Well, Canada, aren't we lucky. A dangerous precedent has been set, which will henceforth allow any Prime Minister in fear of being defeated in the House to run to the Governor General and prorogue Parliament until further notice. This, in my view, is not how a Parliamentary democracy ought to run: today's decision could end up proving to be ridiculously more detrimental to our country than anything Mr. Harper has done to date. Nevertheless, the Governor General has acted on the Prime Minister's behalf to save his neck: if his Government had been defeated in the House on Monday, there would be no way that he could have kept his job (not just as PM, but also as the leader of the Conservative Party, as his caucus would have demanded his resignation during their spell in the Opposition benches). So it seems that Her Excellency has, at the very least, postponed a non-confidence measure until the New Year.

At that point, we may find that the Tories' budget proposals are very much along the lines of that which the three so-called Coalition Leaders had been proposing all along; in which case I think it would be exceptionally difficult for them to move non-confidence in the Government. That being said, however, I feel that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives at large have not proven themselves over the last two Parliaments to be very interested in conciliatory gestures: therefore, while they will probably not introduce such partisan measures as curtailing the right to strike or removing public funding for political parties, they will still introduce what we have come to know as a Conservative budget, thus (at the very least) irking the Opposition parties.

In short, I don't think there's any way the Prime Minister can win in this exercise. His unilateralism and refusal to work with the Opposition in the best interests of Canadians has finally caught up with him, and will be his undoing. This is what I find to be the most alarming about the Prime Minister's record: he has been working over the last 2 or 3 years to divide Canadians along partisan and regional lines, and he shows no real signs of changing. He is a megalomaniacal and ruthless man who treats politics as a game: a game in which the only suitable outcome is that which will bring him more power. We saw this when he was Leader of the Opposition, when he ceaselessly attacked the Liberal Government on scandal after scandal (none of which, with the notable exception of the Sponsorship Scandal, turned out to be anything at all). We also saw this in the last Parliament, when he introduced measure after measure that he knew the Liberals a) couldn't support, but b) would have to let go as they weren't ready to fight an election at that point, even though he was in a minority Parliament. Finally, the Liberals had been tarred with the Conservative brush one time too many (they knew that they had suffered due to this lack of action, as their seat count was reduced in the last election, not to mention the polling data that overwhelmingly supports this thesis). They realised that they had little choice but to act, as Harper yet again tried to ram partisan and divisive measures down the throats of Canadians who weren't interested in what he was offering. This is not to mention his rhetoric that the Conservatives have done enough to shore up our economy, and as such not much else needs to be done: they were left with the strongest fiscal situation in Canadian history, and have, in short order, turned a $13-billion surplus into a deficit, through reckless and unfair tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, and by simultaneous spending increases.

The fact is that 62% of voters in the most recent election voted for someone other than the Conservatives. For the Conservatives to interpret this as a mandate is ludicrous, and their argument that a coalition is undemocratic just doesn't hold water. In such a coalition, the Government would have the clear and unfettered support of the majority of the House of Commons, which cannot be said of the current Government. His yelling and screaming that this arrangement is unfair, then, can be interpreted only as someone who wants to save his own neck. I think it's fair to say, given what I've outlined above, that he cares more about his own job than about the thousands and thousands of Canadians who have either already lost their jobs, or are on the verge of losing them. His pension is safe, but there are thousands more who have opened their portfolios to find they are worth fully half of what they were worth a few short months ago. This situation is unfortunate and I am, for one, 100% behind any effort to oust this sorry excuse for a Government from power.

I won't even go into the Mike Harris connections... that's just too much, but I will say that they sure did a good job in Ontario.