Almost fifty people are running to become Canada’s latest South Asian MPs:
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Who wants to be a Canadian millionaire (USD $14.92)? |
For Jaipal Massey-Singh, Bal Gosal and Jagtar Shergil however, Saturdays for the past month and a half means knocking on doors, listening to complaints and plaudits and eating take-away food… All three men are running in the Canada’s 23 January general elections… [Link]
Fluency in Punjabi or Hindi is virtually a prerequisite for the ethnic vote. In the Punjabi area of Vancouver, the streetsigns are in Gurmukhi:
Nearby, a volunteer makes comforting noises into a phone receiver, before hanging up and saying wistfully, “If I spoke Punjabi, I would know whether or not I was promised that vote.” Mr Gosal says he campaigns in three languages, Punjabi for his largely Sikh constituents, Hindi for other South Asians and English for the rest. [Link]
‘If I spoke Punjabi, I would know whether or not I was promised that vote’If s/he spoke Punjabi, s/he’d also endure a cross-examination about his/her marital situation, village ancestry and parents’ health before being force-fed chai and laddoos. Michael Bloomberg also attempted speaking in Urdu in his re-election campaign for NYC mayor:
During his re-election campaign, Mr. Bloomberg soaked up the city’s diverse communities by hopscotching across its ethnic neighborhoods, and he even studied Spanish. He recorded campaign commercials in two Chinese dialects, Russian, Urdu and Korean, among other languages. [Link]
The desis-working-at-airports phenomenon is even more pronounced in Canada:
Then an expansion of the Toronto airport more than a decade ago attracted skilled South Asian workers from all over India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. [Link]
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p>I’m like a bird, eh:
Brampton has fast become one of Canada’s most multi-cultural communities. First it attracted people from Portugal and Italy, largely to work in the construction industry. [Link]
Speaking of Portuguesas from Canada, Nelly Furtado said this recently about M.I.A.:
I have heard bits of the M.I.A album and it is so cool… what a flow, what a style… and girl can dance! [Link]
She’s giving props to a Sri Lankan Brit on her ripoff of Brasilian Portuguese tunes. It’s sort of like me big-upping Truth Hurts for ‘So Addictive,’ only M.I.A. is, oh what’s the word, good.
It’s been a pretty interesting election campaign up here. Newton-North Delta (Vancouver) MP Gurmant Grewal (whose wife Nina is also an MP) dropped out of contention early after making unfounded allegations against federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanj that were based on apparantley doctored tapes.
Calgary based Deepak Obhrai, a veteran of the Conservative party, and young Conservative party star Rahim Jaffer (34) from Edmonton both have a good chance of holding cabinet positions if the Tories are elected to government.
Mississauga-Brampton is the riding of Liberal incumbent Navdeep Bains who at a tender 27 is a rising star in the Liberal party – the other candidates int he riding are also of South Asian origin. Brampton-Springdale is also the riding in which Liberal incumbent and former Bollywood belle Dr. Dhalla Ruby is running.
Meanwhile, Jaswinder Johal is running for the Liberal party in the riding that I live in – poor guy doesn’t have a chance against the incumbent Conservative candidate.
Should read – Dr. Ruby Dhalla
badmash,
Is Dr. Ruby Dhalla former Miss India-Canadian and a chiroprator?
my info about all comes from India Today? India Today has pretty serious write-ups on these things.
what happened to immigration-strip club-desi scandal?
begin(dirty)
I’ll bet she gets a lot of patients with lumbar joint problems.
end(dirty)
Yes on both counts – Ruby is an absolute stunner and very well spoken. She’s also a successful chiropractor and businesswoman who owns a chain of clinics with her brother. A friend of mine knows her and thinks the world of her. India Abroad has a pretty good write up on all of the candidates in the January 20th edition – check it out.
As for the Strippergate – Judy Sgro, former minister of Citizenship and Immigration came under fire for the way she ran her last election campaign for 1) apparantley speeding up immigration applications for two former strippers who worked as volunteers in her campaign and 2) accepting free pizza for her campaign from Brampton pizzashop owner, Harjit Singh, whose application for residency was being held up by a number of criminal investigations (including fraud, kidnapping). Singh claimed that Sgro offered to intervene in his immigration hearing in exchange for the pizza. Singh’s accusations were later retracted after Sgro was cleared of wrong doing. Singh was deported shortly after.
