4 elections in 7 years and the current Parliamentary system seem to be siblings in the crazy mess the Canadian Government has brought on itself. In the 2008 election the Government was announced a minority in favour of the Conservative party with the Liberals closely behind and the Bloc trailing in third. The only way to get decisions through a minority government is to convince enough opposing MPs to back the decision so it gets passed into a law.
Recently Steven Harper's Conservative government tried to push a new budget that would see Canada (in theory) have a surplus of money in two years. The opposition then brought up multiple problems with this budget. They did not like where the money was going and didn’t agree with a lot of the budget cuts.
The opposing parties passed the vote of non-confidence because they claimed Steven Harper was in contempt of Parliament. This accusation was because the Conservatives neglected to provide information on the cost of the new F-35 fighter jets, larger jails being built, and corporate tax cuts. This lack of information when asked for was the large issue. The money spent to build each item came out of taxpayer’s pockets and the budgets have the right to be public.
However these are not the only issues driving the NDP, Liberal, Bloc, etc. for voting non-confidence. The issue I have a problem with is that each opposing party will jump at any chance to try and obtain Prime Minister glory. The fact that these issues cannot be discussed and dealt with without an election really shows the downfall of our Parliamentary system. Instead we spend upwards of 30 million dollars on another election which has about an 80% chance to be minority all over again.
I agree Steven Harper has done some dumb things as Prime Minister and the concealing of expenses is unacceptable. But where do we draw the line and make a real change instead of continuing down the same path to the same issues? Is the talk about a coalition government the answer? Do we need to make some major changes? Do western voters even matter?
The budget was fair and would pull us out of the recession in two years. The only thing wrong was trying to get a bunch of old, power hungry men to agree on it. Only to use it as an excuse to try and achieve there own selfish goals at the cost of 30 mill. The F-35 fighter jet story is a side show. We have already invested close to half a billion in the development. The idea being when its made we get them at a cheaper rate. This would provide our pilots with an aircraft thats not 40 years old like the CF-18. Why anyone would not want to go threw with getting a deal after investing this much money is crazy. I say buy em now because as the tech gets greater so does the price!!
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