Case Study
STRONG,
National, Majority Go
Stable,
Government T
By Walter Robinson
he 41st Parliament has begun its work with the majority Conservative government assured of getting its agenda through the House of Commons and Senate for the next four years.
Meanwhile, what would have been considered hallucino- genic back on March 25th – the day the 40th Parliament dissolved – is now reality; the NDP form the Official Op- position, the Liberals are the third party and the Bloc Que- becois lost official party status. Since May 2nd, much of the conjecture about what’s next has been pedestrian at best. Facile suggestions of a hidden- agenda or a domineering PMO poised to run roughshod over the bureaucracy, the provinces et al are ludicrous in the extreme.
When Stephen Harper needed social conservatives the most – their numbers and organization – during the 2004 Conservative Party leadership race, he promised them noth- ing yet he still won. And in the last five years as Prime Minis- ter, he has learned that governing Canada is about finding the shifting middle between East and West, French and English, urban and rural, and ideological and pragmatic. There is no hidden agenda … there never was! As for the PMO morphing into a politburo complete with a gosplan apparatus, this runs counter to the next phase of the Economic Action Plan (where business and industry must drive growth, not government) and paring back the federal bureaucracy to eliminate the deficit.
50 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62