Our election is coming up on October 14th and it is currently looking like another minority government. But we Canadians are fickle, so that could still change. Today’s poles indicate that things are tightening up. The latest poles I heard have the following:
Conservatives (our right wing party): 31%
Liberals (our middle of the road party): 27%
NDP (our left wing party): 21%
And the Block and the Green party hovering around 10% each.
Of course, that doesn’t mean anything since we don’t vote directly for our leader. We vote for a local candidate and then the party with the most candidates elected will be asked by the Queen of England (through her representative) to form the government. So even with only 10% of the votes, the Block will probably get more candidates elected than the Green party since the Green party is all across Canada and the Block only runs candidates in Quebec. (Assuming the Green party gets any candidates elected). In fact, I remember at one point that even though the Conservatives got about 20% of the vote, they only had two members elected.
In the past, forty precent of the vote has usually been required to have enough to form a majority government. With minorities, they don’t form coalitions. They just have a heck of a time getting their laws passed.
So who will likely form the next government? It’s looking like it will be the Conservatives. But it looks as if they will have another minority government. Since that is exactly what it was before the Conservatives called the election - and since they called the election because they were mad that they couldn’t get all their bills passed - one has to wonder why we spent all this money having an election. (Now, that is Canadian politics at its finest).
ML
