Canada's House of Commons. Creative Commons photo by Flickr user scazon.

With the House of Commons set to start back up again on June 2, Canadians will get their fist glimpses of the 41st Parliament. Given that the tumultuous campaign period, dramatic results, and overload of post-poll dissection nearly a month behind us, it may seem as though all the excitement in Ottawa has died down. But fear not, diligent politicos, there is no shortage of gripping storylines to follow as MPs new and old take their seats. With that in mind, here are five new trends to watch for as Parliament returns.

1. New faces

The re-opening of Parliament will also mark the debut of 108 rookie MPs. While some of them have already received a glut of press, others will be looking to make a good first impression with their constituents. With some of the youngest candidates ever to have been elected, this edition of Parliament could have a very different atmosphere. While the class of first-timers may bring a fresh new face to governance, they will also carry the mistrust that stigmatizes youth and inexperience. Prepare for a generational gap in the house.

2. New power

For five years, Stephen Harper has had to walk a tightrope over legislation, always wary that his tenuous minority government might be brought down by a non-confidence vote. While this approach helped keep Harper in office, it frustrated many of the Conservatives’ old boys. But now that he’s got his long-desired majority, the PM will be safe to push the party agenda as never could in the past. How far will the Tories go in exploiting their majority? Hard to tell, though it’s a safe bet that Harper will be a lot more willing to let his Neo-Con roots show and play to his base now that he doesn’t have to placate opposition MPs or left-of-centre voters.

3. New Jack

On one hand, the NDP’s new status as Official Opposition gives leader Jack Layton some moral clout and a more prominent soapbox from which to speak. On the other hand, with a Conservative majority in place, Layton has less power on Parliament Hill than ever. Whereas under the Harper minority, he often served as lynchpin for the government, Layton no longer has any leverage over the Tories. Will success and Stornoway change Jack Layton? Perhaps. But the 30.6 per cent of voters who backed the NDP will be looking for the same old Jack to bring more of that old stubborn idealism to a new Parliament.

4. “New Look” Liberals

After enduring their worst-ever showing at the polls, the Liberals will return to the House in a much different state than the one in which they left. The Grits will be in major rebuilding mode but, with a decidedly short-term leader, and without old pillars like Gerard Kennedy and Ken Dryden, it remains to be seen how easily or quickly a rejuvenated Liberal party can be established. In the interim, their main challenge will be to stay organized and maintain a noticeable presence in Parliament as they adapt  to their new role as Canada’s third party. Watch for new chief Bob Rae to make a big splash as he takes advantage of his long-awaited leadership role, and tries to claw back some clout for his maligned Liberals. He will be eager to get the party back into the headlines for reasons other than their historic loss.

5. New allegiances

At times in the past few years there was a cooperative all-against-one atmosphere amongst Canada’s opposition parties. There was even talk, though not as much as the Conservatives would have voters believe, that the NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Liberals might unite under a coalition banner to take down the Conservative minority. The Conservative majority means that a coalition would do little good now but, with the Liberals having been decimated, and the Bloc virtually out of politics, a party merger isn’t out of the question. It’s happened before, as Harper can attest to. Even without a merger, we may, at the very least, see some Liberal and Bloc MPs jumping ship to join the bigger parties. Though often scorned, crossing the floor has become a post-election tradition in Canada’s Parliament.

Did Michael Ignatieff's pro-Iraq war stance doom the Liberals? Creative Commons photo by Flickr user WmPitcher.

Listening to Michael Ignatieff address his few remaining dispirited supporters on election night, I couldn’t help but picture the room dotted with the ghosts of Baghdad. I wonder whether Ignatieff saw them too, like so many Banquos’ ghosts in the room that night as he took responsibility for his party’s dismal showing in the 2011 federal election.

Having since resigned his leadership, it may seem to rude to kick him now that he’s down. But the colossal scale of the Liberal defeat in this election can’t be fully understood unless we talk honestly about Michael Ignatieff’s career as an intellectual and politician—and the Iraq War remains central to both.

Ignatieff’s career as a Canadian politician is bound up in the war: he was first courted by backroom Liberals in the spring of 2004, as an iconic “serious” small-L liberal. (American liberalism was entering what would be years of toxic, self-destructive debate about whether “good liberals” could oppose the war.) For this type of centrist liberal, supporting the invasion of Iraq was the “serious” choice, contrasted with the dreamy foolishness of pacifism.

