In House - A week of transitions
It's transition time!
Next week will be a busy one in Ottawa, starting with Wednesday's swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall... one that the public will be able to get a close look at.
The Liberals will officially form government, the Conservatives will become the Official Opposition (and get an interim leader), while the NDP adjusts to being the third party.
In House panelists Terry Milewski and Jennifer Ditchburn join us to look ahead to "transition week"
Q: Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have an ambitious agenda. How quickly do they have to deliver on some of those promises?
TM: He's got to get moving on the things that are easier. So things that you don't need new legislation... to bring the CF-18s home from Iraq. You don't need new legislation to send folks to Lebanon or Jordan to process refugees, or to set up an inquiry into missing and murdered (indigenous) women. All of those things can and probably should be done. People will ask why if they're not. But for the harder things, I'd say that Trudeau really has to just show that he's going towards the destination even if not at warp speed."
JD: I think he set expectations pretty high, and that's because during the campaign, especially towards the end, he told everyone: we're going to do things fast, we're going to give you change now and not have it unfold over several years as the NDP is doing. In that regard they've set the bar high for themselves. The way possibly out of that is to put something really big in the window.
Q: What do you make of the race to become the interim leader of the Conservative Party?
JD: We just of two more candidates, Rona Ambrose and Mike Lake from Alberta, so that's six that have publicly declared, and there might be a few more. So it's a really open, interesting, competitive race. It's also a race that's allowing the caucus and the party to review what happened during the campaign.
TM: They've got to find something more than a caretaker. We've been there before when Nycole Turmel took over as interim leader during the leadership race to replace Jack Layton. There was no way she was going to outshine Bob Rae as the Liberal interim leader at the time. This time, seems to me they've got to worry not just about putting somebody up against Trudeau. They've got to also put somebody up against Mulcair. The Conservatives can't just go for a caretaker and leave millions of Conservative voters without a voice in the House, in the media scrums.
Q: The NDP is back to third party status. What you looking for from Tom Mulcair and the NDP?
JD: They are going to be going through some of the same analysis as the Conservatives are over what happened during the election. The problem for the Conservatives is going to be Mulcair. He could steal some of their thunder during Question Period.
TM: You get less ice time. Less chance to land that blow that's going to get you on the evening news. However, Mulcair still has an equal chance at the scrums after Question Period. He's very good in that forum, and I would argue better than any of the many prospects that we have for interim leader on the Conservative side.