While the national media pundits have been fantasizing about the possibility of a coalition between the remains of the Liberal party and Jack Layton’s frothy orange NDP, the Green party’s unexpected success in Saanich North has opened up a juicy, sizzling, and wholly tantalizing new prospect.

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<span class="smallcaps"Book Review University of Toronto associate professor of political science Nelson Wiseman retraces the well-worn historical path In Search of Canadian Political Culture. It’s an erudite, insightful, and sweeping analysis of Canadian political history, but in the opinion of our reviewer it misses the mark in that it fails to provide guidance to those struggling for social and ecological justice on this planet at at time when the dominant human culture is out of control.

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Introduction Will Canadian politics simply perpetuate the battles of the past, or have globalisation and the Internet brought about a political sea change that will result in a radically transformed and more polarised political landscape? These two books represent radically different visions of Canadian democracy.

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A trip to a ferry terminal turned into a reminder of the fragility of democratic rights and the insidious way that both Liberal and Conservative governments have secretly adopted the self-serving corporate agenda of North American integration. Is the repressive, anti-democratic Security and Prosperity Partnership the beginning of The Age of Razor Wire?

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Book Review If you’re wondering why all recent prime ministers start behaving like autocrats once in office, it’s because Canada and the UK have moved to a Court system of government, explains University of Moncton public administration professor Donald Savoie. Not light reading, but an invaluable book if you want to understand Canadian federal politics.

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An environmental time bomb that could put all of Canada’s rivers and coastal regions under threat of energy, resort or industrial development has been quietly hidden under cover of the billions of dollars of economic stimulus in the 2009 budget bill. Passing it would make the Liberal Party complicit with Harper in gutting Canada’s environmental protection legislation.

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The collapse of the Coalition after its rejection by Liberal leader Ignatieff has left many Canadians disappointed and dismayed. Does its success in forcing the government to revise its attitude towards deficit budgeting plus the substantial grassroots support that erupted on Facebook groups and the Internet mean that there is a future for coalition politics in Canada?

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Their vote this week to support Harper’s ‘stimulus’ budget puts Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals firmly in bed with Canada’s very own Blue Meanies, and raises questions as to whether there is any real difference between Ignatieff’s Liberals and Harper’s newly-centralist Conservatives. It’s just a question of competing élites who both believe in their superiority.

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Today’s announcement by Ignatieff that his caucus has decided to support the Conservative budget came as no surprise. But by merely rapping the government on the knuckles with an amendment that only requires it to report on its progress three times this year, Ignatieff has in effect formed a tacit coalition with Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

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After an exhaustive consultation process that drew heavily on the advice of the business élite, Harper and Flaherty may have put together a stimulus package that covers all the bases. It even recognises the need for deficits. That gives Iggy his first dilemma, and the future of the Coalition depends on his decision on whether his party should support the budget.

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