Quebec's unstable minority government

I think I know the reason why Quebec’s minority government is proving to be so unstable. I think it is because Quebec has not had a minority government in over 100 years, and as a result Quebec politicians and Quebec in general has positively no experience in how to handle a minority government. At the federal scene, by contrast, there have been enough minority governments in recent memory that the federal politicians are able to handle a minority government with greater success.

I find it odd that at the federal level, the separatist party is propping up the Tories, but at the provincial level in Quebec, the separatist party is refusing to prop up the right-of-centre Charest Liberals. To me it defies logic. The PQ is deeply in debt and hasn’t even sworn in its new leader. And it still wants an election? Even when the most recent Quebec poll puts the ADQ in first place and the PQ in third place? The PQ opposes the Charest tax cuts on ideological grounds. The ADQ does not oppose the Charest tax cuts on ideological grounds. ADQ leader Mario Dumont instead argues that the tax cuts should not occur when there is a deficit. The ADQ is also opposing the budget simply because it is the Official Opposition and the Official Opposition always traditionally votes against the budget even in minority governments. It is for this reason that I believe it is fallacious when Harper attacked the Liberals for voting against his 2007 budget. The Liberals had every right to vote against the budget in its role as an Official Opposition fulfilling tradition.

I support the Quebec Liberals, although somewhat tacitly because Charest is slightly too right-of-centre for me. But the Liberals are the centrist party in Quebec politics whereas the PQ represents the left and the ADQ represents the right. So in that sense the Quebec Liberals fulfill the same role as in Ontario and federally as the centrist party. If, however, I were in charge of the Quebec Liberals the party would be more left-of-centre.

In conclusion I hope the Charest government does not fall on Friday and that instead something can be worked out to save the government.

New Ontario provincial poll

Source for blog post:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=a2d2efab-7cdc-40b4-9ffd-166ae1ef2b16&k=4761


A new poll out by Ipsos-Reid shows the McGuinty Liberals 4 points ahead of the Tories – 41% to 37%. The pollster and/or media were spinning this result as bad news for the Liberals. But this spinning ignores the fact that the Liberals are actually up 3 points from the previous Ipsos-Reid poll. It puts the Tories up 4 points. But more good news that the spinning fails to mention is that both the NDP and Green Party are down from the previous Ipsos-Reid poll. This is obviously good news for the Liberals. What’s more, in my opinion I think this poll is actually good news for the Liberals. For the last several months, the Ontario government has been under constant Opposition attack over the Ontario Lottery Corporation and over grants to immigrant service groups. Even after all the negative publicity that occurred due to these Opposition attacks, the Liberals are still ahead by 4 points. I think that that is significant. If it weren’t for those attacks, no doubt the Liberals would be ahead by a greater margin. I applied the poll results to the UBC election forecaster. It predicted a narrow Liberal majority government based on the results I entered. In the article I sourced it says that a minority government is a distinct possibility. While that is true that a minority government is very possible, a 41-37 spread in favour of the Liberals could just as easily produce a majority government depending on how the votes in each riding are actually cast, and the UBC election forecaster confirms a majority government is possible with a 41-37 spread in favour of the Liberals.

On a slightly related note, I think pollsters should start polling support for voting yes in the upcoming Ontario referendum on electoral reform. For the record, I plan to vote no in the referendum. Sometime soon I will make a blog explaining why I am against the proposed electoral reform.

Meanwhile, us Ontario Liberals have to continue to fight to get re-elected with a majority in October, 2007.

Congratulations to the P.E.I Liberals!

The Prince Edward Island Liberals under leader Robert Ghiz won big last night. They achieved a mirror image of the 2003 election results (the seat breakdown is actually an exact mirror image of the 2003 results), sweeping the Pat Binns Tories out of office. The Liberals improved their raw vote across the province by about 10,000 votes, improved the popular vote percentage by over 10%, and increased their seats from 4 to 23. The Liberals received almost 53% of the vote, over 11 points above the Tories’ vote total. I am personally glad that the pro-Stephen Harper Pat Binns (who following the departure of Bernard Lord was the most pro-Harper Premier in Atlantic Canada) has been soundly defeated. The only bit of bad news from this election result is that it could cause Pat Binns to enter federal politics. I did some calculations and found that the provincial Tories won the federal riding of Cardigan by about 4 points or by about 48% to 44%. This was the only place of residual popularity for Binns anywhere across the province. The Liberals easily won the 3 other federal ridings. Binns provincial riding (which he was re-elected in) is located in the federal Cardigan riding and Binns himself represented Cardigan in the federal House of Commons from 1984 to 1988 before being swept out along with all other Island federal Tories in the 1988 federal election due to the Island’s opposition to Brian Mulroney’s Free Trade Agreement. Binns himself was swept out by about 8 points by the now-current MP Lawrence MacAulay. But this was before he was Premier and Binns has gained plenty of stature since that 1988 loss. My concern is that with Binns no longer Premier, he will quit provincial politics and run in the federal Cardigan riding against Liberal MP Lawrence MacAulay. If Binns were to do that he would have a significant chance of winning due to his residual popularity in Cardigan and the fact that he won his own riding within Cardigan by a wide margin. This is my concern about what could happen but for now I will rejoice in the election of a new Liberal majority government in P.E.I. and the ousting of a Harper-friendly Tory. Congratulations to the P.E.I. Liberals!