“India Abroad has a pretty good write up on all of the candidates in the January 20th edition – check it out.”
I do not read India Abroad except if I am @ my brother’s home or @ an Indian deli. I do not think much of India Abroad.
India Today = gives me analysis on India from India. They have always few pages on Indian news from distant lands. They had an excellent 30th anniversary issue.
I do not read India Abroad except if I am… @ an Indian deli
You don’t say 🙂 I read mine when I’m in line at the Indian grocery store. Aunty always scowls from behind the counter, “either buy it or put it back!”
Kush,
Since you have deemed it necessary to share your reading habits, do tell why you think so lowly of the India Abroad weekly?
Since you have deemed it necessary to share your reading habits, do tell why you think so lowly of the India Abroad weekly? This is my personal opinion: India Abroad is so much caught up in showcasing Indians as “model minority” in North America that it has lost its capability of doing real journalism and critical analysis. If you work for India Abroad or own part of it, please do not take it personally.
It is my take, you might like it. Sometimes, I have read it seriously, like the issue on Kalpana Chawla but that too was in a deli.
what do you know i came from attending a punjabi wedding in canada. Though i’m not pleased with the level of punjabi there though… The young generations hardly understands theth punjabi, they picked up some hindi from the movies they were watching and just seem to be replicating parents accent. I had to translate dozens of words when talking to a 12 yr old between punjabi and hindi eg kamli=pagli the kids are brought up watching hindi movie/TV. If i had to talk in hindi i might have stayed in nj instead of going to toronto. oh well next wedding i’m going to is in pathankot so i guess i will get my fill.
This aptly articulates my feelings on the matter as well. The publication raves endlessly about anything even vaguely positive relating to diasporic Indians in any way, shape or form. Usually the only ‘negative’ stuff that gets a mention is discrimination cases, etc., where the victim is desi. It’s not that the writing is ‘bad’, really, but that it doesn’t interrogate the problematic assumptions behind the phenomena it praises — sure, second-gen desis might have topped whatever national student competition again, but why don’t we see discussion of the dark downside to the pressure put upon desi kids by parents and the community to ‘succeed’? Sure, PIO-s might make up such-and-such a percentage of allopathic doctors in the US, but what about an indepth article questioning the problematic nature of modern allopathic practices vis-a-vis traditional Indian religious and cultural ethics? This type of serious journalism is needed to bring Indian Abroad out of its unfortunate ‘look-how-good-we-are’ approach to reporting on all matters Indian. Well, that, and no more cheesecake publicity photos of scantily clad Bollywood actresses in the entertainment section.
They are living in Canada so they shouldnt be expected to speak or understand theth Punjabi. They are not in India so they shouldnt be made to feel as though there is something wrong with that. You speak English in an English speaking society. Most Punjabis abroad speak Punjabi inflected with their own accent – there is nothing worse than a haughty language policeman laughing or criticising a Canadian or British kid because they cannot pronounce certain Punjabi words ‘properly’.
They are not living in the pind or in Jalandhar so they should not be mocked because they dont speak Punjabi as if they still ate sugar cane straight from the field and got up to milk the buffalo every morning. Punjabis in the UK and Canada speak Punjabi as they please and as long as they communicate it is all good.
At the end of the day they are Canadians/British first so their Punjabi will be spoken with a Toronto or Birmingham accent and that’s the way it should be!
Personally I love it.
Interesting – my cousin, born here like me, and like me English-only, is currently in Kuala Lampur running a phone bank for the wrong party (the one that’s going to win, it seems). Not only can he get inexpensive workers there, but they’re not subject to Canadian election-finance reform, and he can have a room for of Punjabi speakers, a room full of Tamil speakers, a room full of Hindi speakers. . . I’d of course be most impressed with a room full of JBL speakers, but that’s just me. The absurdity of a desi who is only functional in English being the go-to guy for multilingual brown-people advertising is lovely.
brevity, ladies and gentlemen. brevity.
