Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to make a choice: cash for Quebec or an election, says Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

“I am now challenging Stephen Harper to respond to Quebec’s expectations,” a pumped Mr. Duceppe said Sunday in a speech closing a party general council meeting. “We are asking for simple fairness, elementary justice.

“Mr. Harper has a choice. He can respond to Quebec’s expectations or he can spark elections. For our part, we will not fold. We are going to stand up for Quebec. We are not going to give up, we are not going to be quiet.”

Apart from being pathetic losers, the Quebec nationalist movement — led by Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois — is forgetting one important fact: You need to have something the Conservative Party needs before you can start giving ultimatums. The Bloc is in a similar boat to the New Democratic Party: They will always be ready for an election because the outcome of said election doesn’t matter to them. As perpetual opposition parties, they don’t need to play the numbers to figure out when the time is right for an election, they’re ready to go whenever. As such, those two parties have very little bearing on votes in the House of Commons given that they’re diametrically opposed to any Conservative bill.

That being said, it’s not unlikely that they will attempt (yet again) to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party of Canada after the next election comes. For them, that’s their only hope of being anywhere close to governance, so sooner is rather than later. Duceppe can threaten the government all he wants, but the decision lies with Ignatieff. Scary, huh?

After much pondering, I have come to the conclusion that if we do have a federal election this spring, the result will be a Conservative majority.

Now I realize this forecast goes against conventional political wisdom.

Many pundits, using current public opinion polls as evidence, are arguing no party currently has enough voter support to win a majority.

Columnist Lorne Gunter has written, “Party standings would probably end the campaign at more or less their current levels. There is almost certainly no majority available to any party.”

And former Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella has declared, “Harper is still far from a majority.”

Really?

Gunter and Kinsella are forgetting one simple fact: Canadians are not yet politically engaged.

The Liberals recently released a poll, for instance, which showed only 15 per cent of Canadians are even paying attention to federal politics. (By the way, that’s completely normal. The average person rarely cares about the goings on in Ottawa. They would rather watch American Idol than The National. And who can blame them?)

But once an election is actually called Canadians will get focused on politics. They will start paying attention.

And what will these focused Canadians see when they start paying attention?

Well for one thing they will see a Prime Minister in Stephen Harper who is at the peak of his political powers.

A battle-hardened veteran of three national election campaigns and two leadership races, Harper is a wily political tactician who leads a united, well-disciplined and wealthy party.

The Liberals, on the other hand, are in a sorry state.

Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, is intelligent but a rookie when it comes to running a national campaign. He has only one national race under his belt, a Liberal leadership contest, which he lost.

Nor has he shown any evidence that he is a good campaigner or that he possesses good political instincts or that he can come up with a message that will resonate with Canadians.

His party is also demoralized and cash-poor.

[...]

However, all things being equal, we should expect 2011 to mark the true beginning of the Harper dynasty.

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In 2009, following the election of Barack Obama, Australia came to the conclusion that the United States had broken its end of the deal. Australia realized that they could no longer depend on the United States. As such, Australia greatly expanded and retooled its military. It would appear as though Canada has come to the same conclusion.

Canada, the country famous for nixing military spending in favor of socialist healthcare, is set to rearm. Under Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the Canadian military was neglected, as Canada thought that the United States would always be there to fight. As a result of this thinking, Canada cut back on all types of expensive military equipment. However, with President Obama projecting weakness around the globe,  severe cutbacks in American military spending, all paired with an enormous expansion in social spending, have resulted in the creation of an apparent power vacuum. This vacuum is forcing other countries to reassess their national priorities. According to the National Post Canada is set to unveil a $16 billion dollar plan to purchase the brand new Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter. 10 years ago, Canada scrapped plans to spend $5 million of EH-101 helicopters, deriding the choppers “airborne Cadillacs.” That was an entirely different time. With the realization that the United States is on its way over the precipice, set to join the West in stagnant socialism, countries like Canada and Australia are acting preemptively, readying their own defenses. This is a decision the rest of the West is being faced with – without the backing of the United States will other countries chose to remain weak, or will the vacuum left by the destruction of American power cause socialist countries to rise from the slumber, reduce social, and rearm?