Posted on 12/04/2008 10:01:28 AM PST by Loyalist
Canadian politicians got an early start on the Christmas break when Governor General Michaelle Jean Thursday agreed to a request from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to prorogue Parliament.
Harper emerged from a two-and-a-half hour meeting with the Governor General, telling reporters that the House of Commons will not resume sitting until Jan. 26. The House had been scheduled to sit until Dec. 12.
The first item on the parliamentary agenda in January will be a new budget setting out the stimulus that the Canadian economy needs in the face of the continuing global financial crisis, Harper said.
He urged members of opposition parties in the Commons to bring forward ideas that they would like to see included in the budget.
Canadians expect their parliamentarians to work together on the economy, which has become the biggest issue on the minds of voters, he said.
Prorogation of Parliament saves the prime minister from facing a confidence motion next Monday in the House of Commons.
The government had been virtually guaranteed it would lose that vote after the Liberals and NDP announced that they were forming a coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois to install an alternative government led by Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.
Had she refused to prorogue Parliament, the Conservatives would have been defeated on a non-confidence motion.
Two options would have remained: call upon the coalition to form a government or dissolve Parliament and call an election.
The problem with the Liberal-NDP coalition would have been that it had fewer seats combined (114) than the Conservatives (143) and would relied on the separatist Bloc Quebecois' 49 MP to prop it up.
So Canada has been spared the most bizzare governing coalition in history, led by a man (Stephane Dion) who led his party to its biggest defeat in decades, in the process of being replaced as leader in May, tied to a socialist party and a separatist party anathema to the rest of Canada.
What a clusterfark that would have been.
This is very good news for Canada.
There were already signs that the so-called ‘coalition’ might not even hold, as one Liberal MP had indicated that he would prefer to work with Harper’s conservatives on the economic issues facing Canada, rather than to join the coup plotters.
Christmas came early for Stephen Harper, and for Canada.
ping
Thailand.
Maybe Canada should join this country..
but doesn’t this just delay the day of reckoning?
If she had refused to suspend, I believe the next move would have been to remove her from the position of GG.
Got it.
The Liberals and NDP have been getting an earful from their constituents, even within their own caucuses.
This stay of execution will allow the coalition to collapse before it can do anything.
The idea of having the Bloc control the survival of the government is frankly repugnant to the vast majority of people outside Quebec.
I wouldn’t trust the Bloc to keep its word and prop up a coalition on confidence matters, either.
Never. Even life long conservatives would turn on Harper . I would.
The PM cannot remove the GG- she’s appointed to a 5-year term by the Queen. The only recourse would be to appeal to the Queen but that has never happened.
This is why I hate Parliamentary forms of Government..
Was that before or after parliament prorogued?
Also some of the party leadership cadre has expressed unhappiness with this plot, including McKenna and Manley.
That's what I mean . Never . The GG may be unsavory to many in Parliament but any attempt to remove her would have to have reasons well beyond politics.
Good!
Mine is upside down at home.
Which company was it?
Not sure....I passed by about 12:30.
Now you went and done it. Got to pull the last of my supply out of the freezer.
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