Had the Liberals lost the vote, an immediate election would have ensued. Just 11 months earlier, the Liberals won with 135 out of 308 seats in the federal parliament. The Conservative Party, which won 99 seats, and the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), with 54 seats, had been promising to bring down the government for the last few weeks over a Liberal “sponsorship scandal.”

In the days before the vote, Martin agreed to demands from the New Democratic Party (NDP) to increase spending for housing, education, the environment, and foreign “aid” by Can$4.6 billion (Can$1 = US 79 cents), and to defer some corporate tax cuts, in return for NDP support. The government won the vote only after a prominent Conservative front bencher, Belinda Stronach, crossed the floor to join the Liberals, citing fears that an early election would significantly boost the BQ, which promotes sovereignty for Quebec. Her wavering reflected the state of mind of a significant section of Canada’s ruling families.

Since 1993, Ottawa has spent nearly $725 million to promote “Canadian unity” through a propaganda campaign aimed against the right of Quebecois to self-determination. In 1995, a referendum on independence for Quebec was defeated by a very narrow margin, with 50.6 percent voting against and 49.4 percent in favor.

The “sponsorship scandal” fully erupted in 2002 when the auditor general of Canada reported that $100 million out of $250 million in sponsorships had been diverted to dubious commissions for ad agencies working with and for the Liberal Party. Testimony before a judicial inquiry, led by Justice John Gomery of Quebec, has revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks and laundered money made their way into Liberal Party coffers.

Such corruption is standard practice for capitalist parties and is not what underlies the crisis. Charles Guité, the public servant in charge of dispersing the federal funds, told the Gomery inquiry the Conservatives had “meddled more.” When the Liberals won the federal elections in 1993, the minister in charge of the program at the time, David Dingwall, after unsuccessfully trying to press Guité to reveal Conservative Party practices, reportedly congratulated Guité on his discretion and said, “You won’t rat on them, you won’t rat on us.”

The precarious position of the government flows from the rulers’ incapacity to find a way out of their decline internationally as a weaker imperialist power, and their inability to push to the back burner aspirations for national self-determination in Quebec.

During a recent visit, U.S. president George Bush promised to ease U.S.-Canadian trade disputes. But Washington has maintained punitive tariffs on Canadian exports of softwood lumber and beef. The decision by the Martin government to not publicly back the U.S.-sponsored anti-ballistic missile shield has not helped Ottawa.

Canadian employers are also worried because labor productivity here lags behind the U.S. rate. Productivity growth slowed to 1.5 percent annually in Canada during the 2000-2003 period, down from a yearly average of 2.8 percent in the previous three-year period. The U.S. figure between 1995 and 2004 was 3.1 percent annually.

The Liberal government has allowed Canadian imperialism’s ability to intervene abroad to decline as well. In 2003 defense spending fell to 1.2 percent of the gross domestic product.

One part of the budget bill that went completely unchallenged by any of the opposition parties was a $12.8 billion increase in military spending over the next five years. There was also no opposition to a recent white paper on “Canada’s International Role,” which outlines the rulers’ plan for reorganizing the armed forces following U.S. government patterns. The government recently said it would deploy 100 military “advisers” to Sudan, which it considers a “failed state,” before the Sudanese government, which reportedly got wind of this move through a news broadcast, said it would refuse to allow them in.

In addition to outlining an increase in the size of the military by 8,000 troops—5,000 regular and 3,000 reservist—the document spells out a beefed-up role for Canada’s military at home. “As the [Armed] Forces begin to treat Canada as an integrated theatre of operations, they will establish Canada Command, a single operational command headquarters,” it says.  
 
 
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