The Conservatives seem to be getting a lot better at aggressively targeting the south asian vote, can the Liberals really even rely on the ethnic/immigrant vote anymore?
Guess not:
The Conservatives are even going after the tamil vote. I wonder what the Bloc Quebecois position on the Sri Lankan conflict is…
Well, I know that in Western Canada allegiances are shifting as 2nd generation Canadians have started to have families of their own and vote apart from their parents. For example, the Ismaili community has always traditionally voted Liberal, given the fact that Pierre Trudeau was instrumental in bringing a large number of them to Canada when they were displaced from Idi Amin’s Uganda. However, most of my Ismaili friends here identify with the sense of “Western Alienation” far more than they do with the provisions of multiculturalism which, although it was a policy introduced by the Liberals, are taken for granted now. The ridings Toronto with a strong presence of people of South Asian origin (Scarborough, Brampton) have always been strongly Liberal and I think will remain so. Surrey-North (which has a large Punjabi population) in the Vancouver area is a bit of a mystery, having changed hands a few times between the Tories and the NDP. The former Tory MP for this riding, Chuck Cadman, died last year, leaving the seat open. Liberal candidate Surjit Kooner is the only South Asian-origin candidate running in the riding.
You see a similar trend in Britain, and in the U.S., even. Punjabi has evolved in its own direction over there, and over here, and why shouldn’t it be fine? As long as people can communicate with each other. (My own favorite accent is when British-Punjabi guys speak Punjabi (with that random British twang).) Depending on your surrounding community, language will tend to evolve. In regards to theth Punjabi, from my own experience, I’ve picked up more theth Punjabi along the way because of a desire to better understand the pendu truck-driver music I listen to, but my family didn’t speak theth Punjabi as it was (and they’re from Ludhiana/Amritsar respectively). I randomly unconsciously stick in theth words when I speak, and my parents look at me as if I were adopted. Are they losing some sort of connection to their language if their family never used certain vocabulary?
There is something to be said for speaking Punjabi period, though. There’s a difference between kids being able to differentiate between Hindi and Punjabi, and them speaking Punjabi or theth Punjabi (which also varies from area to area). If you’re getting annoyed that they keep saying “hum” instead of “asee”, then I can understand your aggravation – you can know and speak Hindi and Punjabi both, but Punjabi isn’t a dialect of Hindi. It’s a separate language and it shows how much pride or lack thereof some parents instill in their kids for their mothertongue. That’s why I also kind of dig that Canadian politicians are recognizing a key demographic and reaching out to them in a way which that particular demographic will respond. They’re not assuming that, if they go to a town with a huge Punjabi population, they’ll be able to connect with them by speaking Hindi or randomly shouting “Chak de fattey”.
Sorry for rambling.
any of you punjabi lovers familiar with – chamkila or manak? now that is hard core stuff.
I’m def. Chamkila and Manak fan. And a bigger Mohammed Siddiq fan.
I’m def. a* Chamkila and Manak fan. And a bigger Mohammed Siddiq fan.
(my bad. typed too fast.)
This is what i noticed there. Allmost all of them did not bother to learn how to read or write either hindi or gurmukhi which was also disturbing the only thing about being a punjabi they knew was saying jumping up and down and “hurrr”! What was really strange is that their older generation had mentioned it atleast 3 times that canada is for punjabis b/c kids pick up the culture. The only culture they had picked up was from hindi movies, which isnt the high culture of hindi speakers, and the representation of punjabis in hindi movies though usualy positive is so superficial with the obligatory bhangra dancing fella thrown in.
There are 35 south asian candidates running for the three major parties in this election (4% of a total 924 major party candidates!). The Conservatives have 16, the Liberals 10, and the NDP 9. However, six of the nine Liberals are running in winnable seats, while only four the the conservative desis have a shot.
Winnable Liberals — Yasmin Ratansi, Wajid Khan, Gurbax Malhi, Ruby Dhalla, Navdeep Bains, Sukh Dhaliwal, Ujjal Dosanjh.
