Silly Little Country

Undermined Again yet Again!

I keep saying the point of this blog is to document life in the silliness of the Canadian environment (cultural, physical, etc...). But the news keeps placing silliness pinnacles elsewhere.
Over the last month or so here we have had a Prime Minister ready to bargain at multiple levels to avoid losing a non-confidence vote, which would pretty much force new elections. However, this behaviour is fairly simple and conventional. And he prevailed. But we have a bundle of new motions tonight.
Consider the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. When his party badly lost provincial elections in a normally no-can-lose province, and for a variety of reasons it is just too complex to explain here, he decided that he needed Federal Elections to be advanced about a year from the originally planned date - they should now happen September this year rather than in 2006.
So how does one achieve this in Germany under the constitution? Not easily. He will be bringing a motion to the federal Parliament, a motion of non-confidence in the government! So basically the motion says "We the government do not have confidence in the government...".
Honest perhaps, but it beats our silliness hands down.
I remain somewhat disarmed.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:09 PM