Wednesday, March 23, 2011

How it ends

There was a lot of procedural wrangling today, but the end results is that it appears the government will fall this Friday, sometime after 1:30 pm Eastern, on the following Liberal motion:

That the House agrees with the finding of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that the Government is in contempt of Parliament, which is unprecedented in Canadian Parliamentary history, and consequently, the House has lost confidence in the Government.

Given this Parliament started with Harper proroguing to dodge a non-confidence vote, this would make for a fitting end to it.

10 Comments:

  • Gotta tell you, for the first time in a LONG time, I feel pretty bullish about LPC's prospects this election!

    By Anonymous CdnPolitico, at 6:12 p.m.  

  • CndPolitico You gotta be joking

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:18 p.m.  

  • If they're taking down the Conservatives for being arrogant, corrupt, unethical, secretive and partisan, why not just use the same motion from 2006?

    Hee hee :)

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 6:36 p.m.  

  • RV - I actually looked up the 2005 motion, and in it's original form it was quite rambly with talk about how they hadn't compromised on election timing and that sort of thing.

    If I recall correctly, they eventually changed it in favour of a simple "this house has lost confidence in the government", though I couldn't find an old news story to confirm this.

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 7:25 p.m.  

  • Original wording of non-confidence motion:
    "The House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its 'culture of entitlement,' corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government no longer has the confidence of the House."

    Revised wording:
    “That this House has lost confidence in the government.”

    source: http://bit.ly/h2CRZm (P.S. hee hee)

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 9:12 p.m.  

  • In the last election , the Martin government was not found in Contempt..big difference!

    By Anonymous Annie, at 10:39 p.m.  

  • I'm curious about that, Annie.

    Even the most partisan among you wouldn't claim that this is the first government to behave this way (in fact - no one has), so why is this the first time a government was held in contempt?

    Probably because:
    1. Minority government, and
    2. Every opposition party is to one side of it.

    I've always said that the most compelling reason to vote Conservative is that they don't get away with anything.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 10:45 p.m.  

  • Except Robert, we've had loads of minority governments and other jurisdictions (provincial and foreign) have had loads of minority governments.

    Yet only the government - sorry, The Stephen Harper Government (TM) - has shown such contempt for Parliament. From proroguing three times, twice to avoid confidence motions or accountability... to outright ignoring legal and reasonable and justifiable and binding demands of Parliament and ignoring Parliamentary subpoenas... to bald face lying to Parliament (such as claiming cabinet privilege on the cost documents or blacking out documents they are entitled to)... and so on and so on.

    I truly shudder to think how they would behave in a majority.

    By Blogger Ted Betts, at 11:02 p.m.  

  • "I truly shudder to think how they would behave in a majority."

    You're getting ready to find out, LOL!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:35 a.m.  

  • Me: Even the most partisan among you wouldn't claim that this is the first government to behave this way

    Ted: Yet only the government (...) has shown such contempt for Parliament.

    Whoops, spoke too soon.

    To me this government isn't unique in that it acted with such contempt, but rather that it got caught.

    By Blogger Robert Vollman, at 11:24 p.m.  

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