Paul Martin’s government, terrified that the brief moment of spine Jean Chrétien had shown by avoiding direct Canadian involvement in the war, was terrified about the state of relations with the Bush government. Ignatieff’s recruitment was a signal to the Americans and the Canadian elite that the Liberal Party could still be trusted, despite Chrétien’s heresy. It was more about distancing the Liberals from left-wing policies than the war itself.

Ignatieff wasted no time. His landmark speech to the Liberal Party in 2005 was full of rhetorical slaps at the left, but here’s my favourite, in retrospect:

“…many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

Results by Riding. Map by Skyscraper Forum user "Vid." Click to see more

It was only a few years ago that elections in Canada were mostly predictable. For a few solid years, we could bet on Liberals, and some NDP candidates, sweeping the country’s biggest cities. We knew the Conservatives would sweep Alberta, take most of Saskatchewan and dominate much of British Columbia. In Quebec, the Bloc Québécois seemed destined to win the lion’s share of ridings, including a healthy mix of urban and rural areas.

Elections were, for those few years, decided based on pockets of ridings across the country that swung back and forth between, for the most part, Liberals and Conservatives. So when the Liberals had a stranglehold on Ontario during the ‘90s, and benefited from that now defunct divided right, that meant they won government.

But then, slowly, the Conservatives screwed it all up for their rivals. They made those mystical “inroads” into various suburban communities, mid-sized cities and even parts of Quebec. All of a sudden, most of Ontario was voting Conservative, and the Liberals found themselves scrambling to maintain their big city leads. Stephen Harper’s team stopped growing in Quebec, but they managed to win more of the Atlantic, save for Newfoundland and Labrador, and even picked up a few more seats in B.C.

Then the writ dropped in late April of this year. That’s when all the traditional dichotomies fell apart. Suddenly, cities weren’t voting Liberal at all, with a very few exceptions. And Quebec wasn’t voting for the Bloc. High-profile MPs from across party lines—foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon, prominent Liberals Martha Hall-Findlay and Glen Pearson, and virtually every Bloc MP—fell by the wayside. Oh, as did Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe, both of whom were supposed to at least save their own bacon.

Indeed, the 41st parliament’s electoral map looks a little strange. The NDP’s roots were in rural Saskatchewan, and decades of elections helped carve out an urban base, but all of a sudden the party has an enormous, if unstable, Quebec wing. The Conservatives don’t remember what it’s like to have an MP in Toronto, but now they have several in the biggest city going. And the Liberals, who might have at least counted on popular MPs winning based on reputation, are now much lonelier in parliament.

What does all this mean? The next time the country heads to the federal polls, it means parties will have to fight campaigns in some hugely unfamiliar territory. Save for the Conservatives out west, parties can’t rely on many traditional strongholds. The urban vote is split, as is the rural vote. Barring an unprecedented resurrection, Quebec voters will have only federalists to elect.

And further, many popular incumbents aren’t safe. On May 2, 47 percent of MPs won a majority of votes in their riding. Traditionally, those might be considered safe seats. But as Alice Funke of punditsguide.ca points out, a large margin of victory in one election doesn’t guarantee any victory at all in the next election. Her stats suggest that 35 seats that weren’t very close in 2008—that is, where the winner had at least 20 percent on the second-place candidate—changed hands this time around.

As exciting and, eventually, unpredictable as this year’s election turned out to be, it really just laid the groundwork for the next trip to the polls. Whenever that happens, we’ll find out whether or not this redrawn electoral map is for real—or a historical footnote. The only thing that’s certain is that it would be silly to guess what will happen next.

At various times in the run-up to Canada’s 41st trip to the polls, the Conservative Party was the target of accusations—most of them confirmed—which should, in theory, have been sufficient to bring down any government. There was the scandal when Bev Oda directed the doctoring of ministry documents to deny funding to humanitarian group Kairos* and then misled parliament about the origins of that change. Then, there was the revelation that the Conservatives had, under the guise of preparing for the G8 conference in 2010, provided slush money to valued Conservative ridings like industry minister Tony Clement’s, some of which were not even affiliated with the conference. That scandal was followed shortly by an announcement from Auditor General Sheila Fraser saying that a Conservative report on the G8 and G20 summits had used a quote of hers out of context. Way out of context.

