In what can only be called an historic non confidence vote the Conservative government was defeated in Parlament today. A non cofidence vote is usually centered around a new budget but this time the Torys were turfed out after being found in contempt of Parlament. Aparently, they lied about the real costs of some new programs and the cost of new fighter jets. The numbers were grossly under stated.

The election will be held on May 2nd, 2011 with only a five week campain period. After more than a month of nasty TV attack ads it's just as well it's not any longer.
Last election was about four years ago which gave us a Conservative minority government. There is some speculation that the three opposition parties may form a coallition after the election if the numbers are close. There are 308 seats in Parlament so the rulling party must have at least 154 or more to form a new government. If they have less they could go to one of the other parties and get the needed seats to form a minority coallition government.

We don't vote for Prime Minister here so my vote would not be for PM. I have a choice between several local candidates in my riding and the winning party picks their leader as PM or leader of the official opposition if they don't have enough seats to form government.

The voters aren't as politicly engaged here as my friends to the south. That's a bad thing, but then maybe it isn't.......

Gee. And I thought that Canadians were the only ones uninterested in what's going on in Canada.

Now I know the rest of the world is too........

Just picked up the Vancouver Sun and its front page stuff here. We'd be more than happy for you to annex Alaska and pick up one of its politicians to spice up your election.
I haven't followed Canadian politics for a number of years. What are the major competing parties? Conservative, Liberal and NDP? My recollection is that the NDP was strong in the West, particularly BC. Is that still the case? My Master's thesis advisor was a Conservative member of the Ontario Parliament at one time.

The Vancouver Sun says that one of the main topic of the national political election debate will be over whether the elderly are being adequately treated in Canada. I find this topic of debate fascinating. The elderly as a topic of debate in US national elections are all but completely missing. It says something very important about the differences between the two countries.

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Isnt this the second no confidence vote for Harpers Tories? Got to be tough to be a conservative in the minority in that country.

Most voters won't get involved until they're in pain financially, or in danger of it. Until then, everything is hunky-dory.

Whenever the government presents a new budget MP's get to vote on it. This is the usual way the current government can be voted out of office. In this case the Convervatives presented a budget but it never made it to a vote in Parlament because a non condifence vote came before the budget vote. The Conservatives were found to be in contempt of Parlament after a commmision made their findings public. The three other parties joined together to bring them down. This was expected before the vote so it was not a shock to anyone.
We generally have elections here bout every five years but non confidence votes have brought us to the polls as often as 3 times in four years. It's thought that this one will cost us about 300 million.

The NDP have some seats in BC, seem to be strong in the NWT's and have some seats in Ontario ( where I live ) and a few in the Atlantic Provinces.

Liberals have some seats in BC, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.

Consevatives are Very strong in Alberta east into Ontario with a few seats in Quebec and Altantic Canada. They are well organised and well funded.

The Boc is strictly in Qubec and has about 46 seats of the 75 in that Province. They're all about seperation from the rest of Canada but seem to do a reasonable job of making their presence known in Parlament.

We also had two independants in the last sitting for a total of 308 seats.

There are a number of fringe parties:
Green - they actually got some pretty decent air time during the last election and were part of the political debate we watched on TV. Although they have yet to get a seat there seems to be slowly growing support for them. A party needs 5% of the popular vote to receieve federal funding so I don't know if they saw any or not.

The rest aren't worth bothering with. Family Collation, Canadian Action Party, Marxist Lennonist, Communist, and probably a dozen other nut job operations. There was even a Rino party - basically a spoof on politicians and they got votes too.

Big things this time around would be the economy, war in Afgan ( we are there too, lost around 500 guys over there ) environmental issues and there will be lots said about the decline of things in Ottawa. Most people really didn't want an election right now so they're not engaged yet. Things will pick up as the campaign gets into high gear.

So really this just the same old Liberals versus Conservatives, Parlamentary style

Yeah, but with a twist.
The Conservatives had almost enough seats to have a majority but they were only a little bit more than half way there. Any non confidence vote could have taken them out leading to an election ( like we have right now ) but the voters can turn on you if they figure you're wasting everyone's time and money. It can back fire on you.
In this case we have the Grits and the Tories but we also have two other smaller players, the NDP and the Bloc. Niether of them will ever get enough seats to form a government but they are part of the political scene here.

I think maybe minority governments lead to voter apathy - something we don't need any more of right now. With no real clear mandate, the whole system tends to bog down. As soon as the election was called all business before Parlament was stopped and all bills before Parlament are now dead. They would have to re-introduced at the next sitting which will likely be next fall since everyone goes home for the summer because the election is the first part of May.

That's a long time to leave the country sitting on it's collective ass waiting for things to happen.

In my world and under most circumstances, "bogging down" is the ideal state of government.

Politically the seniors vote is important. So appeal to them. It is almost a forgone conclusion the old age amount would get an increase based on inflationary pressures anyway. Much better to make political hay out of doing it this way.

I assume without knowing that the seniors present a larger percentage of the voter turnout statistic wise anyways. It would be unwise for any party to ignore that or shoot down a pension increase.

The real heavy issues are usually ignored anyways. The conservatives will probably win a majority because financial credit can be taken by them for good circumstance. Canada kind of lucked out during the last few years.

I'm with Bot! The less those guys do the better. This country is a good example we cant even pass a budget.

Budget compromise is making the rounds, the real issue is the upcoming fight over the debt ceiling.