Winnable Conservatives — Rahim Jaffer, Rakesh Khosla, Deepak Obhrai, Nina Grewal.
Two of three Desi Conservatives running in Quebec are of Bangladeshi origin — Mustaque Sarkar and Ishrat Alam. An underreported right-wing Franco-Bangladeshi phenomenon? (The third is an Afghan Quebecker. All three have no hope of winning.)
The former mayor of Flin Flon, Manitoba is a desi (Nazir Ahmad), now running for the Conservatives in the riding of Churchill, Manitoba. Churchill is best known for the annual infestation of Polar Bears.
Liberal MP Wajid Khan is a veteran of the Pakistani Air Force. And a used car dealer.
NDPer Anwar Naqvi is a human rights activist once jailed by the Pakistani gvt. And a poet.
Gurbax Singh Malhi, elected in 1993, claims to be the first Turbanned MP in the western world. There are eight turbanned Sikh men running in this election
After being elected in 2004, Navdeep Bains became Parliamentary Secretary to the PM, the same position Pierre Trudeau held when he was first elected in 1965.
Astonishingly, NDP candidate Jim Gill is not desi. He is a Newfoundlander. He may have a better chance of winning if he put on a turban.
Guru Gulab Khatri: you form your opinion by going to one Punjabi wedding, and by speaking to maybe 10 youths.
One thing is for sure, kids either know, or dont know Punjabi based on thier surroundings. I think that some family groups (including uncles, aunts, cousins, thaya, thai, what have you) stress the importance of culture and language, and others do not. So it’s quite possible that the wedding you attended was by composed largely of a group that does not value thier kids’ speaking Punjabi.
In my experience, the vast majority of kids know more Punjabi and are in tune with Punjabi Culture than kids form other cuntries like the US. You can even take classes in most high schools for Punjabi, among other languages. The music of choice is Bhangra. And just the amount of Punjabi related musical talent is quite high out of Toronto. Hindi movies are despised by 80% of the youth I know.
You are wrong to say that most kids in Toronto are out of touch with Punjabi culture and more in tune with Hindu Film culture. Here is an extreme example – Rexdale. Even the kids that are born here in Canada and live in Rexdale choose to speak Punjabi amongst each other first, and English second. Check yo’self homey 😉
There are 35 south asian candidates running for the three major parties in this election (4% of a total 924 major party candidates!). The Conservatives have 16, the Liberals 10, and the NDP 9. However, six of the nine Liberals are running in winnable seats, while only four the the conservative desis have a shot.
Wow! Wonder how long it will take for desis to penetrate the American political system.
It isn’t very often that kids want to learn how to read/write a language of their own volition if they feel the skill isn’t going to be used very much. Doesn’t matter if the language is Punjabi, French, Latin, whatever. Would it not be up to the parents to give them a little push, set them up with Sunday lessons and such, if they really felt their children needed to learn the language?
There is also no way of knowing if the language ability gained by lessons, etc. will continue on to adulthood. I learnt how to read and write Hindi, Arabic, and French in my school years. Today, though I still know the vowels and consonants by heart I can barely read a sentance in Hindi, same with Arabic (plus I can’t understand much of it), and French…well, I know my grammar but can’t produce any speech save for hurling insults in Canuck French. Also, I can’t read or write a thing in my mother tongue, guju. Haven’t had much of an opportunity to practice my skills and they have suffered but I don’t mind one bit. As long as I can still converse in Hindi (regardless of my terrible my Guju accent) and Guju (regardless of my terrible Porbandari/Canuck accent) I’m happy and my parents and grandparents and auntys and uncles and bhais and behns are happy.
Isme soo ‘disturbing’ che? 😛
Oi! I just caught the picture caption, $866,760.20 USD ain’t no pocket change.
Just kidding. USA USA USA! 😀
Bains is great, I wonder what his chances of actually achieving a really high position in the party are? I see him as being groomed for a major cabinet position eventually.
I took Tamil classes in high school (sat. mornings), it was more of an excuse to socialize than actually learn the language. From what I hear that’s what it was like for most kids learning other languages too.