(Fraser had, in 2010, said that the Liberal party’s security expenditures in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks had been “spent as they were intended to be spent.” The Conservatives’ report, however, claimed that Fraser had made that statement in reference to their own party’s summit spending, supposedly absolving them of the slush fund allegations.)

On top of those scandals, of course, there was also the spectre of the Conservatives’ recent contempt of Parliament charge, which had been predicted to be a pall that would loom over the entire campaign.

And yet, just when it was beginning to look as though the Tories’ controversies would have a significant impact, they didn’t. Harper was re-elected, Clement was re-elected, Oda was re-elected, the Conservatives were handed a majority, and any scandals surrounding the party seemed to quickly dissipate, having had little to no effect on the election’s outcome.

So let’s take the long view: political scandals aren’t always as toxic as they may seem. But, with that being the case, it is absolutely worth questioning why Brosseau has undergone so much public scrutiny in the last few days.

Relative to allegations of partisan slush funds, lying about Auditor General reports, and directly disobeying parliamentary law, questions about the vacation plans and postsecondary achievements of opposition backbenchers seem less earth-shattering. And yet while Canada’s media outlets are abuzz with Brosseau updates, the scandals surrounding the Tories have not only gone away but, in retrospect, were scarcely this well-discussed even in the thick of the election run-up.

It is unfair to politicians and voters alike to suggest, as some commentators have, that Brosseau is facing this criticism simply because she is a woman, or young, or attractive. Yes, Brosseau is an outsider on Parliament Hill, but in the wake of a race which saw massive turnover in ridings all over the country, it is difficult to make the case that Canadians are opposed to seeing new faces in government.

Instead, it seems more likely that Brosseau is merely a hot story in the post-election news vacuum, a victim of circumstance rather than prejudice. She’s a convenient foil in a slow part of the news cycle.

During this comparatively inactive post-election period for domestic political news, the media and the public have the time to pick apart cases such as Brosseau’s. Harper and the Tories, meanwhile, had the benefit of having their scandals revealed during the campaign. Already flooded with elections coverage and mudslinging from all sides, Canadians found it harder to keep up with the scandal stories as they developed.

As bigger stories begin to float in again, Brosseau and her introductory mini-scandal will eventually be pushed out of the spotlight. What is required in the interim is a little perspective. Brosseau’s is not a major scandal—certainly not when compared to the recent scandals surrounding other politicians. If the Canadian public wants to examine political issues with such depth, and it should, the big issues, the ones that were largely glossed over during the campaign, ought to be first in line. In time, they will be.

*Disclosure: Kairos is an occasional advertiser in the print edition of This. – ed.

Last night’s election was extraordinary in more ways than we would have thought possible a few weeks ago. Canadian politics has been shaken up in a serious, permanent way, and this election will be studied for years to come. As we start to digest the result and its consequences, there are some clearly identifiable changes and trends at work:

1. A Majority Conservative Government

This is crashingly obvious, but the 166-seat showing for the Conservative Party last night was more decisive than anyone expected five weeks, or even 24 hours, in advance of the polls. A Harper majority represents a true departure from any Canadian politics of the past; we are in uncharted territory. The loss of the moderating influence of a majority opposition gives the Harper conservatives truly free rein for the first time, and given this government’s conduct as a minority, we should expect a swift and substantial turn to the right. Need an example? Last night, with results still trickling in, Heritage Minister James Moore told the CBC that the government would move right away to abolish public funding for political campaigns. The Conservatives now have both hands firmly on the levers of power, and they are going to move. Fast.

2. The NDP Ascendance

The pollsters predicted a good showing for the NDP, but again, the idea that the New Democrats could take more than 100 seats would have been laughable as recently as a week ago. Yet here we are, Jack Layton bound for Stornoway with 101 NDP MPs at his back. Layton will make a skilled and energetic opposition leader, and will undoubtedly use his bully pulpit to solidify the NDP’s newfound national base. The “Orange Wave” phenomenon is, for many progressives, a silver lining of this election, but the grim irony, as every pundit observed last night, is that Layton has less leverage now as leader of the opposition than he had as leader of the third party in a minority government. This election has to be counted the NDP’s greatest success to date — but still a qualified one.

