Last updated: September 16, 2010 6:15 pm
Emma Godmere — CUP Ottawa Bureau Chief
OTTAWA (CUP) — As federal politicians prepare to return to Parliament Hill on Sept. 20, tensions are bound to be high.
Over the course of their three-month break, politicians ensured multiple hot-button issues — including the census, the long-gun registry and fighter jets — jumped to the forefront of political buzz and remained on the minds of Canadians all summer.
But it hasn’t just been all talk. These hot topics, and the debates they have ignited, have impacted the political climate in the country, according to University of Ottawa political science professor Patrick Fafard.
“On balance, it was a comparatively good summer for Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and a bad summer for Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” Fafard said in an email.
Fafard, a Canadian policy expert, believes that Ignatieff’s cross-country bus tour gave the Opposition leader good press and united the party behind him. Conversely, the heightened focus on police presence at the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto in June left Harper with international image concerns.
“This was followed by the somewhat surprising amount of attention paid to the decision to end the mandatory long-form census and, more recently, the fighter aircraft decision,” said Fafard.
Canadian citizens and media have taken particular interest in these two issues, after the Conservative government made the move this summer to replace the required long-form survey with an optional questionnaire for the 2011 census and announced their plan to spend $16 billion on 65 F-35 fighter jets for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Opposition parties have criticized both decisions; most recently, Ignatieff called for a review of the Conservatives’ planned defence spending and the issue was brought up at a House of Commons defence committee hearing on Sept. 15.
These two issues are still pertinent enough to become lively points of debate in the House of Commons, Fafard said, but won’t likely upstage the more recently talked-about long gun registry debate.
“The flashpoint is Bill C-391, a private member’s bill that would scrap the long gun registry,” said Fafard.
Canadians are currently required to register rifles and other long guns with the government. The Liberals and Bloc Québécois support keeping the system in place, while the Conservatives support the bill’s intent to end the registry.
“What is most interesting is the behaviour of the MPs from the NDP who are not required to vote as a block on the bill; the vote will be close,” said Fafard, who added that MPs are scheduled to vote on whether to send the bill to third reading or not on Sept. 22.
Despite the fact that the NDP allows its members to vote as they choose on private member’s bills, party leader Jack Layton told reporters on Sept. 14 that he’s certain an “overwhelming majority” of caucus members will vote against the bill in enough numbers to defeat it.
Fafard went on to suggest that these short-term hot topics will likely continue to take precedence over long-term issues, which he considers troubling.
“As practiced in Canada by the Conservatives, minority government has meant, with some exceptions, governing for the short term or governing with the express purpose of achieving a majority in the next election,” Fafard explained.
“This is deeply unfortunate insofar as it means that Parliament is not a place where some of the major medium- and long-term issues are debated. MPs should be talking about what is the best course for renewing federal transfers to provinces, especially for health care, [as] the current agreements expire in 2014.”
“What to do about climate change remains a critically important issue,” Fafard said, adding that the wellness of the Canadian economy needs to stay at the forefront of public political debate, as well.
And as for the most frequently asked question in Ottawa — should Canadians expect to head to the polls anytime soon?
“Unless something extraordinary happens, there will not be an election this fall,” predicted Fafard. “We can anticipate a great deal of sabre-rattling and frenzied election speculation, but none of the parties wants an election in the short term.”
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