Speculation and anticipation surrounding the Gomery report is building. There are lots of theories floating around about what will happen but I don’t think we’ll get the same sort of twists and turns we saw last spring. There won’t be a WTF moment like when Belinda crossed, there won’t be a nail biting vote, there won’t be ambiguous confidence motions or boycotts of the House in protest. There won’t be an election until 2006 (which pisses me off since I win 50$ from an old bet if the House falls this November). Instead, I suspect we’ll see:
Monday: Someone somewhere leaks a lot of the Gomery report to the press, providing us a sneak peak.
Tuesday: This is the big day and I’ll be sure to be on-line at 10 am Eastern when the report is released for live blogging reaction. It’s a safe bet the report will be harsh but won’t be any worse than Brault’s testimony from last spring. I think we can also assume Paul won’t be fingered but a lot of the guys close to Chretien will be blamed for negligence, even if JC himself isn’t directly implicated. Chretien will say that Gomery was biased, Martin will say things were bad but he’s fixing it, Harper will scream in anger and rant about “moral authority to govern”, Ducceppe will say the same thing in French, and Layton will come out and talk about the issues…well, maybe not, but he’s not going to insist upon an election.
Wednesday: More of the same. There will be fireworks in the House of Commons but no confidence vote.
Friday: Martin will flip-flop from his initial reaction. I have no idea what he’ll change his position to, but knowing this government, it’s safe to say the talking points will change.
Mid-November: No confidence motions in the House but the parties begin testing election strategy and laying the groundwork for campaigns. Polls show the Tories on the rise and neck and neck with the Liberals.
Mid-December: People forget about politics and polls show the Liberals back in front.
Early 2006: The pundits begin speculating about the opposition parties bringing down the House. They don’t. Valeri avoids any possible confidence votes until Ralph Goodale can bring in a budget with all sorts of goodies and tax cuts.
The Election: It happens, within 30 days of Gomery’s final report, as predicted. As for the result? Your guess is as good as mine.