Oh, Canada!

My friend FKL, who lives in Canada, has recently got me very interested in a political maelstrom that's been whirling up there of late. It's gotten relatively little press coverage here in the U.S. -- at least, until the events of the last day or two. (Now it gets a tiny bit of press coverage.) Anyway, I think this is pretty fascinating stuff, so this is something of a Public Service Announcement to bring everyone up to speed.

Here's the background. There are four political parties in the Canadian parliament. This year, the party with the most seats in the parliament (the Conservatives) actually held only around 40% of the total number of seats. They governed, but did so with an overall minority -- in fact, from what I've read, the smallest minority ever in the Canadian House of Commons.

The Canadian Prime Minister is Stephen Harper, of that Conservative party. One of the powers the PM gets is that to request of the Governor General a dissolutionment of the current parliament. Basically, instead of waiting for the natural time for new elections to occur, you can get the Governor General to let you do it early. Three months ago, Harper sought the GG's approval to do just that, and it was given. (Moving the elections to this year when they would not have been scheduled to occur until next year.) This was perceived as disingenuous maneuvering by the other three parties (all varying degrees of more liberal in outlook), and began a rapid downhill slide in the political climate.

These early elections were held in October, and Stephen Harper and the Conservatives continued to hold power over the government -- but continued to do so with an overall minority in the parliament. But throughout November, they pursued an aggressive agenda that increasingly rubbed against the will of the other three parties.

Now those three parties have banded together to form their own coalition and work against the leading party. They had scheduled for there to be a vote of no confidence this coming Monday against Harper, to have him stripped of leadership. And all the indications were that the vote was going to pass, and this "revolution" of sorts would be carried out.

So preemptively, Harper invoked another bit of parliamentary gamesmanship, and asked to Governor General to agree to suspend Parliament for a month and a half. You can't vote Harper out if the Parliament is no longer convening to vote on anything.

And it gives seven weeks in which this coalition of three parties could possibly turn on itself and crumble. Which, according to some indications, it might.

I find this all interesting because all the particular machinations in this are so different from American government, due to the parliamentary system and the elements of monarchy with the Governor General. And yet, at the same time, it's all the same maneuvering and strategy that is oh-so-familiar in U.S. politics, the way that many politicians put their own continued careers so far ahead of the goal of helping prosperity in the country.

I guess there's a touch of schadenfreude here, watching another country potentially bungle things. In any case, it appears that CBCNews will be a good place to track new developments, should you want to keep up with them.

And by all means, if you're from Canada and want to share a more inside perspective here, I'd love to hear it.