Fresh from decking the halls with boughs and holly, Canadians are now being asked to clear the decks to end Harper's folly. Stephane Dion says the "psychological" threshold (two years of minority government) has now been reached, and he feels Canadians are ready to go to the polls again this year.
Of course, it takes three to tango for this minority government to fall, and so the views of the other two opposition parties are equally important.
Jack Layton, fresh from quaffing eggnog, says he is ready for battle. Stuck in the polls at around 15%, with the Greens nipping at his heels, Layton now has a slightly different take on what voters will do. Right now, he says, the polls cannot be taken to reveal what the intention of Canadian voters are. Voters are "parking their intentions". I guess he hopes that they will slip their votes into first gear come election day, make a sharp left turn, avoid the Greens, and once again "lend" him their votes...
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/289170
Fat chance. Layton helped Harper bring down the Liberal government because he threw the dice, and lost. He thought he would end up with enough votes to be a player, the tail that would wag the Tory dog, but this did not happen. Having lent him their votes once before, voters are more likely to dock his tail and vote Liberal.
And the Bloc?
They are poring over a delayed Christmas shopping list, busily writing down a long, long list of goodies which they will present to Santa Stephen. We are for sale, says the sign they are preparing. Pay our price, and you can stay in power ...
http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=35165e66-4936-4f0c-a029-05ea35f06a4d&k=50403
So, what will Santa Stephen do?
He has enough cash on hand compared to the Tories and Dippers to allow his party to swamp the others with TV blitzes come election time, but he must be a bit discouraged about the inability of the Reform Party in the Tory wolf clothes to persuade more than about 30% of Canadians to vote for them. Even worse, a lot of Tory votes are wasted votes under the first past the post voting system, because they have a huge chunk clustered in their rightwing bastion of Alberta, with much sparser penetration elsewhere in the country.
His best bet will be to hope that he can survive another year, and see what that brings. The risk is that the front bench of the Liberals is suddenly awash with talent once the by elections take place in March, and he will find it heavy going to best the formidable Liberal team he will face in Parliament later this year. His fear of the Liberal bench could stampede him into an early election, hoping to win a minority government with another 2 years grace ...
However, Harper is Harper, and he is the smartest man in the room, so the Cat thinks that he will be paying a lot of attention to the shopping list the Bloc is going to hand to him early in the new year, and give them most of what they want, so that he can cling to power for another six to twelve months.
Isn't it funny how Harper is faced in the new year with a cornucopia of advice from his outside advisers: some advice on Afghanistan, a little bit of advice from an independent adviser on the festering sore of the Airbus years which is gnawing at the foundation of Canada's democracy, and lastly, some advice from the Bloc on that to put in his budget.
Study those three pieces of advice well, Santa Stephen, because any one of them could bring down your government and relegate to a footnote in Canadian history.
