Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Coalition watch

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, March 31, 2011 4:49pm - 7 Comments

The NDP has nominated a new candidate in Elgin-Middlesex-London.

Rest assured, the Conservative managed to rush out a new attack ad before their preferred narrative was undermined.

Tags: advertising, attack ad, coalition, coalition government, election, Election 2011, Elgin-Middlesex-London

More by Aaron Wherry

tedbetts

The Conservatives will have to edit themselves in order to be truthful??

Have you been following Canadian politics at all for the last 6 years?

They've actually gone even more bizarre on the coalition nonsense. They are no longer talking about the possibility of a coalition after the election, but that a coalition actually exists right now and that Ignatieff is the leader of the coalition. Even Harper has called Ignatieff the leader of the coalition like they are plotting right now.

That's beyond a Beck-like divorce from reality.

It's also not what Canadians are talking about or care about, frankly.

This Conservative campaign is getting more and more surprising. No wonder the journalists have dubbed the plane the Scaremong-Air.

john g

They've actually gone even more bizarre on the coalition nonsense. They are no longer talking about the possibility of a coalition after the election, but that a coalition actually exists right now and that Ignatieff is the leader of the coalition. Even Harper has called Ignatieff the leader of the coalition like they are plotting right now.

From the Bloc Quebecois election platform (translated from French, hat tip Stephen Taylor):

“In the event of a Parliament with no majority, the Bloc Québécois reserves the right to support a coalition of political parties, as long as the respect of Quebec values is guaranteed” (p. 39)

From the G&M story on Mustafa Rizvi, NDP candidate in Mississauga who just resigned to support the Conservatives:

Mr. Rizvi, a 31-year-old insurance adjuster, said he decided to defect because he wasn't getting enough support from his party, he thought there were no problems with the Tories' budget and he feared the NDP and Liberals would form a coalition. He said a coalition would be a bad idea, citing the example of Great Britain, where a joint government of Tories and Liberal Democrats has seen some friction.

"I was feeling there was a lack of leadership with this whole coalition factor they were trying to come through with," he told The Globe and Mail.

Sorry Ted…when it's coming from the official opposition platforms and candidates, I think Harper gets some leeway here.

Mike T.

Think MacLeans conbots or the CPC will apologize?

me neither.
JSC

I’ve really noticed over the last week since following this event that Conservatives are mostly a bunch of Lying Sacks of Crap.
Tinfoiled Again

Plus there's the ex-LPC (in Vaughan) and now an ex-NDP candidate* that defected to the Cons., and the LPC candidate in Vancouver Island who bailed after a few days, which all go to show that it's just a matter of individual people making individual choices, but, hey, let's not let any facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory

* http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/20...
integral

coalition governments are the only way to maintain a fair democracy within a country that has more than two parties. Without coalition governments, minority governments can have an unfair advantage when too many parties are towards the left versus the right (or vice versa). It is downright undemocratic to be fear mongering over a coalition. Especially right now while a minority government has been found to be in contempt of parliament. Have some respect for democracy. Harper has shown he has none and that wouldn't be acceptable to me whether I was left or right wing. This doesn't happen unless there is serious disrespect for our democratic institutions.
Michael M

I challenge anyone supporting corporate tax cuts to go study macro economics themselves and find the individual cost of each job that has actually been produced by these cuts. The whole argument that we need to reduce our corporate tax rate in order to remain competitive is also not a valid argument because our corporate tax rate is already almost half the rate in the United States. As someone who took economics in university that statement alone was a huge red flag to me. There's no evidence to support the corporate tax rate theory that they produce a significant amount of jobs for how much we pay for them. Small businesses make up 99.7 percent of employer firms. 60-80 of annual new jobs are in small businesses. That's where you want to cut the tax rate.