Majority governments and fixed election dates

In majority governments, maintaining the confidence of the legislature is ridiculously easy. In minority governments, maintaining the confidence of the legislature is often quite hard by contrast. Newly elected governments have the constitutionally given right to govern for 5 years with no new election so long as the government can maintain the confidence of the legislature. The problem with this is that governments that become extremely unpopular who happen to be majority governments are able to keep governing long past their prime. No matter how unpopular a government is, it can continue governing for 5 years. Even if the government drops down to a 10% approval rating after its first 3 months in office and stays at that level for the next 4 years and 9 months, the incredibly unpopular government gets to continue governing for the remaining 4 years and 9 months no matter how much the population absolutely despises the government. That is why Bob Rae was able to be Premier of Ontario for such a very long time. Ontario’s population absolutely despised Rae’s government, but Rae had a majority government and therefore was able to continue governing regardless of how much everyone in Ontario despised his government. The Rae government hit rock bottom in terms of popularity once it’s 1991 budget was released and remained at that rock bottom for the remaining 4 years of their term. Following the 1991 Ontario budget, the Ontario public absolutely despised the Rae government but there was nothing that could be done to remove the Rae government from power for the next 4 years.

Another good example of this is the Mulroney government. The 1988-1993 Mulroney government became very unpopular by 1990 and stayed that way for Mulroney’s remaining 3 years in office. Yet because Mulroney had a majority government he was able to stay in power even though the public absolutely despised his government. This was true even after he lost several MPs to the newly formed Bloc Quebecois. Although Mulroney’s majority shrunk substantially throughout his second term in office, it never became a minority government and so there was no way to force an early election and vote the hated government out.


I support the concept of fixed election dates every 4 years because this prevents governments that are very unpopular from governing for 5 years just to cling to power as long as possible before facing the inevitable defeat. Fixing elections every 4 years allows for governments who are in the popularity lows of Rae and Mulroney to be voted out sooner than would be possible otherwise. The problem with fixed election dates in Canada now is that they are statutory in nature. So if an unpopular government were to inherit a fixed election date law from a previous government, and if said unpopular government was already at a 10% approval rating, and if said unpopular government wanted to cling to power as long as possible, it could simply repeal the fixed election date law and remain in power for the full 5 years before finally being wiped out of office.


The Rae government’s legislature was months away from expiring when Rae called the 1995 election. Rae could have remained Premier for a few more months and could have stayed in the Premier’s office until about November before being wiped out. But he must have seen a sliver of opportunity to call the election for June, as though such a time would prevent his party from being completely wiped out. If the election had been held in 1993, the NDP would likely have lost official party status it was so unpopular during the middle of Rae’s term. Instead, what small amount of support there was for the NDP had managed to recover by June 1995 and that’s probably why Rae called the election then. Rae probably saw that time as the best possible opportunity his party had of not being completely and totally wiped out. However, at no time following the 1991 Ontario budget could an election have been held with the NDP winning the election – that’s how unpopular the 1991 budget made the NDP and there was no turning back and from that point on. Rae never had a chance to win a second term in office.

Harper's Limited Options on Afghanistan

If Stephen Harper wants Canada’s current Afghanistan counter-insurgency mission to be extended beyond the current February 2009 expiration date, he has only a few options of making such an attempt with this minority parliament. Firstly, he can call off the extension and end the current mission in February, 2009. Harper has promised a vote in parliament on all military missions, including a possible extension of this current anti-insurgency mission. The Liberals are now united in their support of ending that current mission at its present expiry date. With the anti-war NDP and anti-war Bloc also sure to vote against such an extension, extending the mission would fail in a vote in this current parliament. So if Harper really wants to extend the mission, he would have the following options left. He could do what he did last time, and say that in the event that the vote fails in parliament, the mission gets extended for one year rather than two. Harper’s second option is to go back on his word and extend the current mission without a parliamentary vote. Harper’s third and final option is to declare the vote on the extension of the Afghanistan mission to be a confidence vote and to then call an election when the vote fails. The problem with this strategy is that Harper may have trouble fighting a campaign that was triggered on the contentious and divisive issue of the Afghanistan mission extension at a time when polls show a majority of Canadians opposing the mission.

School shooting in Toronto

If either John Tory or Stephen Harper attempt to score political points against the Liberals on this school shooting in Toronto, I will be very upset. It is upsetting enough about this tragedy without politicians trying to score political points on this terrible tragedy. I don’t want to hear from Stephen Harper that this incident is all the opposition’s fault for stalling Bills C-9 and C-10. Whoever did this was probably a first offender so that neither Bill C-9 nor Bill C-10 would have applied. That’s not mentioning the fact that Bill C-9 recently received third reading in the Senate and really has not been purposefully stalled anytime recently if ever.

