FOKUS AMERIKA Büro Washington Dr. Almut Wieland-Karimi 1023 15 th Street NW,# 801 Washington, DC 20005 USA Tel.:+1 202 408 5444 Fax:+1 202 408 5537 fesdc@fesdc.org www.fesdc.org Nr. 2/ 2007 Canada’s Minority Government – Yet another Election? By Alex Münter 1 • Canadian federal politics is currently dominated by pre-election positioning as parliamentary stalemate over the environment, social policy and anti-terror policies creates increasingly acrimonious political debate. With no party able to muster a clear majority in Parliament, Canada could well face its third election in as many years. • Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has scheduled this year’s federal budget just one week before the March 26 Québec provincial election. The timing of the budget, in concert with a Québec election, is an unusual and audacious move designed to help secure a federalist victory in Québec and boost the Conservative party’s flagging fortunes in that key province. • The House of Commons must adopt the government’s budget or an election automatically takes place, so the budget will likely be an election-oriented spending plan. Mr. Harper is expected to increase federal funding to the provinces(most particularly Québec), boost military spending, battle climate change, pay down debt and cut middle-class taxes. • Mr. Harper has changed course on the issue of the environment. Not a Conservative priority during his first year in office, Mr. Harper has recognized the salience of the issue to the Canadian electorate. He has appointed a new Environment Minister – one of the government’s strongest performers and most competent ministers, John Baird. • The Prime Minister has strongly supported Canada’s participation in the war in Afghanistan, involving about 2,500 Canadian troops. He decided last year to extend Canada’s role there until February 2009. Two-thirds of Canadians believe that Canada is shouldering too much of the burden in Afghanistan and that NATO allies are doing too little. A country characterized for decades by strong majority governments, Canada will soon mark the third anniversary of unstable parliaments, go­vernments unable to implement their agendas and political parties in perpetual campaign mode. On the Road to New Elections? The January 2006 federal election replaced a shaky Liberal minority government with a Conser­vative government that is outnumbered 3:2 by the opposition parties in the House of Commons. Be­cause of a British-style first-past-the-post electoral system and no tradition of governing coalitions, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government must secure the support of at least one of the three opposition parties in order to pass legislation and stay in office. This is typically done on an issue-by-issue basis but an increa-