WI Harper wins a majority in '08?

Let's say that the culture gaffe doesn't happen and the Tories win with 161 seats. What happens next? Will Iggy still become Liberal leader?
 
Iggy probably will. Unless maybe Bob Ray can make the case that with the Tories having a majority, the Liberals will need someone with more experience for the next election.
 
"Bob Rae" is a vile epithet in Ontario, and has been for 15 years. We'd sweep Ontario, and thus win over 160 seats, every time Rae's name was mentioned. I saw what happened to us with the culture gaffes: we lost 20 potentials and were stuck with 143. It wasn't so much the minor gaffes per se as an ideological tripwire: Harper's crime and culture proposals were too bleu for much of the Francophone electorate in Quebec. Those sell well in English Canada, not so much here.
 
Let's say that the culture gaffe doesn't happen and the Tories win with 161 seats. What happens next? Will Iggy still become Liberal leader?

Maybe but not as easily as actually happened. With a Consevative majority there would be no particular pressure to annoint a new Liberal leader immediatly because there would not be an election for at least four years. Therefore the Liberals would hold a traditional leadership convention and I suspect that Rae and Iggy would beat each other senseless (not hard) and possibly there would be another Dion situation. That is to say a secondary candidate coming up the middle in an "anybody but....." scenario.
 
Which would likely mean Kennedy gets the nod. I can see Kennedy looking like less of a buffoon than either Dion or Iggy.
 
I did do that with Can-Ken, actually. ;) Which reminds me: the Laporte business will have significant PODs in an upcoming TL. I shall say no more on that subject for a couple of months...
 
They can finally pass their "Law and Order" Reforms since they aren't going to suspend parliment each time it gets tabled.
 
I'm surprised no one's mentioned what they tried to do in OTL and failed to, namely cut federal funding for the political parties. However this time, when Harper pushes that piece of legislation through, (ostensibly as a part of a greater economic stimulus package) he won't have the majority of parliament set against him.

The bill will pass and with one fell swoop Harper's effectively returned Canada to a 2 party system. AFAIK, the NDP, Bloc, and Greens all depend heavily on the money that they receive from the government to engage in their electoral campaigns. Outside of the Conservatives, only the Liberal party has enough independent financial support to fund a half decent campaigns (and they're not as good at raising support as the Tories are...)

Without Federal funds for the various parties, come the next election (2012/2013, possibly earlier) the various other parties besides the Liberals and the Tories are going to have a hard time competing.

I'd also wager that once Harper achieves a majority in the Senate (He's only 2-3 seats away from it right NOW IIRC) in ATL probably in 2011, he'll ram through some kind of senate reform, perhaps creating something that resembles the Triple E senate the west has been wanting for years.
 
If the Bloc can be cut down drastically by lack of funding, most of ROQ will go bleu, so say 35-40 of our 75 seats will be held by Tories. The rest of ROQ will go Bloquiste, with the Liberals held to their 10 West Island ridings (including my own Queen Marlene :mad:).
 
AFAIK, the NDP, Bloc, and Greens all depend heavily on the money that they receive from the government to engage in their electoral campaigns. Outside of the Conservatives, only the Liberal party has enough independent financial support to fund a half decent campaigns (and they're not as good at raising support as the Tories are...)

Actually the two parties best at fundraising from their supporters are the NDP and the Conservatives. The Liberals are abysmal at getting money from their grassroots. They heavly depended upon corporate donations and very large individual donations and when Chretien eliminated those sources (as a going away present for Martin) their funding plummeted.

If the politcal welfare is eliminated then we would probably wind up with a two party system but it would be the Conservatives and the NDP. If Layton had an ounce of brains he would have supported the Conservatives because the measure would have hit the Liberals the hardest to the ultimate benefit of the NDP. The difference between tactics and strategy I guess. Layton's playing checkers while others play chess.
 