3. Twilight of the Liberals

There were plenty of factors that led to yesterday’s electoral result, but if you were looking for one doorstep to lay it at, the Liberal Party’s would be the one. Their unprecedentedly poor showing in the polls echoes, in sentiment if not in absolute numbers, the trouncing the Progressive Conservatives received in 1993; the added humiliation of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff losing his own riding, and then failing to resign before resigning anyway, has shaken the party to its roots. Speculation about merging with the NDP is probably premature but no longer an outright joke. Rumours of the Liberal Party’s death are exaggerated; still, even contemplating such a thing would have been unthinkable a year ago. The Liberals pulled the trigger on this election — though, having found the government in contempt of parliament, it’s not clear they could have reasonably chosen otherwise — and their strategists must have felt there was a reason to do so. The fact that they were so terribly wrong is going to prompt plenty of Grit soul-searching.

4. The Smashing of the Bloc

The apocalyptic showing of the Bloc Québécois spells the end of the separatist movement at the federal level; it’s hard to see how it can be otherwise. Reduced from 47 to just four MPs, with their leader defeated in his own riding, and swamped by the NDP in Quebec, the Bloc is over as a parliamentary force. That’s important because the party since 1993 had been a spoiler, changing the electoral calculus necessary to take the House of Commons. That fourth party, wielding many more seats than its popular vote would indicate, had been a keystone of the minority government structure that has prevailed since 2004. Their decimation will change the math for every election to come. What this means for the sovereigntist movement in general is unclear, too — will it dampen the appetite for another referendum, or embolden the Parti Québécois provincially? Again, who knows? We’re off the map here.

5. The Greens Take the Field

As special-interest party the Bloc exits stage left, the election of Elizabeth May as the first Green Party MP ushers in a new parliamentary voice. This was an important symbolic win for May and for the Greens, and perhaps an important substantive win, too. Being the only Green in the house of commons will hardly make May a power broker, but it’s a foothold, and May is known for being an articulate rhetoritician; she’ll make hay from even the sliver of Question Period time this seat grants her. Whether that translates to growth for the Greens remains to be seen, but if that federal election campaign per-vote subsidy is taken away — now a near-certainty — the Greens stand to lose a big chunk of the funding that helped put May in her seat. Have they built a big enough party machine in the last few years (and can they continue to build it for the next four or five) to do it on their own?

6. The Pollsters Are Jokes

The 2008 election was bad enough for the pollsters, who saw their accuracy deteriorate markedly. This time around was even worse. While they all saw the Orange Wave coming, no major pollster predicted the Conservative majority; none grasped the extent of the Liberals’ crashing fortunes, and the utter collapse of the Bloc was barely on their radar. And the media, hungry for numbers, babbled every poll projection regardless. Susan Delacourt of the Toronto Star predicted that way back at the beginning of the campaign when she provided a lesson learned from previous campaigns: “All media will declare that they’re going to not report on polls in the same old way and will break that promise by Day 2.” Bingo.

7. Voters Still Aren’t Voting

Turnout increased a bit this election, bobbing back above 60 percent. But electoral participation remains at distressing lows. Some blame our antiquated first-past-the-post system; others disillusionment with partisan incivility; or perhaps it’s that Kids Today don’t vote in elections. Whatever the reason, it’s a discouraging trend, and more discouraging is that there is no indication that most of these factors will improve. Electoral reform is off the table; a Conservative government has no interest in proportional representation. The U.S.-style attack politics that has metastisized in Ottawa will continue; the Conservatives slathered it on thick and were rewarded with a majority, and that lesson will stick. Perhaps younger people can be enticed to the ballot box by a resurgent NDP, which has traditionally enjoyed their support. Yesterday’s slight uptick in turnout could be the start of an upward trend — or it could be a bump on the long slide downhill.

In any case, it looks like we have four to five years of a Conservative government during which we can contemplate all these questions — and many more besides.

This year’s debate will include a new format, with six-minute one-on-one debates, followed by a 12-minute round for all four leaders.

There’s been much ado over the decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the debate. Debate reform has since taken over our country’s editorial pages. The inconsistency of including May in 2008 but shutting her out this time has angered people even beyond the Greens’ voter base. There just doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to how the Canadian debates are structured or who participates. But there has been some serious study of the debates, and some recommendations worth reading.

During her time at as a research assistant at Queen’s University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy, Michelle Rogers authored a 60-page report on the Canadian federal election debates.

