The Canadian Rant

Yesterday, federal Finance Minister Jim Falherty released a fiscal update regarding Canada's approach to the international financial crisis. All opposition parties, Liberals, NDP and the Bloc, are vehemently opposed to the update and have all vowed to vote against it when it comes to that. And unlike during the last parliamentary session where Liberals would be absent for votes so that the legislation would pass they are saying the will show up in full force and if it means bringing down the government then so be it. Layton, Dion, and Duceppe have all stated they will vote against the current update unless serious changes are made to it and the Conservatives are staying strong and won't back down. So what does this mean? It means that if the update is voted down, it will be considered a confidence motion and the Conservative minority government will no longer have the support of the House of Commons and can no longer be the government. This does not necessarily mean that we w...

Today I decided I would take a step back from Canadian politics for a moment and focus on something that I have had a lot of interest in as of late. The international media had made it one of their main focuses too. I'm talking about pirates and piracy, and more specifically the pirates in Somalia. Obviously, pirates have been around for century and there is a lot of history out there on them but today's pirates are more sophisticated, more heavily armed, and have bigger targets. The pirates in Somalia have been around for many years but they have garnered so much attention in the last couple months because pirate attacks have more than doubled since last year and their targets are getting bigger. One of the most recent ships hijacked was the Sirius Star, a Hong Kong supertanker that has over two million barrels of oil totalling over $200M. They are holding the ship for ransom along with about 16 others in the waters off of Somalia. They have the crews hostage, but treat them ...

On Oct. 14th Harper and the Conservatives were elected as the governing party in Canada and this time with an even stronger minority. Today, that government gets back to work as the new session of Parliament begins and we will see what the new alignment of the House of Common will look like and what they can accomplish. The first order of business is to elect a Speaker of the House of Commons. Liberal MP Peter Milliken has been the Speaker in the last Conservative minority, as well as in Paul Martin's minority and the latter part of Jean Chretien's government. He has mostly stood unopposed in this role as even Conservatives and the NDP have embraced him as Speaker. However, in the last session of Parliament he seemed to have lost control of the House and this time around there are quite a few people, from all parties, looking to take his spot. The Speaker of the House has a lot of different responsibilities, one of the major ones being a tie breaking vote in result of a tie dur...

Say what you want about Americans, their leaders, and their relationships with the rest of the world but let's get one thing straight: what happens in the United States affects us in Canada in many ways. One of the things that many of us, as Canadians, define ourselves as is Not-American. And that is fine as long as you realize that we have a very strong relationship with them in many different ways. Our biggest tie to Americans would have to be economically as we do the majority of our international trade with them. So when the Americans elect a new president and government like they did on Nov. 4th we will see the effects here in Canada. For now I am going to look at what the American election means for Canada from a political standpoint. The Americans shifted their government from a George Bush-led administration to a remarkable Barack Obama administration. This shift will take a couple of months as Obama's transition team gets to work on taking over everything Bush was in c...

Now that Stephane Dion has announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party and the party has announced a date for their leadership contention we can now take a look at those running to replace him and see if anyone stands out. And the outlook... is not good. While there have only been two people who have publicly stated they will seek the leadership role the bigger news is the people who will not be in the hunt. Former NDP premier of Ontario Bob Rae, who ran against Dion in the last leadership race, has announced he will once again try and win the leadership. Along with him the only other name to come forward is New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc. Frank McKenna, who many would consider to be an excellent leader for the Liberals, has stated he will not be entering the race. The former premier of New Brunswick and Canadian Ambassador to the United States has no intention to run in the leadership race. I would consider him to be the best person to put in charge of the Liberal par...