Federal Election Possibilities

Right now, there are three possibilities that could trigger a Federal election in Canada in the next few weeks.

Option 1) The Afghanistan Motion

While I'm pretty sure that Harper would dearly love to run his election on this issue, I don't think the Liberals are going to hand him this option.

While the Liberals could easily counter the Conservative party's fairly obvious propaganda campaign in a number of interesting ways, I just don't think the Liberals are interested in fighting this particular battle.

Option 2) The Budget

Tomorrow is budget day in Ottawa. It's not a good time to be bringing in a Budget either - not only has Conservative spending been profligate in the last two years, but the economy in North America has entered one of those periods of significant "unsettledness", with the US economy reeling from the 'subprime hangover', and likely to start discovering just how expensive Iraq's really becoming in the next year or so.

I'm having a hard time reading what Dion's intentions here are. His actions in recent weeks suggest that he's not too interested in an election today, even if the budget is the "classic" time to collapse a minority government. Personally, I think the fiscal issues are things that the Liberals could capitalize on quite well - it's not like the Conservatives have exactly been, well, conservative in their spending habits.

Option 3) The Senate Fails to Pass Harper's "Get Tough On Crime" Law This Week

Yes, the Liberals walked out on this vote - and rightly so. The motion itself was ridiculous and really showed us all just how little appreciation Stephen Harper and his merry band of thugs have for parliamentary process. Harper may well collapse the government on this one so he doesn't have to stand on his budget or on the Afghanistan motion specifically.

This is amusing though. If Harper does collapse the government on this, he is handing the Liberals not one, but all three clubs to bash him with. Harper will try to play it as a "Senate Reform" issue, but the Liberals are free to play it as what it is - bullying on Harper's part. Harper's own behaviour in this matter is precisely the reason that we need bodies like the Senate in this country. Otherwise a bad government can become an outright disaster.

However, the play for the opposition parties on this one is pretty good. Not only do they get to play on the "Harper the thug" line, but they can accuse him of knowing that his crime bill is all about show, and is really bad legislation. Collapsing the government on this matter would make it the second time that Harper has taken actions that have killed this legislation while it was still "in process".