I'm surprised no one's mentioned what they tried to do in OTL and failed to, namely cut federal funding for the political parties. However this time, when Harper pushes that piece of legislation through, (ostensibly as a part of a greater economic stimulus package) he won't have the majority of parliament set against him.

The bill will pass and with one fell swoop Harper's effectively returned Canada to a 2 party system. AFAIK, the NDP, Bloc, and Greens all depend heavily on the money that they receive from the government to engage in their electoral campaigns. Outside of the Conservatives, only the Liberal party has enough independent financial support to fund a half decent campaigns (and they're not as good at raising support as the Tories are...)

Without Federal funds for the various parties, come the next election (2012/2013, possibly earlier) the various other parties besides the Liberals and the Tories are going to have a hard time competing.

The Bloc, the Greens, and the Liberals are the ones who'd be hit the hardest, and in that order. The NDP is better at getting their supporters to donate than any of the others (apart from the Tories, who are in a league of their own...), so they'd probably be able to run something resembling an all-out election campaign. The Liberals might be able to keep a core of seats based on their brand name, but any illusions they have of being "The Natural Governing Party (TM)" would be put to rest. The two single issue parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the Greens, would evaporate, and good riddance too.

I'd also wager that once Harper achieves a majority in the Senate (He's only 2-3 seats away from it right NOW IIRC) in ATL probably in 2011, he'll ram through some kind of senate reform, perhaps creating something that resembles the Triple E senate the west has been wanting for years.
I think that he might have the votes to get something like that through Parliament now, even with a minority. And the CPC presently has the most seats in the senate, though not quite a majority yet. So under a CPC majoirty, successful (and meaningful) Senate reform would be a certainty. (IIRC, the Tories will hold an outright majority in the Senate by Christmas of this year.)

Also, the useless firearms act would definitely be toast. (Which would be good riddance to an Orwellian piece of trash.) A decent sized chunk of the Liberals and almost half of the NDP voted in favour of dumping it OTL (the last prorogue unfortunately sank the bill in question before it could pass the Senate:(), so getting rid of it doesn't need a Tory majority, but a Tory majority would mean that it could go through as a government bill, rather than as a private-member's bill.
 
In theory, the next election would be in 2012. That's perhaps the only piece of domestic legislation passed by the PM that I vehemently dislike: you don't deprive yourself of such an easily used political weapon. IMO, it's an "Americanization" of the parliamentary system in the worse sense of the word IMO.
 
In theory, the next election would be in 2012. That's perhaps the only piece of domestic legislation passed by the PM that I vehemently dislike: you don't deprive yourself of such an easily used political weapon. IMO, it's an "Americanization" of the parliamentary system in the worse sense of the word IMO.

I have to agree here. We will have a fixed election date...... ummm unless we lose a vote of confidence....... ummm and unless we smell blood in the water and engineer a confidence vote with a poison pill...... ummm and unless we really, really want an election and finesse the date somehow..... ummm.... What the heck was wrong with a parlimentary tradition that has worked perfectly fine for centuries?
 
I agree with RCAFB as usual on the fundraising. Harper could've ended the Bloquiste strangehold on ROQ outside 418 and Montreal Island. We'd win between 35-45 Quebec seats, which would mean a Tory majority of 30, a size not seen since 1988.
 
I have to agree here. We will have a fixed election date...... ummm unless we lose a vote of confidence....... ummm and unless we smell blood in the water and engineer a confidence vote with a poison pill...... ummm and unless we really, really want an election and finesse the date somehow..... ummm.... What the heck was wrong with a parlimentary tradition that has worked perfectly fine for centuries?

Nothing. It worked just fine. The whole 'fixed election date mess' probably had more to do with Chretien (and to a lesser extent, Martin) being able to screw them over several times with this particular move. Unfortunately, it just makes it harder to return the favour. And even then, Harper managed to do just that in 2008.

Now, had Harper won a majority in 2006, we'd only be realizing how dumb this move was now, not in 2008... And had he not pushed for this, he might have been able to screw Dion over even more, and to get his majority, probably sometime in 2008.
 
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