The Camel’s Nose
| Canada, by riding | |
| CPC | 124 |
|---|---|
| Liberal | 103 |
| NDP | 29 |
| BQ | 51 |
| other | 1 |
The Evil Party has taken a particular interest in getting the CPC, in all of their gay-hating majesty, into power. And, as the experience of the United States shows, once the camel has gotten its nose under the tentwall, it will try its damnest to get the rest of itself into the tent. I'm not a Canadian citizen, but I suspect that some unpleasant surprises will be coming down the road along with the all of the campaign promises that the CPC made during this campaign.
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I’m guessing that the first thing off the bat will be an attempt to kill same sex marriage (a bone to the barking fundamentalists), carefully set up as a free vote so that when it fails it won’t be such an obvious millstone, and as everyone gets worked up about that the first round of tax cuts for the rich will be pushed into place so that embarrassingly balanced budget will become a thing of the past.
I wonder if they’ll last ‘til the next budget comes through, or if they’ll founder on the rocks of some must-propose legislation that their more chromosomely-challenged supporters (or the Evil Party carpetbaggers from the USA) demand?
Well, it depends.
The Liberals aren’t going to push them over for about a year; they might not be willing to hold them up, though, and the Bloc might decide that their best course is to push the Conservatives over just after the Liberal leadership convention.
Harper has a reputation as a policy wonk, but his ability to pick his own cabinet and his ability to get the bureaucracy to do anything at all are both unknowns. (The extent to which the bureaucracy, in the person of the deputy ministers, figures the Liberals are going to get back in soon is very important and of course entirely unknown outside a couple bars in Ottawa.)
Much depends on how the Bloc reacts to getting its knuckles rapped in terms of popular support in Quebec; if they decide that the way to regain it is to push left/socialist causes, they’re going to help contain more or less anything the Conservatives come up with. If they decide to push gut-the-federal-government agenda, on the grounds that they may never have another opportunity, they’re risking permanent loss of support and know it.
My expectation is that one of the first things they’re going to try to do is to hide removing or relaxing the draconian political donation limitation rules for corporations, and to hide this in a large bill that re-apportions Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. (Quite possibly to create more rural seats in the process.)
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Yeah, I’m pretty upset about this. But at least they didn’t get a majority. The Bloq aren’t anywhere near as right wing as the CPC, so they aren’t likely to have the votes to repeal gay marriages or recriminalize marijuana. They might be able to kill Kyoto and give tax cuts to the rich, but the tax cut to the poor that they promised to repeal was supported by all of the Liberal, NDP and Bloq parties, so they won’t get any support to repeal it.
I suspect they won’t last any longer than Joe Clark’s minority government did.