One of the sillier elements of Canadian election law is that it is illegal to publish the results which have occured in Nfld. in British Columbia until the polls close in British Columbia.
One of the best things about Canadian election law is that it has no force or effect in the United States. Fresh from publishing the blacked out Gormery testimony which may very well cost the Liberal Party this election, Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters announces:
CQ will start live-blogging the election starting at 6 pm Central Time this evening, with frequent updates as information “crosses my desk”, so to speak.captains quarters
It really is about time for Elections Canada to realize that you can’t control the internet any more than you could control long distance phones.
Thanks Ed!
Written by jay on January 23rd, 2006 with 5 comments.
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Concerned: Outside the James Bay liquor store there was an earnest, drab, 60 something woman, all grey uncut hair and Birkenstocks thrusting an equally grey, badly printed, tab sheet from the Council of Concerned Canadians into the unwilling hands of the beer buyers. It was the first sign of canvassing I’ve seen this go round.
Signs: We hiked up into Fairfield to catch the first garage sales of the season. A fair sprinkling of NDP signs, few Liberal or Tory signs and all the Green signs were on public property.
Beers and Popcorn: I suspect Scott Reid may go down in the footnotes of Canadian political history as the first entirely unelected hack to actually lose a sitting government an election. If you look at the polling, the Liberal decline pretty much started when Scott so eloquently expressed his, and by extension, the Liberal Party’s contempt for Canadian parents.
Nightmare: While the polling as the election closes suggests the Conservatives have a significant lead there are lots of plausible scenarios in which that lead will not translate into a majority. But the nightmare is the scenario in which it does not translate into government at all. All that needs to happen is for the Bloc to win 65 plus seats in Quebec and the NDP to hit 40 across the country. This would leave the Tories and the Grits to fight it out over 203 seats. Propose the Tories take 113 leaving the Liberals with 90. Who forms the government? The Dumpling would have - by the unwritten constitution he so recently trashed - the right to meet the House and to attempt to govern in coalition with the NDP. The Bloc might well sit on its hands for the sheer delight of haviing the Dumpling to kick around for another year or two.
Agendas: As elections go this one has pretty much failed in terms of setting a positive agenda. It has been about the Liberals having nothing to say and the CPC making sure it said nothing. If the Liberals are defeated - and I think they will be - it will be because they have run out of vision and been caught by scandal. If the Tories win, and I think they will, it will be because they have learned to run a disciplined campaign to reassure the wary and because Canadians have, finally, recognized that the Liberals are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Regardless of which party wins, neither will have anything like a mandate for radical change. The Dumpling because he has essentially spent eight weeks putting out fires rather than enuciating a positive program. The CPC because, in their quest for power, they have carefully promised to follow the main outlines of the Liberal agenda for Canada.
The Right Outcome: At this point Canada needs to be rid of the Liberals. But we do not need a horde of evangelicals brooding in the backbenchs waiting for the Conservative Party to get on to their agenda. So long as there is even a possibility of those zealots furthering their agenda the CPC cannot be trusted with a majority position. So, sadly, the best outcome, until the CPC deals with its socon problem, will be a decent minority. Harper needs to have the opportunity to govern. And he needs to have the opportunity to further define the CPC away from the religious right. A minority would give Harper both opportunities while firewalling Canada from the excesses of the fundy taliban.
Written by jay on January 23rd, 2006 with 8 comments.
Read more articles on CPC and Canadian Politics and Liberals and Uncategorized.