A Dog's Breakfast

I think the first time I ever heard this term (or at least the first time it stuck with me) was 1993 when someone was predicting the federal election would result in a "dog's breakfast" with no party able to govern effectively.  As it happens, that didn't happen, and the Liberals under Jean Chrétien wiped out the Conservatives and had a stable majority government.  While it is a bit too early to tell, I worry a bit that last night's result will result in a weak minority government.  I mean there is no question that the Liberals cannot believe their luck (and will gladly take this result).  Not only did they avoid being wiped out, which clearly was going to happen under Trudeau, but Poilievre lost his seat!  I'm sure he'll be around carping for quite some time, but if the Conservatives were smart, they would dump him now and find someone less grating.  If the current projections hold, then the Liberals will come up 4 or 5 seats short of a majority, but the (very weakened) NDP will have 7 seats and could enter into a Supply and Confidence arrangement.  I think this could probably work, rather than the Liberals having to rely on the Bloc or hiving off a few Conservative votes now and again.  But if the math doesn't work after all the votes are counted, then we are looking at a really precarious government that would likely only last a year or two before going back to the polls.  So fingers crossed.

I'm still recovering from being up nearly all night doing taxes.  Last week I finished my son's, only to find that his T4 was completely incorrect.  He did have provincial taxes withheld but this wasn't indicated anywhere on the T4, so he will need to get that corrected and then refile them.  So infuriating and unfair.  I did get a modest refund, though I was expecting a much larger one.  As always, the issue ends up being the large bite that Ontario takes.  I think what continues to grate on me the most is that the marginal tax rate is pretty high in Ontario, but then they hide it.  So you calculate taxes and then have to pay not one but two surtaxes, i.e. tax on your tax, which brings you incredibly close to 50% marginal tax (and indeed 53% for anyone earning over $250K), and it just seems completely dishonest to me.  So I'm feeling very surly today.  It isn't just the tax (not that I enjoy paying these sneaky surtaxes), but that I am paying to support a bunch of provincial politicians that I despise and are making life worse most of the time for progressives in Toronto, by ripping out our bike lanes and weakening environmental laws and just being stupid and generally corrupt.  And we seem to have no way to get rid of them, as the voters are still punishing the provincial Liberals for the sins of the 2010s.  Sigh.

I did manage to do a few fun things over the weekend, and maybe tonight or tomorrow I can account for the time I was not doing taxes.  I'm actually going to run over to Massey Hall to see if any tickets opened up for Max Richter, but I think that's fairly unlikely, so I will probably have this evening to work on this, as well as a few other outstanding issues on my plate. 

Edit (11 pm): While there are two or three extremely tight ridings that will go to recounts, the unofficial count shows the Liberals at 169.  So very, very close to 172.  (Again, in their wildest dreams, the Liberals couldn't have expected this outcome, even a month or so ago.)  If I were Carney, I would probably cut a deal with the NDP to allow them to keep official party status (and not much more) in exchange for a Supply and Confidence arrangement (and just let the Conservatives' complaints about "corruption" roll off his back).  I think that is probably the stablest of any of the options, but I guess we'll find out what they decide to do.  I would definitely hope we don't go back to the polls for at least two more years.