It’s well worth a read. The study, also embedded below, examines the history of TV debates, compares policies worldwide and tackles the tough questions of ensuring debates that are both democratic and realistic. It details the Lortie Commission (an ill-fated attempt to solve these question 20 years ago) and dives into questions like if the Bloc should be included in English-language debates.

Rogers comes up with some interesting recommendations, though you may not like them all. A sampling:

• Televised leaders debates should be entrenched in both the Canada Elections Act and Broadcasting Act.
• Federal party funding for election campaigns should be contingent upon full participation in leaders debates.
• Party inclusion criteria should be three of these four: 5 percent support in national polls; a sitting MP; a full roster of candidates across the nation; and federal funding.
• A series of debates should take place on national and regional themes, broadcast on local channels.
• There should be two debates in the final weeks of the campaign: one with all qualifying party leaders, the other featuring the Prime Minister and the party leader from the highest polling opposition party.
• The use of social networking platforms should be exploited to broaden the reach and appeal of election debates.

Whether you agree with her recommendations or not, Roger’s report makes for an interesting read and may help you reach an informed opinion on what’s become a key part of our elections.

Compiled by Dylan C. Robertson & Victoria Salvas

This election means death. Not only have Ottawa scrums, filibusters, and drawn-out committees been killed, pieces of legislation making their way through parliament have all met a harsh end as politicians take to the campaign trail.

Before a bill becomes law, it is introduced in either the House of Commons or the Senate. Subsequently the bill goes through readings where it is introduced, given a number code and debated. It can be read again, amended then passed, from the House to the Senate but only becomes law if it is given Royal Assent by the Governor General.

But bills are stopped in their tracks when an election is called. We tracked down the people who pioneered five of the most important bills that died on the order paper when the writ dropped. We asked what they thought of the abrupt death of their projects and if they’ll attempt rebooting them.

While government bills (titled C- with a number under 201) can be reintroduced at an advanced phase with the consent of the House, private members’s bills and motions are entered in a lottery to determine their Order of Precedence, meaning the order in which they can be re-introduced. Only 30 members per session have their motions considered, although the list is replenished if all motions are dealt with.

Here’s a look at the five bills that may or may not rise again:

1. Cheaper HIV Drugs:

Bill C-393, An Act to amend the Patent Act (drugs for international humanitarian purposes), was introduced by then NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis in May 2009. After she left to run for mayor of Winnipeg, the bill was adopted by another NDP MP, Paul Dewar.

The bill, which came to be known as “the AIDS drug bill” would’ve allowed generic drug makers to supply their products to developing countries, so they could fight diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, and help the world’s 15 million AIDS victims. Apotex Inc. had promised to make much-needed antiretrovirals for children, should the legislaiton pass. The bill, which was passed earlier this month by the House of Commons, was sabotaged by its review committee and then by the Conservatives’s attempt to effectively whip the senate, feeling it would hinder Big Pharma.

“It’s pretty outrageous,” said Richard Elliott, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. “This bill had a lot of potential, and we pushed really hard to get it to pass. We had a lot of support from MPs in all parties.”

Dewar said he plans to reintroduce the bill. “We have to abolish the senate though, first,” he laughed. “That’s my plan. Well I’m just joking… but not really.” Dewar noted the bill was lucky to be successfully transferred after Wasylycia-Leis’s leave, as it is not an automatic process. “It was revived when actual co-operation broke out in the House of Commons,” he said. “Through unanimous consent, I was able to pick the bill up. “I’m ready, able, and willing to carry it forward after the election,” said Dewar, who hopes it ranks high in the order or precedence. “There’s so much public support for it. I don’t think they could get away with this again.”

2. Civilizing parliament:

Private Member’s Motion M-517 proposed a reform of Question Period. Conservative MP Michael Chong’s pet project aimed to civilize parliament’s most savage — and ironically unproductive — 45 minutes each sitting day.

The motion sought to strengthen how much discipline a speaker can give, lengthen the alloted time for each question and answer, and aimed at “examining the convention that the minister questioned need not respond.”

“Parliament needs to be reformed and I think the reform of parliament should begin with the reform of Question Period,” said Chong. If passed, the motion would have also stipulated who should be asked questions, most notably dedicating Wednesday exclusively for questions to the Prime Minister, and requiring ministers be present for two of the other four days. Chong noted that he was listed in the Order of Precedence for the first time in six years, and said he would re-table his motion in the rare chance he was listed for the next session. “I’m disappointed that the committee didn’t have a chance to deal with it before the election.”

