To have an election or not, that is the question.

So Nej asked my opinion on whether we will be going to the polls again in another short 6 weeks. Long story short, no. Keep reading if you are intrigued on my stance ;)

Okay, first off, I think that right now not too much has changed from the previous federal election. I think the Conservatives might have won a little more support by not doing anything too radical (despite the fact that they COULDN’T since it was a minority government). They played that card well, and have kept most of their radical members gagged over the last two years. That being said, I think they have probably lost as much support as they gained from the left leaning voters who supported them in the last election instead of the Liberals (like say the former PCs). I think that the conservatives KNOW this and didn’t put anything all out crazy into the throne speech that would force the liberals to decline it.

On top of that, I think that the liberals are flailing a bit right now. The party brass is falling hard and fast and I think the restructuring the liberal party needs is right around the corner. That said, they are in NO position to fight an election right now. They need to make up huge grounds in Quebec, and at this point that is not happening. The provincial quebec liberals are also having a rough go at it, so that won’t help the liberal cause at all.

The three parties that have the most to gain by an election today are the Bloq Quebecois (liberals flailing in quebec) and the NDP which stands to pick up a few seats in Quebec (Outremont went non-liberal in the by-election for the first time in several decades and one the NDP their first quebec seat in years). The NDP would be very appealing to quebecer’s right now who are traditionally further left than the rest of the country and wouldn’t vote for the current conservative party but that aren’t separatists and don’t want to vote liberal. A few of the Liberal Quebec seats that went to Tories in the last election could easily go to the NDP if there were an election today over liberal protest and anti-afganistan sentiment in Quebec. The NDP will probably also pick up more seats in the rest of Canada by liberals who see their party in distress or people who voted conservative in the last election but don’t agree with the management of Afganistan. The Green Party is also in excellent position to pick up a seat as well. Never have Canadians been more in tuned to what is happening with the environment, and with the recent strong showing of Jolly in Ontario, more Canadians will likely see that the Green Party could actually win seats in some ridings which would make it more likely for people to vote for them.

So yes, I think the Liberals will guardedly vote for the throne speech. Basically, it doesn’t mean that they have to vote for all the things the conservatives say they are going to do, it just means that the liberals are content to sit back a little longer and see where exactly the conservative are going with this. Basically, the throne speech didn’t include anything new, it was just more of the same conservative rhetoric that they have touted for the past 2 years. Tougher on crime, “better” to the environment (ha!), etc. Most of the points of the speach were actually bills making their way through the house and senate currently that got scrapped when Harper decided he would have a fall throne speech (not traditional). For example the Clean Air Act, which many people think the conservatives wanted scrapped because they had conceded too much to the NDP whose support they counted on to make the bill pass.

If we were to have a federal election today, I would have to think long and hard about who I would vote for. I like Stephane Dion, I think he would make a great leader and a wonderful prime minister, but I’m not sure that the rest of the liberal party is ready to be in charge yet. They talk big saying they are united in supporting their leader, but there are still a lot of people out there licking their wounds and causing shit because they wanted Iggnatieff to be the leader.