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Originally Posted by Jade
So you consider it undemocratic for canadians to get their say? I tend to disagree.
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Like I've said several times, I don't think a plurality of votes is very meaningful. Harper is only the PM because he hasn't yet faced a confidence vote... if that gives him the authority to delay a confidence vote, it should be fairly self-evident how that is problematic.
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Originally Posted by Jade
It isn't like he's magically making the vote of confidence go away. He's just forcing those involved to take some time, think about it, and give the constituents of the NDP and the liberals a chance to get their say. Vote's still going to happen, just not in the panic that the liberals want it to happen in. Why are they trying to rush it so much anyway? Maybe because they know it isn't what a large portion of their voters want, but if they don't hear it, they didn't purposely go against those that voted for them.
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I actually agree that giving Parliament a cool-down period is beneficial, just not at the expense of the precedent it will set.
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There is a signed document preventing the removal of the bloc from the equation. They are in there, and the promises made to them are going to happen. And given that the conservatives have more seats in the house than the liberals and NDP combined, if they were involved, it stands to reason they would be leading. That is the reasoning why the liberals get 'control' of the coalition, even though it started with the NDP and bloc. Kind of like how we voted it. You know, the structure being overthrown right now.
Sure the conservatives could support the coalition. But since the separatists have already been promised whatever they want to keep them involved, its kind of irrelevent. And given that they are the elected government, why do they have a duty to lying down for the liberal agenda. Should they bend, yes, and they have. Too bad the NDP and liberals are hell bent on ignoring it. At this point it no longer has anything to do with policy for either the liberals or the NDP. It's about prooving to themselves and anyone ignorant enough to believe it that they beat the conservatives in this election.
Besides no one has said that the conservatives have never made aggrements with the bloc. We've just mentioned that making concessions on a case by case basis is different than handing them the keys.
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The inherent contradiction in this part of your post is that either the paper that's been signed is worth something, and the concessions that have been made have been made and that's it, and therefore the Bloc no longer has "the keys" or "a veto", or the paper is worthless and the Bloc do have "the keys" or "a veto", but they CAN be removed from the equation.
Agree with you on many of the other points though. Like I've said (before you made an appearance in this thread, so I can understand why you might have missed it), I am both a Liberal and against this coalition.
Some places where I disagree are with your assertion that the Conservatives are the elected government. They are only the government for as long as they have the confidence of the house. As for how the Conservatives could support the coalition without having a leading role despite having the largest number of seats... well it's because at this point they don't have the negociating position to stop the Bloc any other way. Like I said, it's very counter-intuitive, but it does stand to reason.
I will draw an analogy to mutually assured destruction (where giving power to the Bloc is the end of Canada, i.e. the end of the world
). Let's say I have nukes. You have more nukes. You're saying that because you have more nukes, you should be able to dictate the terms of a peace agreement to me. And we have to have a peace agreement, because otherwise we'll both get destroyed. But if I've already set my nukes on a ten-minute countdown, and tell you that if you don't give into my demands I won't cancel the launch, and you believe that I am willing to follow through on that threat, then you don't really have much of a choice, do you? I get to dictate the terms, or you get blown up. Sure, you could take me down with you, but that doesn't really change your predicament.
Of course, for me to do that, I'd have to be crazy. Unless I know that you're not crazy and won't let mutually assured destruction happen, and will therefore cave into my demands, as hard as that would be. And if we're both crazy, well then the nukes will go and the world will end.
And as weird as that scenario (as well as the scenario of the Conservatives supporting the Liberal-NDP coalition) is, it's a very real application of game theory. The US actually recently declassified information on an attempt by Richard Nixon to make the soviets think he was insane. Had he succeeded, the Cold War would have ended right then and there.
And yes, by my analogy, this is a crazy move by the Liberals. I'm perfectly okay with that.