Neha – so the Grit’s look like they’re coming back in the polls, eh? Might be too little too late!!!
Ananthan – Yeah, Bains is pretty cool! Notice there’s been one Punjabi-Canadian in cabinet since the early nineties – Herb Dhaliwal then, Ujjal Dosanj now and hopefully Bains in the future!
I hear ya, Badmash, they aren’t doing quite as well as they were in the last election. Especially here. The burbs might be their saving grace at this point. Downtown has splintered due to the Bulte & Iggy fiascos and Ianno’s involvement in the fishy (har har) waterfront project audit. Stronarch’s Newmarket is looking poised to go conservative.
The Liberal campagin has been so terrible that they have made ‘The cardboard cutout with Homolka eyes’ aka Harper look like a Care Bear.
I voted last saturday in advance (couldn’t wait anymore!), went with Chow. I think she deserves trinity-spadina. My method was to think local and vote for the most experienced and least tainted candidate, ha. I think she’ll take it and I hope Layton takes danforth again, in his unique position
his mustachehe has been able to push hard for this city (sharing gas tax for transit, new deal for cities). Thinking local. I don’t agree with the NDP 100% by any means but I’m settling for them because Ianno needs to go home and the remaining libs need to re-think this ‘god-given right’ sort of view that is affecting their party, their efficiency, and of course their constituents.Hmm, interesting choice – I like your rationale. Olivia Chow in parliament will be a good thing! Can you believe the crap the LIberal party has given her (which it then had the gall to call a faux pas!)
‘The cardboard cutout with Homolka eyes’ – love it :). Tory guru Tom Flannagan has already started making sounds about the direction of a Tory government – a bit scary actually: first stop for clean-up, the Supreme Court!!! Stronach must be just kicking herself – naivite or greed, take your pick.
Sheesh, Iggy picked the wrong election to come back – poor guy, I think he has a lot to offer but his timing and the cloud of suspicion that’s surrounded him has shown him to be an embarrassing amateur. You know I really think the whole Ukranian community’s beef with him is located somewhere in Ignatieff’s own Russian aristocratic roots.
As far as preserving their language in the diaspora is concerned, Sikhs have probably done a better job than most (as compared to other desis overall). I think there are reasons for this. Let’s compare with South Indians for example (I’m not South Indian but many of my friends are and I’ve interacted and observed them a lot). Punjabi is made to appear important to a Sikh’s identity in a way that Tamil or Telugu (for example) are not (for their respective speakers). This identity aspect is crucial – it’s why a lot of desi Muslim kids in the US know Urdu reasonably well, because it’s internalized as a part of their identity. Furthermore, Punjabi as a language is made to appear ‘cool’ and ‘fun’, as is Punjabi culture. Bhangra music obviously plays a big role in this. Whereas for South Indians, the culture (and associated languages) are made to appear intellectual, difficult, and part of a classical tradition (Carnatic music, Telugu literature, etc)i.e BORING. There is absolutely no ‘cool’ factor in the way that South Indian parents present their culture. Of course, it is true that in general South Indian cultures are not as hedonistic and wildly fun-loving as the Punjabi culture. They tend to be a bit restrained. So for a young Telugu kid growing up in the US for example, there is not that much to attract him to his language (I’m talking about kids; obviously when we become adults we all nostalgically wish we could speak our mother tongues). If a group of young Telugu-American kids (for example) get together at one of their parents’ social occasions, the one or two kids fluent in Telugu will not be held in any special esteem; they might be thought of as geeks who are “too into” the whole “Indian thing”; at a Sikh-American gathering on the other hand, the kid who can speak fluent Punjabi will be the envy of the whole group. So what’s the answer? First of all, SPEAK the damn language(s) with your kids! On a daily basis. Naturally. Easily. Make it flow, let it be a part of your normal daily life. Joke around in it, banter in it, lighten it up, don’t let it become some boring, difficult, impossible-to-master kind of thing. If parents don’t speak the language, game over. Secondly, the biggest misconception parents have is “the kids can take classes on the weekend at the temple”. These classes SUCK. Simply learning the alphabet and memorising a few sentences IS NOT LEARNING THE LANGUAGE! No, that requires a very different approach, such as is used in Spanish/French classes in US high schools…a combination of grammer, vocabulary, reading passages, exercises, etc. gradually increasing in difficulty, all taught by trained language teachers (in short, it ain’t gonna happen, so it’s still the parents’ responsibility to transmit the basics of the spoken language to their kids). This is ONLY if preserving our languages matter to us of course
woohoo – cons win minority – best thing is ndp gets its hands off the levers of power, barring pq,libs,ndp banding together – for dem indophiles – grewal, dosanjh and bains won.
