Jack Layton’s. That’s right. Mr. blown opportunity himself.

But first, let’s get something straight: when the opposition parties started moving toward a non-confidence motion back in November, they weren’t capitalizing on an opportunity to topple a democratically-elected government; they were doing their jobs. The majority of Canadians did not vote for the Conservatives, which is why they are a minority government that deserves to be toppled if it refuses to collaborate with the other parties.

Those characterizing the opposition as undemocratic ought to crack a book: the events leading up to the proroguing of parliament were completely democratic. Messy and annoying, yes. Also utterly democratic. That is not my opinion: that is a fact of constitutional law in this country.

What is not a fact, but only my opinion, is that it was Harper who used the law to thwart democracy. The opposition MPs, for whom the majority voted, were presumably carrying out the will of the people. And Harper sidestepped them, sidestepped the properly elected majority. Why is nobody angry about that?

Or asking when it’s proper to prorogue parliament. It is extraordinary to use this process in order to prevent the due process of democracy. One famous instance occurred when King Charles I of England shut down parliament in 1628. He did not call it again until he needed money. (Harper may wish to note that Charles was executed in 1649.)

It is, though, reasonable to prorogue parliament to prevent hotheaded instability within government. Two elections in the space of a few months was too much to put Canadians through and the Governor General was correct to provide us with a cooling off period, particularly during the Christmas season.

But that doesn’t excuse Jack Layton for starting all this in the first place. Let’s not forget that Layton was the idjit who in 2005 brought down Paul Martin’s perfectly functional minority Liberal government. Thanks to him, we now have an arrogant and high-handed Prime Minister running yet another minority government that may well fall to the cluster of hysterics who currently lead the opposition parties. If Harper goes, can he take Jack with him?

Dr Dawg relates that Gerry Chipeur “the Alberta lawyer who drafted a power-sharing proposal between Stockwell Day, Gilles Duceppe and Joe Clark in 2000 is now suggesting that the Conservatives should defy the Governor-General if she were to ask the Liberal-NDP coalition to form a new government if the Conservative administration falls on January 27.”

CanWest : “Chipeur’s argument foreshadows a possibly drastic response from the Conservatives should they be turfed from power. He suggests that Conservatives may not readily accept the governor-general’s decision should she refuse the prime minister’s request for an election.”

Chipeur, an anti-SSM ReformaTory Alliance lawyer and activist with ties to Republicans and the evangelical and anti-Kyoto movements on both sides of the border, is laying groundwork for the Cons again here, something he excels at.

New York Observer : (bracketed info mine) “From: Paul Weyrich[co-founder of the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation]
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:38 AM
To: Bob Thompson [a staffer at Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation]
Subject: Message from Canada
Importance: High
Please get this message to the Stanton, Family Forum and Wednesday lunch groups:

I received a call last night from Gerald Chipeur, an important figure in Canada’s Conservative Party. He told me that Conservatives are with-in striking distance of electing an outright majority in Parliamentary elections Monday.

He said the Canadian media, which is trying to save the current Liberal government, has a strategy of calling conservatives in the USA in the hopes that someone will inadvertently say something that can be hung around the Conservatives.

Canadian voters have been led to believe that American conservatives are scary and if the Conservative party can be linked with us, they perhaps can diminish a Conservative victory. Chipeur asks that if Canadian media calls, please do not be interviewed until Monday evening at which point hopefully there will be reason to celebrate.

Many thanks.”

When contacted by Canadian Press about the email, Weyrich denied any personal involvement but later on his website, he bragged about his “small victory” in the Canadian elections.

This August, Chipeur, a dual Canada-US citizen, teamed up with the American Chamber of Commerce to hold a $1000-a-plate fund-raising campaign for John McCain for the 80,000 Americans who live and work in Calgary. Canadian citizens’ proceeds went to Friends of Science, Tim Ball’s oil industry-funded anti-Kyoto “charity”, whose funding was laundered through the University of Calgary by Harper’s buddy, Prof. Barry Cooper, before the U of C put a stop to it.

Friends of Science used the money to pay for ads which attacked the previous Liberal government’s support for the Kyoto Protocol, pledging “to have a major impact on the next election.” Chipeur acted as their lawyer in the investigation by Elections Canada.

Chipeur is also credited with introducing Republican Frank Sensenbrenner to Canadian embassy officials at the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, attended by Stockwell Day, Chipeur’s choice for coalition PM in 2000. Sensenbrenner had attended Reform party conventions and Stockwell Day insisted he be hired by the Canadian Embassy. Sensenbrenner was subsequently accused of the Naftagate leak. to damage Barack Obama’s credibility during the Democratic primaries but an internal investigation by Harper’s deputy minister failed to provide conclusive evidence.

