Canadian government toppled by non-confidence vote

[Occhidiangela]

Minor nit: This is AFAIK the first time in the Canadian parliamentary system that an explicit vote of non-confidence has been held.  ==And further pointed note on  topic at hand==.

1. Thanks for describing the nuances and subtleties of your process, I hope all the 'Mericans benefitted from your excellent explanation as much as I did.

2. Nice to see someone adopting their handle from two classes of Soviet/Russian submarines. :D

This is different because the Opposition is basically making a naked play for power. And the stakes this time are high -  this will be the end of the line for one or more of the party leaders. =snip=  Traditionally, any leader that loses two elections from the Opposition side of the House is done.

What the Conservatives hope to do is upset the Liberals and form the government.  ==snip==  The risk for the Conservatives is high, and the benefit they get by forcing the election now is minimal, since the government had already pledged to call an election around the end of February with a vote around the end of March or mid-April.  So for the sake of pushing the vote up by three months, they've taken the risk of looking like their ambition for power trumped common sense (as Mr. Martin put it in the opening salvo of the campaign).

I'm frankly flabbergasted that the people running the party would take that risk for what looks like a marginal benefit. It will be a very interesting election.
~Kv [right][snapback]96040[/snapback][/right]

Given the amount of money over what appears to be an 8 year period, I draw the conclusion that, as careless as some members of Mr Chretien's group apparently were, this issue is being overblown in magnitude by the Conseratives.

I roughed out that the program was on the order of 300 million Canadian over 6-8 years, and I guestimated out the bribes and over charging et cetera between 10 and 20 million Canadian. It's not how much went astray, it's how it went astray. The raw magnitude is, in budgetary terms, peanuts.

I wonder if the Conservatives are not cocking their pistols for a musket ball to the boot in a few weeks. That's what happened in the Lower 48 over a few blow jobs, is is, a boob grab, and a state employee staring at the Clinton Obelisk at rest. *shrugs*

Looks entertaining, but not a lot of value added for the good citizens of The Great White North.

Occhi