sub-text – with marting leaving party leadership – dosanjh might have a shot – at least warm the seat till ignatieff comes of age – wait and see – you read it here first
boohoo – cons win.
aww man! it’s the best thing possible – i’m quite bullish on this – a minority con govt will be kept in check from doing anything too radical like the nuckiler umbrella AND we get the NDP from poaching in – here’s something funny sort of to cheer you up . Read in the g&m the other day a local eatery was offering dishes named after the party leaders …
The Harper burger for them who like something unspectacularly solid. The Layton chicken and ribs special for those who want a little bit of this and a little bit of that… and -drumroll- The Martin Jambalaya for those who want a big gloopy, amorphous mass of everythng and nothing.
lol. beautifully put.
well, i’m happy for you. sucks to be lefty me. i think the NDP will still have a positive influence (or ‘poaching in’ as you said…hee)
cheers.
poor guy has yet to update his website.
As did dreamy Rahim Jaffer. (boo)
ps. on a totally superficial tip: what has this man done to his once perfect hair?
respect where it’s due … if it hadnt been for martin … i would have lost faith and moved to the us … spent the bulk of the nineties in the us on my grad studies … many options when i finished – needed a gut check… the heart pointed north … but the economy was stinking in the early nineties had to take a hard headed look at things… this man turned the country around … turned north and decided on building a career here… just so you get the timeline right… this was the late nineties… the height of the dotcom bubble – and i went the ‘wrong’ way – i still get kicks thinking… boy – did i play that right…
i voted con but martin is still the man to me – hope the libs come out leaner and stronger through this… it’s a blessing i still say – that one can make a rational political decision in respect to party platforms and not through ideology
– gets off soapbox –
Which way do the Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats lean? Are they conservative or liberal? Cant the liberals join with Bloc Quebecois to form the government?
huh?
That was not a snarky ‘huh?’, but a genuine ‘huh?’. Just want to understand what you intended to say fully. By rational do you mean strategic, and by ideology do you mean principles? (okay, that was somewhat snarky) 😉
The Bloc are separatist lefties (though that’s highly debatable…but generally the policy stances they’ve taken have been left-leaning rather than right-leaning), and the ND’s are plain old lefties (i guess you could also call them federalist lefties)…neither are little c conservatives…though many of the early bloc members (like its former leader Lucien Bouchard) were former Conservative Party members. Anyway, I don’t see the Liberal party and the Bloc joining in a coalition…we’re stuck with Harper for the time being. I think the coalition work will be on an issue-by-issue basis. The Conservatives and the Bloc will probably get along on issues of increasing power for the provinces and decentralizing federalism.
Short answer: no
Long answer that likely over-estimates your desire to know:
The Bloc and the Liberals are long time opponents. So not likely at all. (though stranger things have happened)
The NDP are left, while the Liberal Party is a centre party (hence the aptness of the “Martin Jambalaya for those who want a big gloopy, amorphous mass of everything and nothing” comment). 🙂
The liberals tend to campaign on the left and govern on the right…so the NDP and the Liberals disagree often on policy directions. I think its possible they’ll come together on particular issues, but not to form the next government.
hey vi – no probs – i multitask quite aggressively across emails, skype and the casual meandering into SM – had in mind the aggressive political rhetoric in the US in which the blue and the red camps seem to be at opposite poles – that’s not healthy in my mind – it’s like if you win then i lose … i felt we’re lucky to not feel we’ve been left out of the government even if our candidate did not win – none of the parties (except NDP) were beyond consideration for me
welll i take that back… i had the cons, libs, greens in mind – um.. the marxist, leninst, animal rights … not so inclined… – this must seem like so many thought bubbles pasted out here…
I dont understand this.