The Star : “In failing to plumb the leak, the report effectively protects the ruling party from awkward questions. With an election not far in the future, voters might reasonably ask if Conservatives put this country’s seminal relationship [with Obama] at risk to give Republicans a helping hand.”

The RepubliCons — just one big happy family.

One thing of which you can be certain: if you’re a western Canadian prime minister, they will eventually try to get rid of you. They, of course, being the central Canadian political operatives and parties who regard it as their congenital right to run the country.

It happened to Diefenbaker, it happened to Joe Clark, and now it’s happening to Stephen Harper. One could also argue that it happened to Kim Campbell, but that was more a matter of a compliant national media doing a Sarah-Palin on her, even before there was such a thing.

I didn’t vote for the Tories six weeks ago, mind. I don’t like most of their policies, and the ones I do like, like fairer representation by population, are liable to happen over time regardless. I also thought the Liberal Party divine right of rule had, for the foreseeable future, been interrupted. Boy, was I naive.

Then again, so too is anyone who thinks the current imbroglio has anything to do with the opposition parties’ concern for the country’s economic well-being, or rights of women, or welfare of the public service sector. What it did have to do with, last week, was Harper’s stupid feint at removing public financing of political parties. Great idea, Steve: now that you have a slightly stronger mandate than before, really go for the jugular. Ignore the fact that you’re still a minority government. The opposition couldn’t possibly get it together to . . . Oh wait. They could.

Since then, of course, Harper has withdrawn the public funding grab, leaving the opposition parties having to pretend they’ve been defending higher principles all along. Right; and sharks eat fish because of their ethical concern for preservation of the food chain.

The current situation may have something to do with the clash of right-wing and left-wing values, but so what? Just because I prefer the latter to the former doesn’t mean my team gets to form the government at any opportunity. The Conservatives represent the values of a lot of people in this country, especially where I live (BC) and where I came from (Alberta). They managed to collect a lot more seats than the next guys during the election, and that means, for the time being, their values prevail, whether I, or the sun court around Dion, Layton, and Duceppe, like it or not.

So if this mess does lead to another federal election, I will vote for the Tories, just to make the point that even people who don’t live in the 416 and 613 area codes and select left-wing ridings get to exercise their franchise too. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past Harper to have that very idea in mind; yet another bun-fight in which a fed-up electorate gives him the majority he blew last time.

In which case, nice work, Mr. Harper. You finally got me, when just about nothing else would have.

On the Fair Vote website, here are the facts:

The 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.

In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.

Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.

The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.

Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projects that the seat allocation would be approximately as follows:

Conservatives – 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals – 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP – 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc – 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens – 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)

Folks, this is crap. No wonder nobody turned out to vote.

- Eleanor Claire

Over on bobalicious, BoB blogger Eric Pettifor suggests that “He’s got the next best thing to a majority. To defeat anything he wants to get past, the other three parties will have to work together, whereas he only needs to get one of the other parties on side and it sails through.” I don’t expect, though, that three motivated left-wing parties will have much trouble deciding to gang up on the PM, especially if they smell blood. And Harper is hereby wounded.

So here’s an idea, Mr. Harper: how about becoming big-minded? People think you have an agenda, and you do, up the wazoo. So why not announce it? Tell people that, yes, you want to restructure the country, darn right, and reduce federal government to a handful of roles, and leave the rest to the provincial governments, some of whom will decide to get government out of peoples’ lives, and that’s just fine by you. How about saying that, really, you understand the Quebec nation’s frustration — after all, you’re the one who finally acknowledged they are a nation — and that if the rest of us don’t want to change, then maybe they should go. That’d get you some of the vote you didn’t get this time. Maybe you’ll even say that, come to think of it, it’s not the artists who bother you, but the long history of autocratic Liberal rule in Canada, and because the Liberals tend to hang out with artists a lot, you got a little confused.

Actually, you already think pretty big; these are pretty radical ideas, at least for our country. What you need to do is talk big. Announce them. Declaim them to the hilltops. You might still not win big. You might not win at all. In fact, I might not even vote for you, despite my advice, because while I do think the country needs restructuring, I also think the government will continue to have a big role to play in peoples’ lives.

But at least you won’t win small, Mr. Harper. Which is what happened last night.

- Frank Moher

If we used the Australian system of preferential voting, I would vote on Tuesday as follows:

1. Green
2. NDP
3. Liberal
4. Satan and his Minions Party
5. Conservative

Note: #4 assumes the ability to do write-ins. I don’t think Satan is directly running a candidate in my riding.

