Friday, August 15, 2008

Harper Threatens Election

Parliament is working -- if the government is defeated on a vote of confidence then we need an election, otherwise not. Isn't that the whole point of saying we'll have fixed election dates? My sense is the "in-and-out" business is causing considerable grief in the Conservative Party and they are looking to an election to bury it.

DANIEL LEBLANC AND CAMPBELL CLARK
From Friday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday he will not govern over a “dysfunctional” Parliament and warned for the first time he could take matters into his own hands and force the country into a fall election.

Mr. Harper's made his threat as he and other government officials grew increasingly testy over four days of rare summer hearings into the Conservative Party's “in-and-out” advertising scheme in the 2006 election campaign.

He warned the opposition two weeks ago that he would not tolerate parliamentary committees acting as “kangaroo courts,” but a senior Conservative official said Thursday it doesn't look as though the opposition was listening.

Full story here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080814.wharper15/BNStory/National/home

3 comments:

Johnathon said...

Morton, you should know that the Cons used a "loophole".

Otherwise there could be charges filed.

Until charges are filed, one can only assume that nothing illegal happened.

Am I wrong?

Anonymous said...

johnathon,

Where in this post did Mr. Morton use the words "charges filed" & "illegal"?

You are intimating something that never happened here.

Perhaps you need your eyes checked.

James C Morton said...

If it's legal,it's legal and more power to them. There is nothing wrong ith reading the law carefully and complying with it in an adventageous way -- that's what tax lawyers spend their lives doing. But this stuff seems pretty close to the edge and maybe over the line.