With the news that the second Gomery Report will be delayed 6 weeks it is time to look at the House of Parliament for the purposes of election speculation.
Liberals: 133
Conservatives: 98
Bloc Quebecois: 54
NDP: 19
Independent: 3
Vacant: 1
If the NDP are able to squeeze some more concessions out of the Liberals to form another partnership they have 152 seats. This happens to be the same number as the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois. As in the spring it comes down to the independents. However, with the passing of MP Cadman, the Liberals have lost a vote. Furthermore, MP O'Brien has left the Liberal party to join MP Kilgour as an independent with a history of voting against the government. Considering that even MP Parrish's vote is not guaranteed the Liberals hold on power is weak at best.
(Aside: Since we are now looking at an April election, at what point are the Liberals required to hold a byelection in MP Cadman's riding?)
In reality they only hold it now based on the "30 days after Gomery" promise. The aforementioned delay has changed everything though. This delay does nothing but help the Liberals and now Finance Minister Goodale is preparing a bag of goodies (hat-tip Whatittakestowin)
..."If the time is available, I will no doubt make use of the time (to introduce a budget)," Goodale told reporters in Winnipeg.
As I said earlier, a fall election election is much easier to sell to the public if the NDP are on board - which is way easier said than done. This bag of goodies is probably going to be enough to drop in a few NDP policies and get them back on board. And the NDP is already shown they will trade future potential seats (I guess they could get upwards of 40) in return for more government spending now.
Where does that leave things with the Conservatives? With a selling job regarding the two Gomery reports. The first one is the report that the Canadian public actually care about. It is the one the assigns responsibility and explains what actually occurred. In short, it is THE Gomery Report. The other one could be correctly described as the Gomery Recommendations and there is not necessarily a need to wait for these recommendations to hold an election as any party can implement these changes. So if the Conservatives want a fall election (and I am increasingly thinking they should want one) they need to ensure that MPs Kilgour and O'Brien are on board and start communicating the difference between the Gomery Report and the Gomery Recommendations.
