montreal mike

Liberal MP Derrick Lee, meanwhile, compared Harper's move to suspend Parliament to the burning of the Reichstag in Germany by the Nazis.


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0...liament_crisis

An unusual POV.

A slight exaggeration perhaps?

fledermaus

I think you lose any argument the minute you mention Hitler or the Nazis.

However. I do think it's a undemocratic way out, where's the national emergency to justify this??

Rich_007

Yes, he's a retarded drama queen.

R.

montreal mike

There is obviously no comparison.

rwin

But it is part of the system we have.

MikeUK

[QUOTE=fledermaus;7038405
However. I do think it's a undemocratic way out, where's the national emergency to justify this??[/QUOTE]

A smart move to give the coalition time to fall out

National emergency would stopping Dion from becoming pm

Novocastrian

Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor and head of the coalition government on 30 January 1933. As Chancellor, Hitler asked German President Paul von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for a new parliamentary election. Hitler's aim was first to acquire a National Socialist majority in order to secure his position and eliminate the communist opposition. If prompted or desired, the President could remove the Chancellor. Hitler hoped to abolish democracy in a more or less legal fashion by passing the Enabling Act. The Enabling Act was a special law which gave the Chancellor the power to pass laws by decree without the involvement of the Reichstag. The unprecedented element of the Enabling Act was that the Chancellor himself possessed these powers. An Enabling Act was only supposed to be passed in times of extreme emergency, and in fact had only been used once before, in 1923-24 when the government used an Enabling Act to rescue Germany from hyperinflation. To pass an Enabling Act, a party required a vote by a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. In January 1933, the Nazis had only 32% of the seats and thus were in no position to pass an Enabling Act.
During the election campaign, the Nazis alleged that Germany was on the verge of a Communist revolution and that the only way to stop the communists was to pass the Enabling Act. The message of the campaign was simple: increase the number of Nazi seats so that the Enabling Act could be passed. In order to decrease the number of opposition members of parliament who could vote against the Enabling Act, Hitler had planned to ban the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (the Communist Party of Germany or KPD), which at the time held 17% of the parliament's seats, after the elections and before the new Reichstag convened. The Reichstag Fire allowed Hitler to accelerate the banning of the Communist Party. The Nazis capitalized on the fear that the Reichstag fire was supposed to serve as a signal launching the Communist revolution in Germany, and promoted this claim in their campaign.


Perhaps that guy had a point.

Canada2006

Frankly I think that all the options that Jean had were bad ones and there was no easy or right way out of this mess.

In many ways this is probably the worst as the uncertainty is postponed until February...

wheatsheaf

Canada is playing third world politics. The Opposition in any democracy is "Government" together with the majority party as it sits in Parliament. The Prorogue is depriving Parliament of it's function at a time when Canada desperately needs the voices (not voice) of its citizens to be heard. What Harper and the GG are admitting is that they are not capable of keeping abreast with the speed of the modern world and they are now seeking refuge from the storm whilst leaving the country at the mercy of the storm. It is shocking that Canadians cannot appreciate genuinely elected Bloc members as already entrenched members of Parliamentary governance. This is not an ice hockey game where time out is called when things get rough, nor is Parliament or Government a commercial enterprise where corporate marketing of the Goebbel gendre can be forgotten easily. The only honest Federal MP appears to be Dion!!!.

MarkG

No, the opposition is; they're doing this because Harper threatened to pull their fingers out of the taxpayers' cookie jar. If they were really concerned about doing the best for the country, they wouldn't be creating a crisis right now.

I don't have any particular opinion on Canadian political parties other than disliking Harper for being on the side of the neo-cons (and thinking he's a moron for trying to cut opposition funding when his party is a minority), but it's the 'coalition' playing politics right now.

And it would appear that their 'coalition' is already starting to fall apart:

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9009674.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/...arliament.html

Which is lucky: imagine that they did take over the government and then turn to fighting each other so that there was yet another change of government in a few months. Does the country really need that?

wheatsheaf

This is third world politics. In effect, Parliament has been locked out and a minority group of MPs with a deceitful leader have free reign without even a Judiciary available to keep them in check contemporaneously!!. Mugabe must be seething at the thought that he missed out on this angle of manipulation plus he could have continued to receive international aid too!!. A decision such as this could not have been made by a GG who had sought unbiased opinion. If the GG was concerned with how her role would be perceived considering the Quebec "bias" she is said to have, then she has done the greatest disservice to Canada at a time when the role of GG was at its most crucial. She could not have sought proper advice (available even at Privy Council), as this is the most immature adolescent course of action that she has allowed Harper to resort to.

MarkG

If the 'coalition' falls apart in the next few weeks, will you accept that the GG did the right thing in not allowing such an unstable group to take over the country? After all, there are few things the left are better at than stabbing each other in the back (or through the ear with an ice-pick).

DaveLovesDee

Which if the other political parties had agreed to would have left the Conservatives as probably the only party likely to be able to afford the expensive ad campaigns to be re-elected. How does that help democracy if no-one else can afford to run a campaign?

macadian

The silver linning would Canadians not being exposed to so much unadulterated piffle in the guise of Party Political Broadcasts....

Tableland

How many elections have you guys had this century? Is it five or six?