We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast...

Wow, just watched the live broadcast of Harper and Dion addressing the nation and trying to convince people who should be PM. It was streaming Global, with disappointing anchoring by Kevin Newman, as usual.

First off, Harper offered no olive branch, no conciliatory note. He spent his whole five-minute speech trying to convince people that the Bloc support of the coalition would break up Canada, and promised a mysterious economic recovery plan that doesn't seem to have received mention in the house or elsewhere. It sounded like a campaign speech, not like a Prime Minister. He is not backing down from this one.

Between the speeches, the angry political science professor offered probably the most interesting commentary. Everyone kept talking about how Harper and the Liberals and the GG are consulting their political scientists, which is the first time I've heard of gainful employment for political scientists outside of the ivory tower. (Possibly a bailout of the political-scientist industry?) Kevin Newman couldn't stop repeating sentences from Harper's speech, and everyone else seemed pretty critical of the speech, and generally excited that their jobs as Canadian political reporters were going to get a little more interesting and that they would be getting a lot more airtime.

Dion's speech was shown late because of technical issues at Global. He spoke for maybe ten minutes, listing regions and industries he planned to help and making a dramatic promise to work 24/7 to fix the economy. His English has gotten better, but they shouldn't trust him with English words with French cognates. Also, there were a couple mentions of working with labour, and other NDP talking points. I really hope this doesn't end up scaring off investment.

Anyway, it's looking like Harper is going to ask the GG to prorogue Parliament - that is, shut it down - for about seven weeks. This would more or less be a chance for the Conservatives to put out lots of ads criticizing the coalition, and try to turn public opinion against it. Like I said earlier, can't wait to see some poll results.