I’m not sure if the news has penetrated the USA, but I feel like I need to provide a summary of the events that have led up to the temporary time-out of our government. Also, I feel these events need to be hotly debated and approached with skepticism. Anything from spin to downright lies are coming out of every media outlet and politician in Canada right now, so I’m going to try to downplay the spin, but definitely encourage everyone to challenge anything I say (especially Canadians).

First, my disclaimer: I’m a member of the social democratic New Democratic Party of Canada, and am thus partisan on all the issues I’m going to talk about. I’ll try to stay neutral, but I make no promises. If you’ve followed me on Facebook at all, my rants and arguments have been littering everywhere for about five days now.

So now some background:

Canada is a technically a constitutional monarchy, which means our head of state is the Queen of England, and her representative the Governor General. The monarchy has little to no influence over this country, but the Governor General does need to be consulted for certain events. Our current Governor General is Michaelle Jean. Typically her role is ceremonial, but in certain instances she can use her discretion to look out for Canada.

Canada has five main political parties, and four with seats in our parliament. They are (from oldest to newest); the Liberal Party (centrist policies), the New Democratic Party (or NDP, social democrats), the Bloc Quebecois (website in French; a party for the “protection of Quebec’s interests on a federal level as well as the promotion of its sovereignty” [Wikipedia]), the Green Party (environmentalist party with centre-right economic policies, they have no seats presently), and the Conservative Party (right wing). In comparison to American politics, the Liberals follow the general policies of the Democrats (with a less charismatic leader) and the Conservatives are similar to the Republicans (and even share an evangelical support base – but the Canadian wing is less overt about it).

Finally to introduce the topic, Canada operates as a representative parliamentary democracy. Rather than have three separate branches of government like the USA (legislative, executive and judicial), Canada has a weird blend. When Canadians vote in federal elections, we choose an member of parliament (through a single member plurality or first-past-the-post system, i.e. the most votes wins) who represents us and our constituency in Ottawa (the nation’s capital). Typically, the party with the most seats “wins” the election and the Governor General gives the opportunity to govern to that party. The leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister, who chooses his or her cabinet to form the executive branch of government. Contrary to some belief, Canadians do not elect a government or prime minister, we elect representatives who are supposed to do that for us. Usually this system works fine, as the winning party has more than half of the seats in the House of Commons, thereby halving a majority and the ability to pass laws without consulting the opposition.

During the 1990s, Canada was lead by Jean Chretien and the Liberals. They typically received popular votes in the 40%-50% range, while getting a majority of the seats (prompting many calls for alternative electoral systems, but thats another post on its own). In 2003 he stepped down, and his long-time Finance Minister, Paul Martin, took over as Prime Minister. However, a number of scandals overran the Liberals at this time and his government held only a minority of the seats after Chretien left, and eventually fell after the right was united by Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper won a minority of seats for his Conservative party in 2006. He has governed as Prime Minister since.

One of the laws Stephen Harper introduced was a fixed election date law. Citing that the parliament had become dysfunctional, in September 2008 he requested that the Governor General to call an election an entire year early (had his government been defeated by the opposition there would be a required election). Typically in minority governments in Canada, elections occur after a vote of non-confidence occurs. This means that the majority of the members of parliament vote against the government on a bill of confidence. The Speech from the Throne (the first thing read in any session of parliament that outlines the government’s goals for the term), budgets, any finance bills, and any other bills the government puts forth as confidence motions are all votes of confidence. Between 2006 and 2008 the Conservatives used many confidence bills to force the Liberals, still weak and poor since Chretien left, to vote for the government (often the Liberals would fail to show up in parliament as a way to abstain from voting).

After the election on October 14, 2008, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives received a slightly stronger minority government, despite having what many consider a lame-duck leader of the Liberals, Stephane Dion, as their chief opponent. Dion and his Green Shift Carbon Tax were so unpopular with Canadians that the Liberals received their lowest popular vote since the confederation of the country in 1867. With his weakest opposition ever, Harper still couldn’t convince many Canadians to support his party. In fact his party only received a popular vote of 37%. It would seem Canadians are still uncomfortable with Harper and his policies.

Since the election, Harper presented a Throne Speech, which passed with support of the Liberals. The Throne Speech is usually vague enough that most oppositions parties pass it.

On Thursday, November 27 (only a week ago), Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, presented an economic update, that the Conservatives promised to use to tackle the economic crisis and recession. To the opposition parties dismay the update contained a removal of the rights of civil servants to strike for three years, removed the guarantee for equal pay for equal work that protected women’s salaries, no promises for bailout or stimulus packages, no conditions for bank bailouts, no money for small or medium sized business, and to top it off, removed the government subsidy to political parties.

This subsidy grants $1.95 to each party for each vote they get in a federal election. It was introduced by Chretien to replace corporate and union donations to political parties, as well as caps on individual donations. Since then the Greens and NDP rely on the fund for half of their budget, the Liberals for two-thirds, the Bloc for 86% and the Conservatives for only a third. The government claimed that this represented each party “tightening their belts” during the hard times to come, and that they would stand to lose the most money (since they received the most votes). However, the disproportionate hit that some parties would take (it is common knowledge that the Conservatives are “swimming” in cash and can afford to run campaigns nearly all year long, while elections have fixed campaign spending limits) along with the extreme right-wing nature of many of the points in the update seemed to signal a strategic partisan attack on the rival parties.

