Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Its a good post, however to me, the biggest difference is that with the Bloc/NDP/Liberal coalition government it was going to be a true coalition which ment that Bloc and NDP members were going to be given ganking cabinet positions. I think that this is what angered Canadians and myself was because nobody wants to see Jack Layton actually having signatury authority over policy, nobody wants to see a regional seperatist party actually dictating policy.
In this current case, its nowhere near a coaltion government, the Harper government as elected remains very much in control of policy and cabinet positions. What its hopefully showing those is that Harper is going to lossen his neck and take some of the good or possibly needed suggestions and use them while avoiding an election.
But the NDP is in a position of suggesting, not formating policy, and the Bloc is in a position of suggesting, not dictating policy from an overtly strong position within cabinet.
At the end of the day, the government is still going to fall if the NDP or Bloc put what the conservatives think is a lousy or too self interested condition in place..
The Liberal's could have had a seat in this to, but as much as we bitch about Harper not being willing to work with parliment, the Liberal's behaviour really hasn't been much better, especially in the case of the reduction of hours for EI eligibility which Ignatieff put into place because it sounded sexy to reduce it to a stupid 300 and some odd hours of work, if passed it would really cripple the budget and EI, and he knew that if he dug in his heels on it that the Conservatives would walk away from it and the Liberal's would come out as the injured party.
To me, the Liberal's are going to do everything they can do to topple the government right now because as this recession fades to the past, there just won't be a good enough issue to topple this government in 6 or 8 months. The Liberal's also want to trigger an election right now because they are losing power in the senate, and eventually the big buggaboo of Senate reform which the Liberal's really dislike is going to get to a senate vote.
|
Like Eddy said, the Bloc would not have been part of the Liberal/NDP coalition. The Liberals and NDP were to make up the government, and the bloc's role was signing an agreement not to vote against them in a confidence vote until after 18 months. The NDP were not to be given important cabinet posts like foreign affairs or finance.
The Liberals had been the only ones propping up the government until now, so it is unfair to blame the Liberals for not making parliament work... and it was the Liberals who walked away from the EI meetings. They claimed the conservatives were sabatoging negotiations and not bringing anything serious to the table.