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Oct. 31st, 2006 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frandroidLayton won't rule out no-confidence motion against government
Hahaha. I don't think he's game, but I think it would make tactical sense for him right now... If he's scared of the combined crunch of Bob Rae and Liz May, he might want to speed things up right now. The Bloc is broke as fuck right now too, so that's something else to consider. The flipside, of course, is the backlash from calling a second election within the same year... But I think most Canadians would be relieved to see Harper challenged.
ETA: You have to look at the context too. Layton introduced a private member's bill this morning, the Climate Change Accountability Act. The fact that Layton challenged Harper to a meeting in 24 hours yesterday and introduced this bill this morning are not a coincidence. Layton set Harper up, Harper fell in for it by accepting to meet, and now Layton is springing the trap. With this private members' bill, Layton has set conditions with which Harper can't just come out of the meeting with platitudes about "good discussion", and Layton can say that Harper sucks, and then move on to introduce a no-confidence motion tomorrow. Layton wants to force the Libs and the Bloc to oppose the motion in order to own the environment issue, which the Liberals have made a lot of noise on but never did anything on. If the Bloc opposes the motion, it's nearly-suicidal. The Libs can oppose it, but they would take some damage along the way.
If the government falls, Layton looks like the Green champion, toppling Harper on Kyoto, and starts the campaign on a high note, and making the issue central to the election. Harper is committed to his bill, the Liberals have no credibility on the file for doing nothing in 13 years about it (other than ratifying the deal), and the Bloc is, as I said, broke, so they won't make much gains.
So who's gonna yield?
Hahaha. I don't think he's game, but I think it would make tactical sense for him right now... If he's scared of the combined crunch of Bob Rae and Liz May, he might want to speed things up right now. The Bloc is broke as fuck right now too, so that's something else to consider. The flipside, of course, is the backlash from calling a second election within the same year... But I think most Canadians would be relieved to see Harper challenged.
ETA: You have to look at the context too. Layton introduced a private member's bill this morning, the Climate Change Accountability Act. The fact that Layton challenged Harper to a meeting in 24 hours yesterday and introduced this bill this morning are not a coincidence. Layton set Harper up, Harper fell in for it by accepting to meet, and now Layton is springing the trap. With this private members' bill, Layton has set conditions with which Harper can't just come out of the meeting with platitudes about "good discussion", and Layton can say that Harper sucks, and then move on to introduce a no-confidence motion tomorrow. Layton wants to force the Libs and the Bloc to oppose the motion in order to own the environment issue, which the Liberals have made a lot of noise on but never did anything on. If the Bloc opposes the motion, it's nearly-suicidal. The Libs can oppose it, but they would take some damage along the way.
If the government falls, Layton looks like the Green champion, toppling Harper on Kyoto, and starts the campaign on a high note, and making the issue central to the election. Harper is committed to his bill, the Liberals have no credibility on the file for doing nothing in 13 years about it (other than ratifying the deal), and the Bloc is, as I said, broke, so they won't make much gains.
So who's gonna yield?