Let me get this straight: Harper can suspend parliament when he’s afraid of a no-confidence vote? What’s the point of having the power to oust the PM if the PM can stop the vote? And what kind of a third world country did we suddenly turn into? How can this be okay? How can a GG, representing another country–in a way–sanction this obvious grab to retain power.
Okay, I’m an American and I’m lost. I realize that. I’m also a permanent Resident of Canada, legally landed in a new country that feels like a third world country when I read headlines like this: Harper Suspends Parliament. Imagine if you read that Thailand suspended its parliament, or Russia, or if Hugo Chavez had suspended the Parliament of Venezuela (they may not have one anyway….)
Wouldn’t we think that was completely un-democratic? That a power-mad mogul had locked himself into power? Wouldn’t we think of that man as a dictator? Chaos? Cats and dogs sleeping together?
Help me out: how is Harper okay doing it when Chavez would be considered a dictator if he did it?
Bear Witness 
It’s partizan politics gone horribly wrong. Perhaps we need to consider a consensus-style system of government at the national level.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47966050395
It works in the NWT and Nunavut.
A lot of people would say that having parties they didn’t vote for, ousting the party they did, might be undemocratic. Now the option of having a PM, even for a short time, who’s own party doesn’t want leading them is plenty undemocratic.
Sure lotsa people hate Harper, but if it wasn’t apparently obvious from the election debates not too long ago, Dion is plenty incompetant. He is far from a choice of leader that I would like to see. I sure as hell never wanted him in the chair. The Conservatives won, bitch and moan as we lefties want, but they did. That’s how our system works.
It also wouldn’t hurt to have the Coalition MP’s have a little chat with their constituents in the meantime, to maybe see what they think. I’d like to think that’s also how our system works.
Hey thanks for the comments! I need to retract any Chavez-Harper comparisons. I’ve watched some Hitler-Harper remixes on Youtube and it’s a bit of a stretch.
I am being educated on this: seems like it’s “sorta” legal. The GG might have received criticism if she’d have gone against the PM too. So she was between a rock and a hard place, and merely followed her “job description” as a friend put it–by listening to and supporting the advice of the PM. She’d have had to have more evidence that he was really trying to get away with something to interfere…
Still, it looks bad. And at least some Canadians agree. I was kind of hoping Ignatieff would become the voice of the Coalition. We need a stronger voice if we are going to “oust” a party from power and lead in a time of crisis.
Wait, I cannot fathom it being so straigthfoarwrd.