Coming Throne Speech

I can’t deal with whether the federal government will fall on the coming Throne Speech. That seems too far away right now. I want to focus on the provincial campaign. There will be a lot of Throne Speech optics later. If we’re lucky, someone will find away to keep this government in power for now – Liberals in Ontario cannot have two elections so close together. I want this Conservative government out of office just as much as the next Liberal, but a 2007 election is not the way to do it. Bringing down the government only creates an election that the Conservatives could easily win with a minority or majority. Not for decades upon decades has the Governor General asked an opposition party to form government without an election victory for said opposition party. That just doesn’t happen anymore. If we could bring down the government in hopes of Dion simply being appointed Prime Minister on the spot, I’d go for it. But Governors General just don’t appoint new Prime Ministers on the spot following the loss of confidence of a government anymore. So it just is not a doable option. That is why we need to keep this Conservative government in power in the year 2007 and explore our options next year. That’s all the dealing I’m going to do on this topic for now.

But as a closely related aside I want to mention that Harper has been bold enough to say he won’t hold a vote on extending the combat mission in Afghanistan unless he thinks the government can win that vote. The implication is he may hold it eventually, as the current deadline of February 2009 comes close. But he will not hold such an early vote because he thinks he can’t win it. I seem to read signals from the government that the government was hoping certain Liberals would again break ranks and support the extension past 2009 in the same way that certain Liberals voted for the extension to 2009. I expect the government to be disappointed if they are hoping for this. Dion has more or less united the Liberals on this issue. In the spring there was a Liberal motion to end the mission in 2009. Individual Liberals did not break ranks and I wouldn’t expect them to in a future vote. We are now quite united on this issue. When it comes down to it, there cannot be an extension of the Afghanistan mission within the context of this current parliament. Harper would still need a majority government to push through such an extension of the mission. And even then, it would go against the type of “all-party consensus” that Harper has been promising.

Pauline Marois

PQ leader Pauline Marois will run in a Quebec provincial by-election in Charlevoix. While the Liberals have already said they will not run a candidate against her, the ADQ is considering running a candidate against her. One reason she probably chose this seat is due to the Quebec political tradition of other major parties not opposing party leaders in by-elections. Otherwise it would not make sense because Charlevoix is not a safe PQ seat. The resigning PQ member won by only 6.88%. The ADQ had about 30% of the vote. A race with Marois against an ADQ candidate with no Liberal candidate would be strange. It could give the ADQ candidate a chance to win. This could in turn force Marois to resgin as leader and could bring Gilles Duceppe to Quebec City after all. I don’t know how a straight PQ-ADQ race with no Liberal candidate would look like. If all the federalist vote were to unite behind the ADQ, the ADQ could easily beat Marois. If it is more of a left-right thing, then Marois would stand a good chance if the centre/left vote united behind her. I think if the ADQ insists on running a candidate, the Liberals would be doing Marois a favour to run a candidate as well. The Liberals want to let Marois into the legislature. A PQ-ADQ race with no Liberal candidate has the significant danger of Marois being defeated and therefore in this circumstance running a Liberal candidate may be the right thing to do. Maybe ADQ leader Mario Dumont will in the end choose not run a candidate. If they do run a candidate they will receive a lot of criticism for such cruelty and it could cost them the by-election race. I say either both other parties run candidates or neither party runs candidates. The Liberals bowing out if the ADQ won’t does not exactly make sense.

The tradition of not opposing party leaders in by-elections exists federally as well but is less hard and fast. Unlike in Quebec, at the federal level the tradition does not extend to other opposition parties. What I mean by that is that at the federal level it is the tradition for the GOVERNING PARTY to not run a candidate against a leader attempting to enter parliament in a by-election. Other major opposition parties do run candidates against leaders trying to enter parliament and there is no tradition against this. On the other hand, if it’s a Prime Minister trying to enter Parliament (it can theoretically happen), I also know of no tradition that says opposition parties are not to run candidates in the by-election.

I do not consider the Conservatives to be strong followers of the tradition of the governing party not running a candidate against a party leader attempting to enter parliament in a by-election. I say this because when Green Party leader Elizabeth May ran in the London North Centre by-election last year, the Conservatives ran a candidate against her. I also strongly suspect that if someone had won the Liberal leadership race who did not have a seat in parliament, the Conservatives would have run a candidate against them in the by-election that would have occurred to get the new leader in Parliament. Of course knowing the Conservatives, they probably would not have even called that by-election until just recently, leaving this hypothetical Liberal leader unable to lead his/her party from the House of Commons.

This political tradition I have been discussing does not exist at all in Ontario at the provincial level, at least not anymore. The Liberals ran a candidate against John Tory when Tory ran in the 2005 by-election. The governing party in Ontario has also always run a candidate against Ontario Green Party leader Frank De Jong the numerous times De Jong has run in an Ontario by-election. On a side note, De Jong seems to really like hopping from riding to riding. He has run in the following places:

1988 Federal: Rosedale, Winner: David MacDonald (PC)
1990 Provincial: Ottawa East, Winner: Bernard Grandmaître (Lib)
1991 Municipal: Ottawa’s Capital Ward, Winner: Jim Watson (now Lib cabinet minister)
1993 Federal: Ottawa—Vanier, Winner: Jean-Robert Gauthier (Lib)
1995 Federal by-election: Ottawa—Vanier, Winner: Mauril Bélanger (Lib)
1995 Provincial: Nepean, Winner: John Baird (PC)
1997 Federal: Ottawa Centre, Winner: Mac Harb (Lib)
1999 Provincial: Parkdale—High Park, Winner: Gerard Kennedy (Lib)
2003 Provincial: Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, Winner: Ernie Eves (PC)
2005 Provincial by-election: Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey, Winner: John Tory (PC)
2006 Provincial by-election: Parkdale—High Park, Winner: Cheri Di Novo (NDP)
2007 Proincial by-election: Burlington, Winner: Joyce Savoline (PC)

De Jong is relatively economically conservative and has even called for the abolition of Catholic schools. As with the federal Greens, it is for reasons like this that it is hard to tell sometimes who the Greens are splitting votes with.

The political tradition I have talked about has once actually helped a political party defeat the leader attempting to enter Parliament at the federal level. Arthur Meighen became leader of the Conservatives (again) in the early 1940s. The York South riding was supposed to be a safe Conservative seat. So the MP resigned to allow Meighen to contest the riding. The Liberals followed the political tradition and did not run a candidate against Meighen. The CCF however did run a candidate. It was a two-candidate only race. Because the Liberals ran no candidate, there was no vote splitting on the left. The result of this lack of vote splitting was that the CCF candidate was able to easily defeat Arthur Meighen in the February 1942 by-election by a large margin. This forced Meighen out of the Conservative leadership. I wonder how close the 1942 York South riding boundaries resemble the modern York South—Weston boundaries where in 2007 there was also a by-election upset won by a social democratic party (the NDP) at the provincial level. This 2007 by-election upset also took place in February. Maybe in another 65 years they can have another by-election in York South in February, but a with a Liberal winning it!

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.