Canadian leader shuts Parliament to keep power

The title from the Associated Press says it all. Even the BBC noticed. What a disgrace. But hey, it could be worse.

Why do the Comedians seem to be the most rational sources of political analysis around here?

Rick Mercer provides the most insightful review of events that I have read.

Canadian politics suddenly got interesting

And so frustrating. At a time when there are massive global issues (economic and environmental among others) that need immediate attention, we have a Prime Minister and government more interested in destroying its political opponents than doing anything else. Stephen Harper is playing political games and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced he's going to win.

Harper started this crisis when the conservatives tabled a fiscal forecast on Nov 27 that contained a perfect recipe to piss everyone off. (You try to take a political party's money away and see what happens.)

It's possible that the conservatives were all complete idiots and thought they would get away with it. They have a history of acting like bullies in parliament, and a few days ago may have even broken the law, when they covertly recorded NDP Leader Jack Layton in a conference call with his caucus.

But it seems more likely to me they knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to spark a non-confidence vote because all the likely outcomes would end up with the Conservatives with majority control of parliament.

1. Enough MP's cross the floor to support Harper to defeat the non-confidence motion. This isn't so far-fetched because there are a lot of MP's who aren't comfortable with getting into bed with the Bloc. They don't even have to cross the floor, they can go independent “for the good of national unity” and vote with the Conservatives. If their riding hates the Bloc more than they hate the Conservatives, these MP's are really doing it for the good of their re-election.

In fact, I'd bet it's likely Harper already had those MP lined up before he presented this budget-update and set this whole thing off. And then we have (in effect) a Conservative majority.

2. The non-confidence motion could pass and topple the government, then:

a. The Governor General calls an election. If she does, now Harper can campaign on the fact that the Liberals and NDP formed a coalition (something they promised they wouldn't do) and they were willing to get into bed with separatists.

The Liberals are even weaker than they were two months ago since they are in the middle of choosing a new leader and they're broke! That could be what the Conservatives need to get a majority. Big win for Harper.

b. The Governor General asks the coalition to form government. This plays into Harper's hand well too because its going to be a bad year for any government and there's going to be very little any government can do about it even if it were fully functional.

We're going into a recession and we have no control over that. Whatever bailout/stimulus package we do, we need to coordinate with the US, and they're the ones that got us into this mess in the first place! It's uncharted territory, people are going to loose their jobs, people are loosing their savings, and we just don't know what will help.

It might be the Conservatives' plan to just get out of the way and let the coalition take all the blame. I'm one of the people hoping the Coalition will see the scope of the problems the world faces and usher in a new era of government cooperation that puts the Conservatives to shame. But the cynic in me thinks it will be a miracle if this three-headed experiment in Canadian government can work together.

I'd say Harper expects this, and when the coalition explodes there will be an election, where the Conservatives will rout the other parties that are now discredited due to the coalition.

Huge win for the Conservatives. That would probably cement them in power for a few elections.

Most people expect Harper to ask to the Governor General to prorogue (pause) parliament until the new year. Maybe that time will give the party leaders a chance to sit down and come up with a deal after they cool off a little. But if Harper wanted the non-confidence vote and did this on purpose, then he won't deal. He may think proroguing parliament will help his chance to get and then win an election, but in the end it doesn't change anything. It just delays the inevitable, while the rest Canada get screwed.

Burried in Work

About a week ago I decided that the most logical course of action for me was to re-do work that has taken me around about a year thus far to do. I've given myself two weeks. This isn't as crazy as it seems for a lot of reasons.

Why would I do this? After discovering some errors in the analysis I had done, I had to go back and fix some things anyway. Also some of the requirements of what we wanted to get out of the results changed, meaning that I would have to go back and change some other things. It wasn't that those things were wrong, I just didn't control or pay too much attention to some details that didn't matter before, but now, they matter.

This work is entirely computer programming and my code was pretty incomprehensible already. To go back and change things now without making more mistakes would have been tricky and would have only resulted in more spaghetti-like code.

Another thing is I was learning how to program as I was working on this project this past year. (Masters degrees often tend to be heavy on the on-the-job training.) Starting fresh means now I'm not held back by a bunch of stupid things that I did before when I didn't know any better.

Plus I'm going to re-use most of the algorithms exactly, I'll just write them better. So there won't be nearly as much problem solving this time around.

So two weeks. Not so crazy... I think.

Star Trek Trailer

Watch it while you can. I'm sure Paramount won't let this stay on Youtube for long.

*****Update
Now you can check out the trailer in high def.

My first Canadian cold

Both my roommates were sick this week. I was bound to catch it eventually. I don't feel too bad actually, and I hope I'll be back on my feet tomorrow. Did a lot of web surfing today to pass the time.

-found a cool online app for making free long distance phone calls: freeringer which uses the talkster network

- a very cool series of pictures about urban art that makes things invisible, which reminded me about urban knitting!

-some interesting stuff about copyright which led me to read some scary stuff about the future of copyright in Canada, some ideas about things that are "better than free" and tools to convert online streaming music to MP3's: Chilirec and The Last Ripper

-on a related note, have you heard of Kryders Law? It's the popular name for the predicted exponential growth of hard drive storage capacity. (Kind of like Moores Law is for processor speed.) What's interesting is that within 10 years, the typical home computer hard drive is expected to have so much storage capacity that you could save on your laptop EVERY recorded song in the since 1950. File sharing will no longer be about songs, or albums or even the complete works of an artist. You can just have ALL OF IT. What do you think that would do to the recording industry and the concept copyright as we know it today?

Interesting!

-a new evolutionary theory that attempts to explain human warfare and male cooperation
-no one knows what will happen, or what we should do about it, but here are two signs that something is seriously wrong with the economy

As for me: I'm getting settled in my new place. I just about have enough food to encompass a balanced diet and only a couple of boxes left to unpack. Work is going reasonably well. Motivation is high but focus is low. Speaking of which, I better get back to it!

The big deal is it shouldn't be a big deal

I was reflecting on the US election last night and I realized I don't understand racism at all. This is a result of having an incredibly privileged life which is probably the result of some very wise decisions by my parents and some luck. Now re-reading what I wrote last night, it's a bit flowery and maybe trite, but I'm happy that was what immediately came to my mind:

That a competent, well spoken, charismatic man can run and win the presidency of the most powerful democracy in the world shouldn't be a surprise. That any man or woman, of any race, can become president of a country that is founded on the principle that all men are created equal, should simply be obvious.

So there's the proof. The black guy won and you'd say, “so, what's the big deal? I just voted for the best candidate.” I guess that is a big deal.