the structure of govt.”
    Respectfully, and from inside government, I would say this is not, in fact, true. I would venture that the CPC and Stephen Harper were the direct beneficiaries of Stephane Dion’s (incompetent) leadership, and not by any perceived public view of the CPC’s stewardship. Had Ignastief been the leader, the results would have been markedly different. Dion’s inability as an ESL, and his ridiculous clinging to the green shift debacle pushed even his core away.
    The reality is, the CPC have not done as good a job as they should have. Their NUMBER ONE priority in the next year is to take control of the bureaucracy of government. At the moment, the civil service is rudderless and the expertise is retiring. 13 years of structural retooling has left a bureaucracy free from the control of political oversight, steeped in Liberal ideology, and polluted with managerial featherbedding and incompetence. They need to be talking to their frontline civil servants, not to the Ottawa mandarins and hangers-on.
    This should have been dealt with in the last two years and wasn’t. As a consequence there are departments which are failing badly under their Liberal governance models, and when Sheila Fraser catches up with some of them, the public will scream outrage; its coming.
    The CPC won’t be able to blame the Liberals much longer. This time around they will carry the burden of responsibility. Many of the corrections require significant legislative changes. To be successful going forward, the CPC will have to be especially aggressive in bringing legislation into the house. They burned a significant portion of their grassroots constituency in the first go around. They won’t be given a third chance.

44. Thanks inquest.
    JJM, admit the cursed english have supported your french-ness through 3 centuries, and without the relatively benign rule of the British Empire and her leftover Dominion there is little chance the Colony of New France would have survived this long.
    Be a proud Quebecois JJM, say no to the Federal cash.

45. Phantom: “. TAX CUT. That will be the engine to drive the Canadian economy out of recession fast. The way to “pay” for the tax cut is to CUT PAYROLL. Fire people. Eliminate entire departments. Decimate the bureaucracy.”
    It may come as a surprise to you but this has already happened. In fact, the civil service has dropped below its ability to provide essential services in many departments. Critically, staffing is especially low in areas of law enforcement and in the financial and judicial sectors. In my division alone, we are almost half our workforce from 5 years ago, and we are now below our ability to provide regulatory oversight that Canadians are entitled to and demand. Our burn-out rate is at an all time high. All of us have case loads that no one in the private sector would accept.
    Its a perpetual myth that countries with modern economies can exist without a substantial bureaucracy. They can’t. Ultimately, if a country is to have an equitable and ethical legal, regulatory and supportive governance, it must staff the functions. Notwithstanding the kumbayah crowd, individual citizens left to their own devices will not of their own volition, act in the public good.

46. skip – I completely and totally agree with you about the civil service. It’s a corrupt mess, and just as you say, polluted with Liberal ideology and featherbedding. I think that now that Harper has a near-majority, he can take them on. Just as he’s thrown down the gauntlet to the Senate. But I fully agree with you about the unfettered and self-serving civil service.
    I also agree with you about the ‘assistance’ that an incompetent Dion played in assisting the CPC success. Dion’s problem is not merely his inability to speak the language of over 80% of the population, but, his inability to even relate to anyone outside of the cocooned academic Seminar room. And the Green Shift, which was really a tax shaft –
    I don’t know what you mean by the CPC ‘burned a significant proportion of their grassroots constituency’.
    But, I think that Harper’s policies of decentralization, his foreign affairs policies, his various economic measures which included a focus on small business and entrepreneurial initiatives – weren’t unnoticed and played a role.
    However, since the CPC can’t rely on the MSM to make its agenda and policies public, a major problem has been, and remains, that the public simply don’t know about the enormous accomplishments of the Harper govt.
    I undertook to find out and list some of them, pertaining only to Ontario. It was excruciatingly difficult to find the information on the Govt Web Pages. It most certainly wasn’t in the newspapers. But, what I found out was quite astonishing – the govt investment in Great Lakes clean up, water treatment plants and projects in Ontario, massive road work, the govt investment in public transportation in Toronto (and elsewhere); the hybrid buses, the money for rapid transit..on and on and on.
    The immigration settlement houses set up, the assistance to establishing small and medium businesses, the focus on integration of immigrants, the tax reductions…again..on and on.
    All kept silent by our local media.
    The CPC doesn’t publicize its actions well enough. Since it can’t rely on the mass media, which are almost all firmly pro-Liberal, then, it has to find another strategy to make its accomplishments public.

47. Good points, Skip. Perhaps the bureaucrats from the various Federal health departments could be reassigned to actual essential services such as the judiciary and the military, and leave the health care issue to the Provinces, where the Constitution places responsibility.

48. “Harper squandered $300 million by calling this election.”
    Queen Adriane’s lunch tab was bigger than that.

49. Tooting my own horn a bit Skip but see my post at 1:39.
    Harper, by winning a minority only, has just cleared the decks moving forward far more than he would of if he had won a majority.
    The changes you refer to will start to happen now, because the Liberals have exactly ZERO ability to fight another election. That was not the case prior to now.
    Best part is the Libs and the media did most of the heavy lifting for him in preventing the majority that would have saved the bacon of the LPC.

50. If Harper really wants to get another 10 seats in Atlantic Canada he should significantly reduce the cost of travel for people and shipped goods on the crown corporation Marine Atlantic ferry system. Take the extra costs out of the ACOA budget if you want. This one move will reduce personal and business costs throughout the whole region. Everything bought and sold on the island has a cost which can be traced back to the ferry. It could probably be done for less than 200 million a year, split between 4 provinces. If Harper is serious about ensuring Canada remains comppetitive this is one move which would prove to me he is serious. Again, I am not asking for a handout to the region but a “shifting” of the spending priority in Atlantic Canada.