Immediately after the release of this update, all three opposition parties slammed it. By the next day the Liberals and the NDP had recruited Ed Broadbent (leader of the NDP in the 1980s who brought them to their most successful showing) and Jean Chretien to spend the weekend discussing a coalition that could bring down the Harper Conservatives. The update, being a fiscal bill, was scheduled to be tabled on Monday, December 1, along with what’s known as opposition day (when the opposition parties get to table bills). By the end of Friday, the Liberals let out that they were potentially tabling a motion that said the House of Commons had lost confidence in the current government and that a new government could be formed within the current house, as well, fearing heating rhetoric, Harper delayed the votes by a week, postponing any non-confidence motions until December 8.

By the end of Saturday, Harper and Flaherty had removed the party funding aspect of the update, as well as the removal of the right to strike. However, it seemed too late to slow the momentum of the budding coalition.

Also over the weekend, a member of the Prime Minister’s Office released a tape recording of an NDP caucus teleconference where they discussed past attempts to work with the Bloc to topple the Conservatives. In Canada, recording a conversation is legal so long as one party involved in the conversation is aware of the recording. It is unclear whether the tape was recorded legally, so the NDP are calling for a criminal investigation. The Conservatives maintain that an invitation was mistakenly sent to one of their employees who recorded the conversation.

On Monday afternoon, the leaders of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc signed an agreement stating that the Liberals and NDP would enter into a coalition, supported on confidence votes by the Bloc, and sought to replace the Conservatives at the earliest possibility. The coalition promised that a Liberal government would take control, but would give a quarter of the cabinet seats to NDP MPs. This would represent the first coalition government in Canada since the First World War. While the Liberals and NDP combined have less seats then the Conservatives, with the support of the Bloc they represent a majority of the House and a majority of the popular vote from the past election.

Now, one of the options the Governor General has when the government loses a confidence motion is to ask if anyone else feels they can govern with the confidence of the House. This has only happened once in Canadian history.

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday parliament was in session and denigrated quickly into shouting matches and harsh allegations. While Dion and the coalition challenged Harper to face a confidence vote, the Conservatives called the coalition “traitors” for working with the “separatists” of the Bloc. The Conservatives further attacked the coalition calling it “undemocratic” and forged in “back room deals.” Quickly it was found that in 2004 the Harper Conservatives had attempted a situation almost exactly the same to attempt to oust then Prime Minister Paul Martin. Further, in 2000, the Canadian Alliance (the precursor to the Conservatives) attempted to form a coalition with the Bloc and Progressive Conservatives to oust the government.

On Tuesday the Conservatives launched radio ads attacking the coalition and on Wednesday Harper took to national television for a five minute speech in which he chastised the opposition as undemocratic and wrong for Canada. He refused to use the word “separatist” in the French translation, opting instead for the less divisive word “sovereigntist.” After his speech, which provided no new information, Stephane Dion gave a rebuttal, which suffered from low quality, arriving late to the networks and Dion’s weak English.

On Thursday (today) morning, Harper visited the Governor General, who ended her European trip early, to request to prorogue parliament. To prorogue parliament essentially means to take a time out. Everything is put on pause for a break. Typically it occurs when a government needs a bit of wind down time for the year end or summer break. No Prime Minister has ever requested to prorogue to prevent a vote of non-confidence. While being generally symbolic, it would have been within the rights of Ms. Jean to deny Mr. Harper the request and instead ask him to face the music. However, setting precedence, the request was granted and parliament was closed until January 26. The government is still able to spend money and operate, however no new bills will be presented and any spending to occur should be approved when parliament resumes.

Had the request been denied, Harper’s government would have fallen on Monday, and he would be visiting the Governor General to request an election (the second within as many months). She would then have the ability to deny that request and allow the coalition to govern.

Harper has promised to present a budget as soon as parliament resumes, the earliest a budget has ever been presented. However, the coalition claims that without “monumental changes” they will bring down the governing party at first chance.

If the government falls in January, it may be more reasonable for the Governor General to call an election, since, although they haven’t done anything yet, it will have been a longer period of time since the past election.

Current polls show little support for either the coalition of a continuance of Mr. Harper’s government. At this point, the likely consensus of Canadians is that the government should settle down and get to work. The problem lies in the best way to accomplish that, be it by coalition or a more cooperative Conservative Party. Also, rumblings have been heard from within the Conservative Party that it may be time to replace Stephen Harper as their leader.

The biggest cog so far for the coalition has been Stephane Dion. Still few people like Mr. Dion, and he has pledged to step down in May when the Liberals choose a new leader (one of Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, or Dominic LeBlanc). Canadians are also very inexperienced with coalitions as compared to their European counterparts, where coalitions are the norm in government. Many see a coalition between ideologically different parties as disastrous and they question if it will even survive until January.

So now, until January 26 Canada will be under a PR war between the Conservatives and the Coalition. Both will claim to stand for Canada and democracy. Both will launch extensive ad campaigns, and fight for the hearts of Canadians, even if the key decision lies with Mr. Harper, his cabinet, and the Governor General.