Chong explained that while many members add motions and bills to the order paper solely to generate publicity for an issue, he fully intends to enact this reform. “I’ll continue to work on this issue through whatever mechanisms are available to me after the election,” said Chong. “Because this problem isn’t going away and I think Canadians want it to be addressed.”

3. Protecting trans rights:

Bill C-389, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression), was a private member’s bill sponsored by NDP MP Bill Siksay. Introduced in early 2009, the legislation would have make it illegal to discriminate based on gender identity, and aimed to protect transgender individuals by amending the Human Rights Act.

These amendments would have also been made to the Criminal Code, rendering these acts of discrimination hate crimes. The House passed the bill in February, against Stephen Harper’s wishes. However, the fact that it received “unanimous support from the Bloc, several Conservatives, and the Liberals bodes well for the next parliament” says Siksay. The MP is confident in the future of the bill; passing it again will demonstrate the governments’ “commitment to human rights.”

4. Improving First Nations’ water:

Bill S-11 Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act, was introduced in May 2010 and would have developed federal regulations for governing water provision, disposal and quality standards in First Nations communities.

An issue that has received much attention recently is the issue of providing First Nations reserves with safe drinking water. An assessment from 2001-2001 found that three quarters of the drinking water systems in First Nations communities were at risk.

Despite the dire situation on many reserves, many First Nations leaders criticized the bill, feeling they were left out of the creating of the legislation and not offered funding to get it off the ground. The Assembly of First Nations felt that the bill presented lofty goals but sparse plans for financial investment and support, which in the long run, could leave reserves in worse condition.

5. Copyright reform:

Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Copyright Act, was the third attempt at copyright reform killed by an election call, dragging on a 14-year effort.

The bill sparked controversy for attempting to criminalize the use and promotion of software that circumvents digital locks, generating high-profile criticism, a minister’s comment that critics were “radical extremists,” and an indutry-led astroturfing campaign. But the bill also aimed at tackling online piracy, and making it legal to transfer music from CDs to iPods.

MP Tony Clement, who introduced the bill as Minister of Industry, told us he plans to reintroduce the bill if re-elected. “It’s just another example of important legislation that has now been discontinued because of the opposition parties passing a motion of non-confidence,” said Clement. “This is a very necessary piece of legislation to help regularize certain habits of consumers and also protect artists from wealth-destroying pirates. “I’m hoping that if we get a majority government, we can actually concentrate on the issues like C-32 and privacy protection and other aspects of the digital economy.”

Parliament reflected in a skyscraper. Creative Commons photo by Vince Alongi.

The governing Conservatives are about to table a budget that spends many billions of dollars. It sets the agenda of virtually every government department and it means a lot to anyone who pays taxes in Canada. But when the budget is introduced by the finance minister tomorrow, the prevailing Ottawa groupthink says it’s not about the money.

Instead, we all wonder: will the budget trigger an election?

That the next few days will have nothing to do with the details of the budget and everything to do with an election that seems inevitable when a minority parliament makes the decisions. The spring session, much like the fall session on the other side of the parliamentary calendar, presents a window of opportunity for opposition parties in the mood for an election. It might well be impossible to avoid those twice-annual tugs of war, where jockeying and horse trading rule the day, until one party leads a majority government—or, as we call it in Canada, a friendly dictatorship.

Indeed, during the majority governments of not so long ago, elections happened when the government wanted them to happen, or when it ran out of time and had no other choice.

But now, parliament revolves around potential election triggers, and Budget Day is like a gold rush for election speculators.

Not long after the crack of dawn tomorrow, hundreds of journalists will enter an hours-long lockup at Ottawa’s grand old train station and study the details of the budget documents. They’ll pen their first stories while cooped up, and no doubt place final bets on the big question: election or not? None will emerge until the finance minister rises in the House of Commons to detail the government’s plans.

When he rises to speak, that first raft of budget stories will hit the wires and the secret will be out.

Meanwhile, outside of the House of Commons, the finance minister’s opposition critics and their leaders will already have reporters badgering them for their comment—not on the details of the budget, of course, but on whether or not it’s enough to postpone an election.

It all happens so fast. So are those questions, asked so soon and with such demand, fair to politicians who have a huge federal budget sitting in front of them?