Under this system, if no candidate got the majority of the votes, the party getting the least votes would be eliminated from consideration, and the second choice of those who had voted for them would be counted. If there was still no majority, the party now with the lowest number of votes would be eliminated, and so on until one party had a clear majority.

So let’s say I was in a riding where polls indicated the following support:

• Conservatives: 33%
• Liberals: 32%
• NDP: 25%
• Green: 10%

And let’s say actual voting is as polls predicted. In the first round, no one has a majority, so the Greens are eliminated. This can get complicated, so for the sake of simplicity, let’s say all Greens have NDP as their second choice. Second round then, the NDP has 35%, still no majority. Again for simplicity’s sake, Liberals are the universal 3rd choice of Greens and 2nd choice of NDPers. Now the Liberals have 67%, a clear majority, they take the seat.

But under our current system, it is enough to simply get the most votes, no majority required. It is possible to win the seat of a riding where the majority of residents hate your guts. There is something seriously wrong here.

If I was in a riding where the polls showed support as indicated above, I would vote Liberal. Note that this is not even my second choice. But given that I would rather see the Lord of Darkness as Prime Minister than Stephen Harper, I would have to vote strategically for the party with the best chance of beating the Conservatives, and in our example scenario, that would be the Liberals.

As it turns out, in my riding we’re not really having an election on Tuesday, we’re having a “Give Libby Davies the thumbs up” day instead. It’s a terrible waste of tax payer dollars to have an election here, since this is her riding. I don’t mean “her riding” as in “she is the current MP,” but rather that she owns it, this is hers, it is such an NDP safe seat that one really wonders why the other candidates even bother. Liberal candidate Ken Low has put a huge amount of effort into getting people to put up lawn signs and it’s so sad because you know half of them are just sympathy signs — “Honey, let him put up a sign. We know how we’re voting, but he seems such a nice, clean cut young man, and this would just make his day.”

So I can vote for whoever I want on Tuesday, it doesn’t really matter who since the outcome is such a forgone conclusion one imagines it was foreordained in the plan of some creator god before the world was made. Elizabeth May seems a pleasant, articulate woman with a lot of good ideas, so I think I’ll throw her party a sympathy vote. I know if the Greens came in second in this riding, it would just make her day.

- Eric Pettifor

I have been very interested in listening to Green Party candidates and I believe that they ought to have a voice in parliament. So if I lived in a riding with a very strong Green Party candidate, I would vote Green.

I might also vote NDP if the local candidate was strong. That is because I know Jack Layton will never become Prime Minister. To tell the truth, even as I adopt more and more socialist tools, I remain a staunch liberal. This is a small “l” liberal because I believe that the Liberal Party of Canada is still in disarray. I prefer Liberal polices over other policies but Dion hasn’t come out swinging enough to win me over.

But I am a liberal. As much as I believe in democracy with all my heart, I believe in inalienable human rights even more. I know this because democracies make huge mistakes all the time. Sometimes self-government flips into mob rule — governed by ignorance, stupidity, or plain old depravity — particularly when the electorate is threatened, or simply feels threatened. If I had to choose between living in a democracy where my inalienable human rights were not respected and an autocracy where they were, I’d take the autocracy every time because I absolutely believe in the liberal idea of inalienable human rights limiting the power of mob rule. George Bush was elected (at least once and maybe twice). Hitler was also elected. And, while this is probably a lesser disaster, the morons in my riding are going to vote Conservative. Oh, that someone could save me from the mob rule of my neighbours.

Incidentally, that’s why I am not completely socialist. The last thing I want is for a bunch of addled-brained zealots tromping all over my rights because they have an idea. Some socialists can talk themselves into some pretty heinous behaviour. I am particularly frightened by people who seek to improve me, or do me good.

Anyway, nobody in my Alberta riding has a hope of beating the Conservative incumbent but, if I lived in a riding where somebody (dear god anybody) had a chance, I’d vote for them. Generally, I don’t like to vote strategically. I like to vote for the party and the person who most closely embodies my values and preferences. But let’s face it: the only reason Harper is in office today is because the Progressive Conservative and Alliance parties got over themselves and merged. I think we’re in rough enough shape financially and environmentally that we can’t take the chance of a Conservative majority.

I found out how my neighbours are likely to vote at a nifty page that allowed me to search by postal code (www.voteforenvironment.ca). If you’re interested in how they arrived at their prediction, check out their “advanced prediction model” at http://advanced.voteforenvironment.ca/poll_list.php.

I’ll be voting Liberal, without hope. And I will be joining the Liberal Party and the NDP and start advocating for a merge. Frankly, both parties could do each other a lot of good.

