RE: Gomery Commission is
The Conservatives are as corrupt as the Liberals. Remember Mulroney? There were more scandals under him than any other PM. The Conservatives' chief lawyer got caught breaking election laws when he was part of the provincial Conservatives here in Manitoba. Stockwell Day, when he sitting in the Alberta government, first illegally tried to force a lawyer to drop a case, then had the provincial government pay his legal fees. Don't even get me started about the Conservatives who went to jail in Saskatchewan. Those were sitting MLAs, not people peripherally connected to the party.
Saying that the Conservatives are somehow less prone to scandal is ridiculous.
That, combined with the regressive social policies of Stevie Harper and his gang of Christian radicals, is why people will give the Liberals another minority government, Dan. It's also why Harper doesn't want to go to the polls yet...he wants to wait until the publication ban is lifted. He's hoping that if the scandal is bad enough that he can win Ontario.
He won't get anything in Quebec though, and this will push some seats to the NDP...especially in the urban areas.
So far the next election is being fought on the environment. The Liberals and the NDP are going to see to that. The Conservatives have been cranking up the anti-environment machinery (notice how many anti-Kyoto posters have shown up on various boards lately? have a wander around some Canadian sites...it's pretty funny) but that won't be enough because people see what's going on around them. If the Conservatives can't switch the issue, they will get whipped.
Even if Harper manages to eek out a minority, he won't be able to do much because his policies are inherently backward and he won't have the support of the BQ or the NDP on them.
The election being pushed back by as much as a year isn't a bad thing, Cub1c. So what if the criminal trials are in the fall and the publication isn't lifted until after Christmas? That would make it a little sweeter for the PQ, wouldn't it?
Meanwhile pushing for everything to be rushed out now offers very little benefit to the BQ. The Liberals will be reduced to only their safe seats...pretty much where they already are. The NDP would pick up support though, so the BQ's influence in the House of Commons would be reduced.
What would it change in the end? Nothing, because neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives want to change things to prevent things like this from happening in the future. They like things this way.
