Canadian Politics

I was talking to a friend's little girl, and when I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said she wanted to be Prime Minister some day.

Both of her parents, Social Liberals, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?' She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.'

'Wow - what a worthy goal,' I told her.

'You don't have to wait until you're Prime Minister to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where that homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food or a new house.'

She thought that over for a few seconds because she's only 6. And while her mother glared at me, the little girl looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work and you can just pay him the $50?'

And I said, 'Welcome to the Conservative Party.'

Her folks still aren't talking to me.

Coalition-Coup nonsense

This whole Coalition-Coup nonsense was going to happen sooner or later. The catalyst just happened to be the PM’s attempt at getting rid of the $1.95 per vote, per party. (Which I agree with, the public should not be in the business of financing political parties.) If it wasn’t the political financing issue, it would have been something else later.

The BQ, the NDP and the LPC needed to be seen as having some type of relevance to the Country and to their membership, for some reason, this was perceived as the only way to do it. Larry, Moe and Shemp's time was up as political Leaders, they needed to do something/anything to stay around.

You can’t keep saying how bad a government is, and then keep supporting them, you look like a fool.

In Canada the tradition has always been a minority government, governs through the support of smaller parties. The Canadian people see it as a training ground for future majority governments, or keeping a short leash on parties they are still unsure of. They see minority governments as sometimes the best governments, as the parties have little choice but to get along. Legislation is generally based on compromise.

Budgets and important pieces of legislation are/can be confidence motions. Even then, there is back room talking and dealing to get a compromise. It’s not strong arm tactics.

A coalition coup is a majority government. Something that no one in the Canadian public wanted. This was not what the people wanted, drop the government in January and lets have another election.