Happy thanksgiving.

- Eleanor Claire

Only the Queen wouldn’t have made as many mistakes. It has been rewarding, for the first time in my lifetime, to watch arts and culture not only become a campaign issue, but become a key campaign issue, thanks to Mr. Harper’s offhand remark that “ordinary working people” can’t relate to the cultural elite when they see them swanning about at galas on TV. This raised two questions: what channels has Mr. Harper been watching that carry this sizzling programming, and did he not realize that his opponents in Quebec would use his comment to paint him as an anglo cowboy?

And then there was his more recent suggestion that the current economic crisis offers a golden opportunity to buy some cheap stock. Talk about not resonating with ordinary working people.

And so his majority government is almost certainly lost, and there’s even some possibility, depending on the deliberations of Canadians over the remainder of this Thanksgiving weekend, of a Liberal government. In a way, I’m disappointed. I will vote NDP, mostly because I’m in a riding that tends to send NDPers to parliament. When I look south at the limited political palette offered Americans, I think we should do everything we can to sustain our own vigorous multiple party system. But I wouldn’t have minded seeing the Tories get a majority government and finally reform or jettison the Senate, pursue fairer representation by population, and take us back to something more like the federalism we had before Trudeau got all centralist on our ass.

As it is, it looks like we’re in for a few more years of Harper Lite. Then, of course, a renascent Liberal party under Michael Ignatieff or Bob Rae will reassert itself, topple the Tories, and blow us all as far back towards the 1970s as they possibly can.

Oh well. At least there’ll be a lot of grants to go around.

- Frank Moher

Poll from Nanos Research

The G&M; has Elizabeth May endorsing strategic voting for close-race ridings again today, mentioning both VoteforEnvironment and DemocraticSpace as sites to go to for advice/info.

VoteforEnvironment is still endorsing May in Central Nova against Peter MacKay, even though the Ekos, Decima and Nanos polls listed there all show her running a close third place behind the NDP candidate. Come on, guys, get it together — these are your own rules.

Would be very peculiar if this means Greens are expected to not vote for May in her own riding on top of her having done the deal with Dion to not run a Lib there, but last time Lizzie was quoted as coming out in favour of strategic voting, she says she was misquoted, so we’ll have to see. Her oft-stated position is that the most important thing is to stop the Cons.

I was part of a two hour radio show on SPP and the election today, with local candidates giving their thoughts. Unsurprisingly the Libs and Cons both declined to participate.

Thursday night Update : Yup, it’s happened again. May says she did not endorse SV.

Received from Adriane Carr, Green Party, 2pm:

“Media reports and suggestions from other parties that I am urging strategic voting across the country or that backroom deals are being made are complete nonsense,” Ms. May said. “As I have said over and over, strategic voting is generally not a sound strategy at all and I do not support it. Canada needs to elect Green MPs.”

Ms. May was responding in particular to the headline and opening of a Globe and Mail story that directly contradicts what she said to the reporter.

“I clearly said that voting strategically as advice is pretty useless. I also said: ‘Suggesting one should jump away from the Green Party is very bad advice indeed.’

“I want to do politics in a much different way, with collaboration, civility and respect. But I am not making deals with other parties, and the Greens are not in discussions with other parties.

“I will say it once again so absolutely no one can be confused or misled: I want Canadians to elect Green MPs.”

The G&M; had reported May as saying:

“As the leader of a grassroots party, I’m not in a position to yank anyone, or tell anyone what to do. I just think Canadians need to take a long hard look at the potential here to get rid of the government of Stephen Harper and all that it represents . . .”

“That includes Greens as elected MP’s, and to make that change it includes Stéphane Dion as a minority prime minister.”

She said it’s a bad idea to leave the Greens in most ridings in the country, but that it would make sense in a small number of ridings where there are tight races.”

I dunno. If the above G&M; quote is accurate, it clearly is a limited endorsement for SV. If that’s what she said. This misquoting business happens a lot to May. Hard to say whose fault that is.

Peterborough Politics has background on the Green reaction.

– Alison@Creekside

And what could possibly be the point? The Conservatives appear to be determined to remove, one-by-one, the pillars supporting professional artists in Canada. They may say that they have increased cultural funding, but much of that additional money has gone to things like the 2010 Olympics and the Quebec City 150th birthday celebration. Once all the special events are over, we are likely to be left with a much reduced cultural landscape. So what is the point in training children as artists if, at the end of the day, they have nothing more to aim for than maybe an appearance at the Kiwanis Music Festival?

That’s a good return on that $150 million? The Conservatives’ cultural policy may be a shambles, but at least it has value as theatre of the absurd.

- Frank Moher