Results for ‘Conservative Party’:

6 TOTAL POSTS

December 5th at 1:19PM

Eh, Canada: Stephen Harper Shuts Down Parliament, Merde Hits the Fan

POSTED BY: Mary Phillips-Sandy

We've been so busy watching Barack Obama's press conferences to announce secretaries of stuff, we're just getting to this now: Canada's government is in pandemonium! What the hell is happening up there?

Here's what we know. In October's wacky House of Commons election, Prime Minister Stephen "Bobblehead" Harper's Conservatives won more seats than any other party -- but not enough to secure a majority. Opposition disgruntlement ensued, and last week, Harper announced a bobbleheaded budget that set off a full-scale political crisis...

Harper introduced an economic plan that included no stimulus measures but called for a three-year ban on strikes by civil servants and the abolition of public financing for political parties. The Liberal party leader, Stéphane Dion, accusing Harper of seeking to politicise the economic crisis, formed a coalition with the leftwing New Democratic party. The two also secured support from the separatist Bloc Québécois to bring down the government.

Facing the risk of being, I don't know, extradited to Nunavut, Harper pulled out the big guns: yesterday he talked the Governor General, the Queen's representative in Canada, into letting him shut down Parliament until the end of January (!).

Plus! Just for good measure, the opposition coalition is now fighting with itself.

Good grief. And I thought the hockey games were vicious.

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LAST COMMENT:

Better make this relevant... Parliament should have it out like in this Ottawa/Philly fight. Best fight of all time I think. If you've never seen this fight (only a few years back), get popcorn. I can watch this one over and over. Thanks for sending me on a hockey tangent. Over 11 million YouTube hits and about the same in the fight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1-25s4uwFQ&NR=1

by Cube December 8th at 11:14PM
4 Comments
October 15th at 2:12PM

Eh, Canada: Everybody Lost Your Election!

POSTED BY: Mary Phillips-Sandy

Canada has spoken, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives got 143 seats in the House of Commons, thereby hanging on to their minority control of the government. But they fell short of the 155 seats they needed to win a majority, which means things haven't changed much in Ottawa, despite all the exciting partisan rancor of the past few weeks.

As for the Liberals, they wanted to win -- well, I'm assuming they just wanted to win more than this...

The Conservatives have won about 37 per cent of the popular vote, up one percentage point from 2006.

But [Stephane] Dion's Liberals garnered the lowest share of popular vote the party had ever tallied -- lower than the 28 per cent the John Turner-led Liberals garnered in 1984.

On the tree-hugging side of the ballot, the Greens picked up 6.8 percent of the popular vote, but they still haven't managed to win a single seat in Parliament. Oh yeah, and with 59% of eligible voters going to the polls, this election had the lowest turnout on record.

In the interest of cheering up our Canadian friends, here's my favorite clip from Rick Mercer's "Talking to Americans." Nothing takes the edge off a losery election like seeing Mike Huckabee, a real American loser, complimenting you on your national igloo.

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