Tuesday, December 02, 2008

cantankerously livid

It is within the law and yet extremely rare for a coalition to be formed in Canadian politics, and yet that is what has happened.

The part that I do not understand is the Bloc's involvement. Without the Bloc, the Liberals and the NDP do not have sufficient representation to form the government, and yet the Bloc has signed on to be a part of the coalition, guaranteeing to not bring down this coalition for at least 18 months, but the Bloc gets no representation in the cabinet. I recall reading or hearing that one demand the bloc had was to give the forestry industry assistance in a 'bailout package' that this coalition will put in place that the conservatives did not.

For those of you who do not live in Canada, this may all be beyond you. For those of you who do live in Canada, these are particularly historically relevant times we are living in.

3 comments:

ghost said...

i understand you politics about as well as i understand my own.

Debstar said...

We had a Liberal and National Party coalition govern Queensland for about 20 years so I understand a little of what you're saying.
Maybe it's a good thing that a third party is there to keep them honest. Oh hang on, they're politicians, what was I thinking?

Anonymous said...

Interesting...although i don't understand it. I do have a feeling that understanding foreign systems of government would be very beneficial to my own political future & I am working on gaining this understanding.

I've just finished a 24 lecture course on Ideas in politics that explored the various Western political ideologies. Now I need to find something on the different systems of government.