ColbyCosh.com

They're all over the place here in Ontario. I mean, there are more scaredy-cat types who say "I just don't like Stephen Harper", but there are lots of us non-Conservatives who are watching this all unfold with our heads in our hands.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, just that it's all so stupid and childish...

Interesting points, yes, but your Newspaper has now more or less (as of 11:53 Eastern, Hamilton and Martin) supported the coalition, if i'm reading correctly. I think i'm reading them correctly. This seems odd given that CTV is reporting both Mckenna and Manley are no longer in the wiseperson's group.

hmmm.

I beg your pardon, but I'm one of a very small group of people who helps decide what our newspaper technically supports and doesn't support, and I'm reasonably sure we haven't settled in favour of the coalition (unless something major has changed since I filed a draft editorial attacking it a few hours ago). The chairman has made his views on the subject pretty clear.

I realize there is a great deal of confusion about this, but individual senior reporters and columnists are wholly responsible for the particular opinions that appear under their byline.

Thanks for the clarification. Parizeau's column tomorrow should be the deathknell, I imagine. Thanks so much for your blog, by the way. Also, glad to know that your health has returned.

Very best.

"I beg your pardon, but I'm one of a very small group of people who helps decide what our newspaper technically supports and doesn't support, and I'm reasonably sure we haven't settled in favour of the coalition ..."

Like many generic Canadian voters, over the last few days I must have read, heard or seen about eighteen thousand, nine-hundred and seventeen different news articles and opinion columns, about what's going on in Ottawa right now.

To my mild astonishment, there is a political specific topic or concern that no one, SFAICT, seems to have gotten around to suggesting yet.

Therefore, Mr. Cosh, as you are indeed "one of a very small group of people who helps decide what our newspaper technically supports", could you and your Editorial Board please get behind accusing the LPC/NDP/BQ coalition of having the hidden agenda, of bringing in legislation changing our federal electoral system to proportional representation, as soon as they can get sworn in to office?

Given whom the constituent ideological parts of this coalition are, and what their past stated political objectives consistently have been, etc., it seems to me quite literally impossible that this was not at least discussed amongst them during their negotiations, and is quite very probably on the top-ten "What Must Be Done" list of the NDP moeity of the coalition, in particular.

Please, oh pretty please, pour the kerosene of this accusation swiftly and visibly onto the bonfire of accountability that has flared up within the Parliamentary Precinct.

I put it to you that it does not even matter that I am, let us be honest, merely speculating.

Rather, I suggest, it matters that this specific issue be raised at all, and that it be canvassed by the media, so that it be finally, publicly addressed, prior to their possible assumption to power, by the public double and triple faces of the coalition which has now presumed to govern us.

If we must select our governments on the basis of which faction of the electorate is the most scared, by what accusation, of which hidden agenda, to be advanced by whom, for what worrisome hypothetical end, as hinted at darkly by whomever, elsewhere in the body politic, then this plausible public concern must be poured into the blaze also. It is of the same vague yet ulcer-inducing grade of stuff.

Thanks very much.

I think 20 years is optimistic. I started hating the liberals for real back in the 80's. I swore I would raise my kids to hate them too. I'm the proud father of two liberal hating machines. Nothing makes my daughter prouder than when she gets to debate her fellow high schoolers and set them straight on all things liberal. Last year I helped her research an essay on Canada's worst Prime minister - Pierre Trudeau. 20 years is chump change, for me it's multi generational. I can't wait to indoctrinate the grandkids when they start arriving in 10 years

So, I watched question period today. Duceppe won, in my opinion. He has nothing to lose. At the end of the day, the Tories should have had a backup plan...they were on the defensive. I think this is over.

Lots of people who vote against the Tories provincially and federally will be ecstatic. Or, they won't.

Whatever emerges, it won't be yer Dad's Western Canada Concept with, oh, the name escapes me now...help me out...

Harper can always prorogue.  And to those who say that prorogation would be "heavy handed," my response would be "No more 'heavy handed' than any other procedurally-correct thing you can do with Parliament (like the Troika is attempting).

Hell, if this were Paul Martin facing the Troika, he'd just do what he did last time — ignore an actual confidence vote until such time as he could get enough extra MPs on side to "survive" the vote (ignoring the inconvenient fact that the vote had already occurred and that, procedurally, there wasn't any provision for a "do-over").

Everybody gets to use the entire arsenal available to them if one party gets to use any of the arsenal at all.  Sauce for the goose...

Garth

No, not 20 years, but 28 years and 2 months, to October of 1980, when Allan MacEachern rose in his place, and with Marc Lalonde and PET, effed us up the ass.
This coalition, if it is allowed to do what it says it wants to do, will be just as divisive east / west as that budget, and further cement the Liberals as also-rans everywhere west of Thunder Bay.

The trouble for Harper is that he's let the Opposition frame the issue. Of course proroging isn't any more heavy-handed than overthrowing the government without an election. But given the images of Harper as Ruthless Leader and Dion as Fuzzy-Wuzzy Professor, it could backfire.