OTTAWA – Canada is going back to the polls in January after a non-confidence vote initiated last night by the Conservatives brought down the government.
The motion passed, as had been widely expected by political observers, by a vote of 171 to 133. It marks a first in parliamentary history: never before has a Canadian government has fallen on a straight confidence motion. Before last night, governments have fallen on confidence votes relating to money, especially on budget bills.
As the Liberal members began to vote on the motion, Paul Martin and his Liberal colleagues seemed quite jubilant to be heading back on the campaign trail. Unlike the nail-baiting series of confidence votes in the spring that turned on the decisions of a handful of independent MPs, this vote had the air of inevitability about it. And unlike the last-minute defection of Belinda Stronach, everybody in Ottawa yesterday knew the government would fall long before the vote began. The fall of the government ended weeks of election speculation that has consumed much of the national media.
The announcement that appeared to generate the most buzz at U of T was that human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff, who was scheduled to start teaching at U of T’s Munk Centre in January, will be running in the western Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore. The announcement confirmed months of speculation that he would join, or even try to lead, the Liberals. If he is successful, some insiders have intimated that he could be appointed foreign minister. Many admire Ignatieff’s strong commitment to human rights and to humanitarian intervention, although some question his support for the war in Iraq.
It was unclear yesterday how his candidacy will affect Ignatieff’s appointment to U of T. For the past several years, Ignatieff was director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights and Policy at Harvard.
Others on campus will likely be interested in the contest for the Trinity-Spadina riding, the federal riding that encompasses the western side of the university’s downtown campus. Olivia Chow, wife of NDP leader Jack Layton and long-time Toronto city councillor, has confirmed that she will be running again as a New Democratic candidate against Liberal Tony Ianno who won by less than a thousand votes in the 2004 election.
