New Speaker of the House

The house has just replaced Peter Milliken as speaker of the house with a 32 year old MP from Regina. Andrew Sheer, Tory MP originally elected to the house in 2006, says he's going to bring a more "friendly manner" to the house of commons.

New Speaker, saying hi.

I for one found it kind of interesting to see the race turn out. There's several reasons behind that. Firstly, the speaker of the house is kind of important. The last one found the Harper Government in contempt several times. The last occasion was the pretext for the watershed May election.

Secondly, and this builds off of the first point, it was interesting to see the people who would be filling the last speaker's shoes. Peter Milliken served for ten years as the Speaker, which is the longest anyone has cared to do this. By and large, the candidates were Tories, and fairly green. There was Denise Savoie, the only woman and the only NDP candidate to run, and apparently she came quite close after Sheer.

Personal note - she is the MP for my old riding of Victoria. I was totally rooting for her.

Thirdly, the race is pretty much a huge popularity contest. Anyone can nominate themselves to run, but it's a vote in the house that determines it. A free vote, not determined by party discipline. So the results can be interesting. Usually it's the most respected MP who gets chosen. In other words, it's the most popular girl in school who becomes Student Body President.

As speaker of the house, I'll return civility to the house of commons! :)

And like the student body president election campaigns you probably only remember dimly, the candidates all said nearly the same thing: "I will try and return civility and decorum to the House of Commons."

According to the candidates, the workings of the house has become something of a bear-pit, except less polite. Everyone has been bemoaning the lack of civility in the political process. I don't know how much of this is true. If you go by old politicians' anecdotes, the Parliament of old was a chummy place, with respectful debate, followed by beer and golfing. Back slaps all round!

The one we've ended up with, Sheer, is no different. He says going to restore a degree of friendliness to the House of Commons. That would be quite the accomplishment.

Plus he can write about it in his yearbook! :)

I'd like to see if a rookie MP with only a couple of years experience to his name will be able to pull this off. He has been in parliament since 2006, and he's been involved with the party since the days of the Canadian Alliance.

But Milliken, to draw a parallel, was an MP for 13 years before getting the position. That's a really long time in politics, long enough to build relationships, and learn procedure.

Sheer, as far as I can see is a backbencher with only five years of experience. Are these advantages? He better have a good plan to restore civility to the house, otherwise they'll eat him alive.

Long time since the last post. I have been on vacation. Then I got a job - the director of a small news department in a college radio station.

My last post was on April 29th. Since then, a blue tide has washed over Canada, completely to the surprise of most pundits and commentators. The problem with Canadian politics is that everybody goes into an election with the idea that they know how things are going to turn out: that nothing ever changes, and that nothing interesting is likely to happen this time around.

Well.

So we have now four-and-a-half years of Conservative Majority government to look forward to, with an NDP opposition. As much as I was overjoyed to see the NDP break the 100 seat mark, I was in shock over the majority. I was also flabbergasted (I love this word) to see the Bloc Quebecois eliminated, and the liberals reduced by half.

I think it's important to remember that the liberals in many of the lost ridings didn't loose by all that much. Some places it amounted to about a couple hundred votes. One riding, it was something like four votes that determined the outcome. However, in this first past the post system, it doesn't really matter that it was four votes or four thousand. They still lost.

So Iggy is gone, and Bob Rae is in as Liberal interim leader. Maybe this should have happened much earlier. The received wisdom here in Ontario is that that would have been a suicide move by the Liberals, because everyone in Ontario remembers when he was premier in the early 90s. But I wonder if it really would have been that big a deal. He could not have been worse than Iggy. Rae kept his seat in the election, which is more than you can say for Ignatieff. For that matter, so did Stephane Dion.

Let's say this for Rae - he's a seasoned politician, and very able man. He has political baggage in Ontario from twenty years ago, but that doesn't necessarily write him off as a leader. 

Now the Liberals are pissed that the NDP are evicting Ralph Goodale from his office in the centre block of parliament. Which means that they've been reduced to playing musical chairs, and being sore losers at it to boot.

To change subjects, I'm dismayed at the Harper majority. I am not looking forward to what he has planned for the next four years. While he said that he wasn't going to touch gay marriage or rights of women, I say all bets are off. He has a majority in the house and the senate (yes, that matters now), so he can basically do whatever he likes.