“It’s completely unfair,” says David Akin, Sun Media’s national bureau chief. “I suppose you have to ask. But [politicians] seem to be punished for not having a decent answer.”

Don Newman, on the other hand, says those questions are unavoidable these days.

“When the embargo is lifted, political parties flood the foyer,” says Newman, the chair of Canada 2020 and erstwhile dean of budget reporting—he covered 30 throughout his career. “And government ministers do the same.”

It’s a race to get the message out, and there’s only time for basic talking points.

And then, Akin says, finance minister Jim Flaherty becomes chief budget salesman. “The government will put an immediate sell on the budget,” Akin says. “The finance minister will do the rounds on the television networks, and he’ll do op-eds the next day.”

The Big Thing

Akin defends Ottawa’s focus on the budget.

“The budget document itself is, I would say, the most important document a government will produce in a given year—money makes things happen,” he says. And that importance is confirmed by local papers, Akin says, the editors of which decide which story their readers should see on the front page.

“Those editors, who are very closely connected to their local communities, are making that decision,” Akin says. “Editors vote with their front pages, and they think it’s the most important story year in and year out, just based on the play it gets.”

It wasn’t always like that, says Toronto Star senior political writer Susan Delacourt. In years past, she never had time to cover budgets. That’s because there were larger stories in the nation’s capital.

“It’s my overall impression that budget lockups have become such large affairs because everything else is not,” she wrote in an email. “The only big things the federal government does these days is either spend money or cut taxes.”

Delacourt said the “big things” of the past included national debates around the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords—governance based on ideas, not just money. But now, Delacourt says, the budget is just about “the only show in town.”

Whither long-term planning?

Newman says the current government would do well to avoid planning budgets around potential elections, since it leads to short-term planning.

“I’m a little disappointed that politicians and journalists have disregarded fixed election date laws,” he says, adding that governments “would have to have more far-reaching plans.”

The current government passed fixed-date legislation in 2006, and it didn’t last a single election cycle before Prime Minister Stephen Harper called an election in September 2008. If he were to follow that law to the letter, Harper could work toward a four-year plan where each budget was but one part of the longer-term whole that he could present to parliament on an annual basis.

But even that scenario might not silence all the election talk, because the fixed election date law cannot overrule a vote of non-confidence in the House of Commons. And since none of the opposition parties would likely buy in to Harper’s four-year plan without conditions, elections would always be just on the other side of a Commons vote.

Horse races as shiny objects

No matter what, the budget usually finds support in one corner of parliament or another, and election speculation is put off for another year—as is much of the reporting about the budget itself. And that’s the annoying part, according to Maclean’s columnist Aaron Wherry.

“You could do weeks of stories about what’s in the budget. It’s insane to think that all that can be covered in a day,” says Wherry, who recently wrote about the declining relevance of the House of Commons. “It should be the start of the coverage, but we all shrug our shoulders and walk away.”

That’s because more incisive reporting is relatively rare in the world of minority government, which is very much a zero-sum game where every story has a winner and loser.

“Most stories are ‘X’ versus ‘Y’. It’s entertaining, but I don’t know what people are supposed to take away from that,” Wherry says. “We don’t spend a lot of time explaining what’s going on.”

Voter recall—known in political science as a citizens’ initiative—is best known for taking place in the basketcase democracy that is California.

In 2003 the “Dump Davis” campaign was launched a year into Gray Davis’ second term in office. Davis, who described the initiative as a “right-wing power grab,” was voted out after an electricity crisis, an ongoing financial crisis, and a public image crisis.

The $66 million recall — the second state-level initiative in US history (most are mayoral) — resulted in a snap election with many candidates including Arianna Huffington, Gary Coleman, and ultimate determinator Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Last year, Illinoisans did some legal fidgeting allowing them to do likewise after facing gubernatorial scumbag Rod Blagojevich. Angry Wisconsinites might follow suit.

Last week, in the run-up to Ontario’s election this October, one Progressive Conservative MPP floated the idea of implementing recall legislation. Although the proposal’s likely just a distraction in a campaign that’s had little substance, the idea has been gaining some traction. One candidate in Toronto’s recent mayoral campaign proposed a similar initiative.

While some commentators have shown interest, others have decried the proposal as an extra apparatus for the Tea Party’s populist toolkit. NDP MPP Peter Kormos dismissed the initiative as being among “interesting things that come from the right.”