I don’t want to hear from John Tory that Dalton McGuinty should have already done something to prevent this tragedy from happening. Tragedies happen. It looks as though this was not a random shooting but a targeted one for a specific reason against the victim. This is not the first targeted shooting that has occurred at Toronto’s schools in the last 7 years. If anything, its incidents like these that point to a need to ban handguns so that anyone caught with one could be arrested on the spot and prevented from committing an imminent crime. This is something Stephen Harper refuses to do. Because of that, maybe it’s time the provincial government looked at introducing its own handgun ban and exploring whether doing so is constitutional. In any event I will be very angry if I hear any Conservative politicians trying to blame the Liberals for this terrible tragedy.

Judgement Day in Manitoba

May 22, 2007 is Judgment Day in Manitoba. Manitobans go to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new government. By the looks of it, incumbent NDP Premier Gary Doer is likely to be re-elected. Despite being a Liberal, I am quite glad if this is true. Gary Doer is a very moderate New Democrat who actually won his first term in 1999 on a promise of modest tax cuts. The Doer government is left-of-centre, but more in the sense that a Liberal government would be left-of-centre. I also like the Manitoba Liberals. But they are a distant third party that only has two seats in the legislature, which is not enough for official party status (something I think they deserve even with two seats). Going into the election, the Manitoba Liberals only have those two seats but have the potential to gain more. If the Manitoba Liberals win a total of three seats, they would still be short one to make official party status. I believe the winning government should be gracious and restore their official party status even with only 3 seats.

If I lived in Jon Gerrard’s riding or Kevin Lamoureux’s riding, I’d vote Liberal. Those two men are the two current Liberal MLAs in Manitoba. If I lived in a super-safe NDP riding, I would vote Liberal. If I lived in a riding where the Liberals finished second to the NDP last time, I’d choose to vote Liberal. But if I lived in a riding which is a tight fight between the Tories and the NDP, I’d vote NDP to avoid splitting the left-of-centre vote. This is all a moot point, of course, because I live in Ontario. I’d also vote Liberal if I lived in a super-safe Tory Manitoba riding like Tuxedo. Of course I would choose to avoid living a Tory seat.

Also of note is that even Liberals can occasionally get shortchanged by the first-past-the-post electoral system. In the 1995 Manitoba election, the Liberals received 23.73% of the vote resulting in only 3 seats. Currently there is something going on in the Manitoba riding of Wellington. There were allegations of signing up members without said new members paying their own membership fees leveled at incumbent NDP MLA Conrad Santos. As a result Santos was forced to drop out of the nomination and is now running as an independent. He will split the vote. I am hoping that Santos wins. He was in my opinion treated unfairly. He may well have done nothing wrong. If nominations had been protected, none of this would have ever happened. This is why I believe incumbents should be protected from nomination challenges. Another NDP MLA also lost re-nomination for no apparent good reason. Therefore I indeed think that incumbents should be protected to prevent messes like these. If Santos wins, he may well rejoin the NDP caucus. Mr. Santos is 72 and has served in the legislature from 1981 to 1988 and continuously since 1990. It is not fair that this long-serving member has been in treated this way. That he’s running again when he’s 72, even as an independent, shows how much he loves politics. He ought to be able to serve until he’s 82 or longer. What happened to him this year is totally unfair.


In conclusion I want to wish Jon Gerrard and Kevin Lamoureux good luck in their ridings for Tuesday. I also send good wishes to the Liberals in the election on Tuesday in ridings that they are not splitting the left-of-centre vote. I also wish Gary Doer good luck in his quest to win a third consecutive majority government on Tuesday.

Christian Heritage Party helps pass gay marriage

The Christian Heritage Party is a very right wing and socially conservative party that strongly opposes same-sex marriage. Yet ironically at least two of the parties candidates in the 2004 federal election helped ensure that same sex marriage would become law in Canada. I will point to two ridings. In Skeena-Bulkley Valley, NDPer Nathan Cullen won by 1272 votes, or 3.45% of the vote. The Christian Heritage Party candidate received 1408 votes or 3.82% of the vote. Had the Christian Heritage Party candidate not been in the race, the Tory incumbent clearly would have won by about 100 votes. The result was that ironically the presence of the Christian Heritage Party allowed for the election of a pro-gay marriage NDPer and the defeat of an anti-gay marriage Tory. This paved the way for one extra vote for gay marriage that would not have been there otherwise. It also would give the future Liberal-NDP coalition one extra vote without which the government would have fallen in May 2005 prior to the passing of the gay marriage bill, thus causing it to die on the order paper.

In Middlesex—Kent—Lambton Liberal incumbent Rose-Marie Ur won by 164 votes over Conservative Bev Shipley. The Christian Heritage Party candidate received 1,015 votes. Without the Christian Heritage Party, Tory Bev Shipley would have won by about 800 votes. Although Ur strongly opposes same-sex marriage, she (along with all Liberal gay marriage opponents who were still in the Liberal caucus) voted to support the government in May 2005 in the tied confidence vote that was broken in the government’s favour by Speaker Peter Milliken. Had Shipley been elected, he would have voted against the government and the government would have fallen and the same-sex marriage bill would have died on the order paper. Thus also in this riding the Christian Heritage Party helped ensure that same-sex marriage would become law in Canada.