canspice.org

Earthquake! It felt a lot stronger than a 4.5, though.

With the vote held at roughly 6:50 pm EST, the Canadian House of Commons has passed the motion that the House has lost confidence in the government. The vote was 171 for, 133 against. Tomorrow morning Prime Minister Paul Martin will go to the Governor General and ask that Parliament be dissolved.

The vote was interesting to listen to. First the members voting for the motion stood up and their names were read. Members not standing for re-election received large cheers, as did the leaders of the three opposition parties. Then the members voting against the motion stood and had their names read, and the cheers continued.

One interesting thing that I discovered is that video and audio coverage of proceedings in the House of Commons is available through ParlVU. The high-res video is a little congested, stopping to buffer every 30 seconds or so, and you can hardly see anything with the low-res, but at least they make it available.

On 28 November 2005 the Canadian government will fall.

On 24 November, Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party and the Official Opposition, introduced a non-confidence motion

That this House has lost confidence in the Government.

This motion goes to vote on the 28th, and it will be voted in. The currently-ruling party, the Liberals, hold 133 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons. The other three parties — the Conservatives, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — have all said they’ll vote for the non-confidence motion. This triggers the dissolution of Parliament by the Governor General.

The election must happen at least 36 days after Parliament is dissolved and must happen on a Monday, so the earliest possible election date is 9 January 2006. Most analysts agree that the government will extend this to accomodate for the holidays, pushing back the election to either 16 or 23 January 2006.

The election promises to be especially bitter. Harper has said that the Liberals are linked with organized crime, which understandably has the Liberals spitting mad.

My pre-dissolution predictions: the Liberals will take the most seats, but reduced sharply to 114. The Conservatives will not make inroads because of their negative campaigning and the personal dislike of Stephen Harper by many Canadians, losing three seats to end up with 95. The big winners will be the NDP, gaining 18 to end up with 36, and the BQ, gaining 10 to hit 63. The Governor General will again ask the Liberals to form the government, but this government will fall quickly, possibly on the vote for the Throne Speech. At this point the Governor General will refuse to dissolve Parliament, citing the precedence of the King-Byng Affair, and will ask the Conservatives to form a coalition government with the Bloc Quebecois. Harper, recognizing that getting in bed with separatists won’t make him popular amongst his base of support, will refuse, and Parliament will be dissolved again. After that? Who knows.

Note: I’m not a parliamentarian, so I don’t know if the GG is actually allowed to refuse to dissolve Parliament when asked by the Prime Minister. It’d make for exciting times, though.

No, today isn’t the busiest shopping day of the year, it’s Buy Nothing Day! Hurray!

The next step in Formula One cost-cutting measures?