Sir Monkeypants and I were playing with the election numbers this morning (and just let me say what a huge relief it is that we are not facing the words “Stephen Harper, Prime Minister” this morning). The minority government leaves some interesting possibilities.
Although they are saying on the CBC that the minority Liberal government will likely do very well (receiving support from the Conservatives on fiscal issues, and support from the Bloc/NDP on social issues), the actual seat count is quite interesting. Say a vote happens in which the Liberals and NDP unite. Combined, they have 135 + 19 seats — 154 votes, exactly half of the house. Now suppose the Bloc and Conservatives vote against — they have 99 + 54 seats, 153 votes.
Now another important factor (I think) is that the Liberal party must appoint a Speaker Of The House. Traditionally, the governing party picks the Speaker from their own MPs (ironically, so that in the event of a tie, the vote will go their way). The Speaker only votes in the event of a tie. So if the Liberals give up one of their own to be Speaker, they’ll only have 153 votes as well (combined with the NDP).
You might think, okay, that’s a tie, so the Speaker votes, end of story. But it’s not really a tie, because there is one other vote in the house. One Independent guy was elected in B.C. I think this could be the first time ever an Independent could be the swing vote in the house. Imagine the power! It’s like being on Survivor and being wooed by two different alliances at once!
So who is this guy? He’s Chuck Cadman. He used to be a Reform MP for his riding, but after the merger of the Conservatives and the Alliance, the new party chose someone else for his riding, so he ran as an Independent and won. Assuming he still has conservative ideals, and isn’t bitter about the fact that he lost his party’s nomination, I think we can count on him to side with the Conservatives in most cases.
This tells me that Paul Martin should possibly consider not picking the Speaker from his own party. I wonder if that has ever happened before.
In any case, the next month or so should be pretty interesting!
TurtleHead 
But how often do you think the Bloc and the Tories will join forces? 🙂 Isn’t the Bloc fairly liberal in most issues?
I thought that MPs all voted on the Speaker too. Do you think the Conservatives would elect a Liberal Speaker? Hard to say…
I didn’t realise that the Speaker has to be elected by the House. Hm. I wonder if there will be any trouble with that.
I agree that it seems unlikely that the Liberal/NDP versus Conservative/Bloc situation will ever arise, but it is interesting to look at the numbers. I often think of the Bloc as being conservative-leaning since I associate them with Lucien Bouchard, but during this campaign I was surprised at how often they seemed to have more in common with the NDP.
Yesterday on the CBC they had an interview with Chuck Cadman and asked him if anyone had soliticited his support yet, fearing just such a “tie” situation I’ve described above. He said that no one had approached him, and that he feels obligated to his constituents to act as a true independent, voting on an issue by issue basis, despite his Reform/Alliance history.
Ah, it’s an interesting time!
A friend of mine works for a Liberal MP, and I was chatting with her over the weekend.
Apparently there are a few judicial recounts taking place right now, including two in BC. If they win the recounts, the NDP might take two more seats (one from the Liberals, one from the Conservatives).
She also told me that Chuck Cadman is supposedly *even more* right wing than Steven Harper. If that’s true…yikes! I doubt that the Liberals could count on his support very often.
I would say that any party would reject an attempt by the Liberals to have one of their members named to the Speaker post. They all need all of the seats that they can get.
I loved the fact that the photo used on CBC for Peter Milliken (the current Speaker) appeared to be a black-and-white one taken of him in something like the 50’s. It looked like a bad photo from an old class photo on the wall of a university building somewhere.
It’s definitely an interesting situation. I wonder who they will get to be speaker. Do you know if Peter Milliken was re-elected?
Maybe if the NDP wins the two recounts, they’ll be willing to cough up someone to be speaker. It won’t affect their influence and they’ll get some good prestige for one of their MPs.
As for Chuck, I’m not surprised to hear he’s quite right wing given that he used to be a member of the Reform party. Looks like the Liberals really can’t afford to give up a Speaker!