You have the Liberal Party (lp) which is centrist or Left and has won 103 seats. You have the Bloc Quebecians (bc) who are Leftists or Centrists federalists and they have won 51 seats. You have the NDP which is even more left and has won 29 seats. So the Centrist or Leftist Parties have won 183 seats.
The conservatives have only won 124 seats.
So why on earth would the conservatives form the government? They need a coalition to form the majority. Why would the bc or ndp support the conservatives when they are closer to lp in ideology. I am presuming a person who voted for ndp or bc would rather see their party support lp which would be closer to them in ideology instead of their party supporting the conservatives.
Also which party gets the first chance to form the government. In a Parliamentary democracy, as I understand, the party which gets the first offer to form the government has the best ability to offer carrots to other parties (cabinet seats etc) to make them join the coalition. Does the single largest party automatically get invited to form the government. What if the single largest party fails to get any coalition members to support them? Does the second largest party then get the invitation?
Thanks to any Canadian who takes the time to explain some or all of my questions.
the fact the cons as a registered party won the most seats gives them the authority to form the minority government – as the second party over the line the libs form the formal opposition – this is a given – that being said – the cons are not guaranteed a free rein for the extreme hardliners because like you said – the bulk ofthe parliament has leftish leanings – if they all get it in their head, it is possible to submit a no-confidence motion and get the government thrown out – the last motion passed precisely because the majority of the parliament banded together to get the government dissolved – and THE reason why I am really angry at the NDP
The way forward – the ideological lynchpin to a functioning parliament this time around is common ground between PQ and Cons in greater provincial autonomy from the center. otherwise another election in 2007…
Al-Mujahid:
At the federal level, Canada does not have a tradition of coalition governments. The Governor General will invite the leader of the largest party in Parliament to form a government and demonstrate that he or she has the confidence of the house.
In minority situation, the other parties will abstain or support the government from the outside in a confidence vote, and the government will function on an issue by issue basis. This is what happened when the Liberals won a minority in 2004.
Theoretically, it is possible that the other parties will gang up together and try to support someone other than the Conservatives for gvt. However, federally, this never happens. It is understood that Canadians have granted the largest party a mandate (albeit a minority). Any party that ignored this mandate would likely be punished in the next election.
At the provincial level, the only example of the seat winner not forming a government in in Ontario in 1985 — but there were special circumstances.
To bring this back to matters brown, here is a list of brown MPs in this Parliament:
Yasmin Ratansi, Navdeep Bains, Ruby Dhalla, Gurbax Malhi, Wajid Khan, Sukh Dhaliwal, Ujjal Dosanjh — Lib
Deepak Obhrai, Rahim Jaffer, Nina Grewal — Con
Pretty much the same as last time, except that disgraced Gurmant Grewal (Nina’s husband) is gone and Sukh Dhaliwal won his seat.
Also, neither major party would want to enter into any sort of long-term alliance with the Bloc. Separatism – or the fear of it – has been playing a bigger role in federal politics lately. They prefer to work with the bloc on an issue by issue basis to avoid being seen as too close to them. The bloc really holds the balance of power in this new government though; the willingness of the Conservatives to give into their demands might be what determines how long this government lasts.
and the way i see it ananthan is that as long as the bloc draws a line between autonomy and separatism – there is a lot of room to play – harper’s talked about firewalls around alberta and provincial autonomy is right up his alley – even layton, for all his failings, wants more for TO and will likely support special autonomous status to the big four cities – oo i get goosebumps… – maybe mad mel wasnt so loopy after all…
At the federal level, Canada does not have a tradition of coalition governments. The Governor General will invite the leader of the largest party in Parliament to form a government and demonstrate that he or she has the confidence of the house.
In minority situation, the other parties will abstain or support the government from the outside in a confidence vote, and the government will function on an issue by issue basis. This is what happened when the Liberals won a minority in 2004.
Wow! I cant imagine the Conservative surviving for more than a year or two.
Thanks everybody for educating me 🙂