Is a Federal Election Looming?

Ask just about any political junkie and most of them will tell you that a federal election was all but a sure thing for this spring, myself among them. After all, the Harper government has been in power for two years now, which is quite ripe by minority government standards. What caught me by surprise though, was the likely trigger. I always kind of figured that the Conservatives, who have a little more control over the matter, would rather fall on a budget bill that was laden with tax cuts and other goodies than on something as controversial as Afghanistan.

It seems to me that for the opposition parties, little could be of greater tactical importance than starting out on the offensive. The first thing that the opposition parties will have to do is justify their decision to bring Canadians back to the polls, and frankly it would be far easier to justify bringing down the government over a controversial issue than to do so because of popular tax cuts.

Even the Liberals, who have been through a change in leadership since first having sent troops to Afghanistan have begun to speak more and more with one voice. Dion seems quite steadfast that troops are to be pulled out of combat operations in the province of Kandahar by 2009. While Jack Layton is still demanding that troops be pulled out immediately, in spite of commitments that Canada has made to NATO. Gilles Duceppe is demanding a pullout by 2009.

Whatever you might think about the mission in Afghanistan, it is a controversial subject and it's not likely anyone is going to gain ground on this issue. Perhaps that is what the PM is counting on, but then again he knows that if he wants to gain power he needs to win seats in Québec, which has a reputation for being somewhat more pacifist than other provinces. At this point though, it's all just speculation because as far as I'm aware, the PM has not yet publicly declared that the motion will be one of confidence so they could well choose to engineer their own defeat over something completely different.

Who knows? I might be completely wrong, and the election may be stalled for a while longer. After all, there is a provincial election going on right now in Alberta. Just the same, these next few weeks promise to be interesting!