{"id":2877,"date":"2011-03-02T23:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T04:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2011-03-02T23:08:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T04:08:00","slug":"three-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2877","title":{"rendered":"Three Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s how long it might be until we&#8217;re in an election campaign. Jim Flaherty confirmed the rumours today &#8211; budget day will be March 22nd, setting up a confidence vote later that week and a trip to the polls on May 2nd or May 9th. This isn&#8217;t the first time Ottawa has come down with a case eleculation (<em>short for election speculation &#8211; trademark Calgary Grit 2011<\/em>), but this is likely the biggest bout of it since September 2009.<\/p>\n<p>If you remember back then, Michael Ignatieff made it clear he was <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/this-time-we-mean-it.html\">ready to bring down the government<\/a>, the Conservatives <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/shockingly-iqaluit-typo-hasnt-proven-to.html\">flirted with 40%<\/a> in the polls, and <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/this-time-we-mean-it.html\">the little one said roll over<\/a>. The story appears to be repeating itself, but that doesn&#8217;t mean we won&#8217;t get a different result this time. If Harper&#8217;s not willing to give an inch or the NDP decides there&#8217;s no point in putting off the inevitable, it&#8217;s go time. As such, the parties are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.punditsguide.ca\/2011\/02\/key-slots-being-filled-on-party-slates\/\">nominating candidates<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/calgarygrit.blogspot.com\/2011\/02\/and-so-it-begins.html\">running ads<\/a>, and booking planes.<\/p>\n<p>And what should we expect, if we do find ourselves in a campaign? Well, if the polls are to be believed, Harper is on the brink of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vancouversun.com\/news\/Poll+claims+Conservatives+near+numbers+needed+majority\/4369222\/story.html\">crushing majority<\/a>. Or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.winnipegfreepress.com\/canada\/breakingnews\/tories-have-eight-point-lead-new-poll-suggests-117257048.html\">not<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So to summarize, we <em>may<\/em> or <em>may not<\/em> be heading to an election, and we really have no clue what will happen in the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Hope that clears things up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s how long it might be until we&#8217;re in an election campaign. Jim Flaherty confirmed the rumours today &#8211; budget day will be March 22nd, setting up a confidence vote later that week and a trip to the polls on May 2nd or May 9th. This isn&#8217;t the first time Ottawa has come down with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}