Canadians will be taking to the streets this week as the power play in Ottawa works itself out.
The Conservative Party is encouraging supporters to get involved using Party talking points for internet, talk radio and letters to the editor as well as a Saturday  Rally for Canada in major cities across the country.
Coalition supporters are being encouraged to rally in Canadian cities Thursday in Make Parliament Work.
One of the memes we will hear this week is the spin on the familiar refrain Dion is not a leader. It goes like this: he wasn’t elected leader of the country, this is a coup, back room deals, yada yada.Â
Stephane Dion was elected leader of his party and as Member of Parliament Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. Â
His mandate as leader of The Liberal Party of Canada will end when a Liberal leadership vote is held in May 2009, he will abide by the party constitution and step aside for whomever is elected party leader. He will still be an MP (unless there is a federal election and he is voted out or chooses not to run.) 
The Conservatives are barking up an odd tree on the talking points.
Example: Consider John Tory, the Ontario Conservative Party leader. In 2005 he was an MPP parachute candidate for the riding of Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey. In 2007 Tory ran for MPP in the riding of Don Valley West. He was defeated.
 In 2004 John Tory ran for the leadership of The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and won. After the 2007 provincial election the party decided to hold a leadership vote in early 2008. John Tory won the leadership of his party.
Is John Tory ‘not a leader’, or behaving illegally because he doesn’t have a seat in the legislature? Is he illegally leading a party because he isn’t an MPP?  Of course not. The constitution and procedures of The Progressive Conservative Party were followed, as was the will of the voters in Don Valley West.Â
I’ve been amazed at the passion of Canadians the past few days as events unfold.
People are weighing in, expressing their opinions, adjusting to quickly breaking federal maneuvers, and I wonder how many skipped social studies.
This is not the US, Canada operates under a parliamentary system.Â
Fear and labelling is being used. Separatists. Socialists, yada yada.
The provincial and federal parties chose their leaders, not the electorate.
The electorate chooses MPs and MPPs.Â
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was re-elected as leader of The Conservative Party of Canada again this year and was voted in as MP in his riding of Calgary-Southwest.
Same scenario for Dion, Duceppe and Layton. You want to elect a party leader, join the party, attend the convention, cast your ballots.
The party with the most MP’s forms the government, leaders of the parties winning fewer seats lead the opposition parties.
There is no coup, parties are doing their job.Â
When the current federal government introduced it’s economic package, an economic vote becomes a confidence vote. That is procedure. In the past week, the Loyal Opposition made it clear they would introduce a vote of no-confidence. No procedure has been broken.
That is their right as elected members of Parliament representing Canadian who voted them in.
Now the current Prime Minister to make some decisions.
1) He pushed back Opposition Day by a week from Monday December 1st to Monday December 8th. He has not broken procedure.
2) He makes his case to the Canadian people and will be addressing the nation sometime this week. That is appropriate and legal.
3) He can adjust the package coming up for the vote. That is his right and responsibility in a minority government to make a move to compromise with the opposition.
4) The opposition can accept or reject the compromise. That is their right and responsibility.
When there is a vote of none confidence the Prime Minister has a couple of choices.
a) He can consider proroguing the House until the January budget (which again the opposition votes on) To prorogue he will need what is called an Order-In- Council.
This Order-In-Council accomplishes some strategic objectives.
i) It prolongs a no-confidence vote;
ii)Â his governments defeat in next weeks confidence motion is delayed
iii) buys the Conservative Party of Canada time to put out advertising across Canada to make their case and raises the economic costs for the coalition so they back off and support his governments choice when Parliament returns (thanks to Andrew Steele)
The Order-In-Council has to be passed by the Federal Cabinet and then taken to the Governor-General for assent which is usually seen as a formality. However if the GG has information and decides The Conservative Party does not have the confidence of the House and has information the Loyal Opposition can form a government she can refuse the request for proroguing if she believes the government has to test their decision they don’t have the confidence of the House.
Prime Minister Harper can go to the Governor-General and ask for an election. If she believes there is support and a plan in the Opposition for a coalition she ask them to do so.
And that is what the signing of the agreement and the passing of it to Rideau Hall was about. The coalition has done a game.set.match on Harper.
The decision will rest with the GG.
1) Grant the request for prorogue before next weeks vote if it is requested.
2)Â Grant an election when there is a vote of no-confidence.
3) Grant a coalition government formed by the current opposition.
4) Say no to all the requests and recommend the House get back to business and work it out.
All legal options, all within constitutional and parliamentary procedures.
You can contact your MP, write the Governor-General, and opposition leaders. You can sign petitions. You can use the Conservative grass roots tools to write letters to editors or use talk radio to support of the progressive coalition.
40% of eligible Canadians did not vote in the October 2008 election. Apathy, disillusionment, uncertainty, discouragement, busyness. This is a historic week in Canada. You can be a part of it. Be heard. Read. Decide. Act.
CBC: Liberals, NDP, Bloc sign deal on proposed coalition
CBC: Harper says Dion playing biggest political game in history
Thank you for a reasoned and clear explanation of what is happening. I found it helpful.
You’re welcome, I want to cut through the noise and understand too.
Leaders on all sides of the House are responsible for their own decisions, and with all the racket it’s easy to miss that.
Pingback: A copy of the federal Opposition accord at Bene Diction Blogs On
Another thank you for this run-down. I’ve been hearing the call of ‘undemocratic’ a lot and it just isn’t so, no matter what side of the political spectrum you land on. It’s simply how our system can work. Thanks for filling in some of the details for me.
I believe Stephen Harper’s game plan has always been to emulate the government’s of New Zealand, Goerge Bush’s USA, and Maggie Thacher. Simply put their idelogy hates government and wants to do away with pesky regulations, unions, and demolish their opposition.
The fornulae for driving a country to the right typically involves opportunistically using a crisis to justify ‘harsh measures’ such as divestiture of assets, public private partnerships, bashing civil servants, and divesting powers to other levels of government.
Stephen Harper’s game plan has been to increase spending and decrease revenues. Such difficult to revoke actions are very similar to that of George Bush in that the hands of future governments have been tied by debts and obligations for many years to come.
I believe that Stephen harper and his party are ‘wreckers’ rather than builders. I believe a government has a moral mandate to seek consensus and govern in a moderate, considered manner that respects the wishes of the majority of Canadians.
To be fair I also feel that Paul Martin’s Liberals were also cut from similar small ‘c’ cloth in terms of their economic policy.
The faux economic crisis that Stephen Harper was carefully building over the past several years has been superceed by a real economic crisis of international scale.
I have witnessed the RESPs that my wife and I spent two decades building for our children devastated. I have seen my retirement RRSP nest egg halved. I attribute this to the roller coaster ride that the petrochemical industry has embarked on. A roller coster ride that is the greatest source of power for our Prime Minister.
As an architect I have witnessed how the conservative governmnet in Alberta cut and cut spending on infrastructure, schools and hospitals under Ralph Klines’s watch. Then they reversed course and invested in Provincial and municipal infrastructure in a four year period of time. A 250 bed hospital that would have cost 80 million dollars if it was built a decade ago ended up costing a half billion dollars. And Alberta didn’t just build one hospital in the last two years they have built three. Multiply this by the pent up comnstruction of community facilities and schools and universities and then multiply this again with unregulated growth in the tar sands and one sees the rason for the huge boom in comnstruction costs in western Canada.
I believe that the conservative’s record of mismanaging Alberta finances is documented in the book, “Stupid to the Last Drop’. I believe Stephen Harper is repeating this cycle of deregulating, divestiture, economic darwinism and bad management at a federal level.