A Democratic ‘Crisis’: The Fall 2008 Debate in Canadian Federal Politics

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A Democratic ‘Crisis’ – the Fall 2008 Debate in Canadian Federal Politics.
Introduction
The world’s financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 followed a summer of much debate in Ottawa. An August 2008 meeting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the leaders of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Liberal Party (LP) and the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) failed to reach agreement on a federal election. Jack Layton of the NDP, Stephane Dion of the LP, and Gilles Duceppe of the BQ claimed that the Conservative Party’s government had violated democratic standards and should be replaced. The Conservatives countered that voters had put the government in place, in Harper’s minority government that first took office in January of 2006. The NDP and LP had threatened...

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