Ballot recalls aren’t too popular in Canada. The Albertan government passed the Recall Act in April 1936 but rescinded it 19 months later after public support dropped. A bill to reintroduce the act had its first reading last year.

British Columbia is the only province where voter recall is an option. It was implemented in 1995 by the provincial NDP after a 1991 referendum, but it’s much more stringent than American legislation.

In California, a successful recall petition requires an number of signatories equal to a percentage of those who voted in the last election for the office in question: 12 percent for statewide offices and 20 percent for local senators. Because only half of registered voters actually voted in the 2003 election, only six percent of registered Californians were needed to oust Davis.

Luckily, a voter recall is much harder to stage in BC, where the required levee is 40 percent of all of registered voters — regardless of whether they even voted. Not that an actual recall is necessary. The threat alone can shake things up.

Last summer, anti-HST activists mounted a recall campaign in an attempt to oust Liberal MLAs in ridings with shaky support. What resulted was a premier’s resignation and a related NDP coup, described by one voter as an “internal recall.”

If it is implemented in Ontario, Alberta, or elsewhere, let’s hope voter recall produces better results for democracy than its antithesis.

This week the Green Party launched an anti-attack ad criticizing other parties for their sensational advertisements. The meta attack ad aims to benefit from Canadians’ supposed distaste for ad hominem vilification and mudslinging.

It’s commonly believed that the first attack ad was the iconic 1964 “Daisy Girl” commericial, which threatens American voters with the prospect of nuclear war (another long-held American political tradition). Attack ads returned in 1988 with the George HW Bush “revolving door” spot suggesting a candidate’s prison reforms led to an increase in violent crime.

That same year featured Canada’s NAFTA election, in which the Liberal party ran ads suggesting Canadian sovereignty was at stake. You can read about it in a CBC interactive feature documenting 10 prominent attack ads from the English-speaking world.

A 1993 Kim Campbell ad mocked Jean Chretien’s facial Bell’s palsy. Political figures decried the ad as “political desperation” and “totally inappropriate and in poor taste.” It’s a shame the same terms apply to today’s political discourse.

Conservative Senator Doug Finley, a “genius of political attack ads,” was interviewed by the Globe and Mail last month. Responding to those who believe negative ads turn off voters, his response: “Politics is an adversarial business. Kellogg’s doesn’t make their money by telling everybody General Foods are a great product.”

There’s little consensus on the effectiveness of attack ads. A 2007 psychological study suggests that although negative political ads make us want to turn away, we remember their negative messages. Some studies suggest negative and positive ads both have the same effectiveness.

Attack ads have made a lot of inroads south of the border. A study of the 2008 US presidential campaigns found that almost all McCain ads were “negative,” with many focusing on Obama’s personality over his politics. It’s gotten to the point where the hilarious “demon sheep” ad was actually used to sway voters, before it went viral and generated a spinoff.

In the past five years, attack ads have gained worldwide prominence.

An ad from the 2006 Mexican election compares one candidate with Hugo Chavez. Australia, a country with some really broken political discourse, saw the rise of attack ads in last year’s national election — including one monumentally stupid commercial.

Although such ads remain uncommon in UK elections, there’s been a recent increase in Europhobic ads — the word works for both definitions — attacking EU policy by airing stereotypes of continental neighbours.

TV ads in the 2006 São Paolo mayoral race speculated on a candidate’s supposed homosexuality. The tactic is eerily similar to a homophobic Tamil-language radio ad that aired in Toronto’s recent mayoral election.

The rollin’-in-dough Conservative party financed comparatively civil attack ads with funds allegedly arranged through the now infamous “in and out scandal” (that ironically focused on accountability and transparency). While it’s tempting to pin attack ads on one party or political persuasion, the Liberals, Bloc and NDP take part too.

These ads have repercussions on our democracy as a whole. In the 2008 election, the Conservatives made the daft choice of posting their pooping puffin ad online. The ad itself was intellectually (and otherwise) insulting. But more troubling: the Toronto Star ran a frontpage story about it.

Rick Mercer’s 2009 rant on the issue makes some pretty poignant points (and his parody ads are pretty funny, too). Attacks ads are bad for democracy. Instead of helping us debate serious issues as a society, it creates poisons our discourse with character assassination, the politics of fear, and a culture of sound bites over substance.