Sixty two percent. That represents the number of Canadians that did NOT vote for the Conservative Party of Canada in the last election. But of course, what we got, again, was the leader of the Conservative Party as our prime minister. Such is life in this archaic first-past-the-post system of election.
But wait.....we may still get what we wanted. There is a pressure relief valve built into our system that can, from time to time, correct what seems to be wrong with out system. This is our parliamentary system of government. In fact, in this system, we never vote for a prime minister. we vote for a local representative who goes to the House of Commons to vote, on our behalf, for a member of that House to be the prime minister. Traditionally, in order to obtain governing power, people would join together and form political parties. If their party got the most members elected (seats) their leader could easily be voted in as prime minister since every other party would only vote for their own leader as prime minister. if the party with the most seats got more than half of the seats in Parliament, they had a majority and could never be defeated by the other parties.
So, for the last 32 months, Canada has had a minority government where the ruling party had the most seats but could be out-voted by the other parties at any time. Defeating the government often meant that Canadians would have to go to the polls in an election - much like we did at the beginning of October this year - at the cost of $300 million for the same result we went into it with.
Which brings us to the current situation. The NDP, Liberals and Bloc have negotiated an agreement to take down the Conservatives and form a government. Stephan harper is the master of his own undoing here. He miscalculated that the opposition would be in such a disarray that he could push through even more ideologically-driven legislation. Now he faces full non-confidence of the House. Some are crying foul - that this is "undemocratic". Undemocratic that a party with 38% of Canadians support govern or a coalition of parties with 62% of voter support?!
With all of its problems, our parliamentary system provides this great relief valve to bring stability and exert the will of the people on government.
I say, give us what we want.......
Take Action:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/coalition_for_canada
5 comments:
Well said, Sheldon. Imagine people working together to make the country work better ( than a bullydom)
Sorry Sheldon, you just don't have a coherent argument here. 38% voted conservative is fine, but that doesn't automatically mean that 62% voted for a coalition. In fact, Dion was quite clear and adamant that he wouldn't form a coalition. So, presumably, many people who voted for the liberals (or another choice) might not support a coalition.
The other, bigger problem, of course is that this is really quite a silly farce. There is no way that a coalition could actually function for long. The very notion makes us a laughing stock throughout the world. Up until last week, Canada was one of the few countries that was relatively unaffected by the globabl financial meltdown. Now, however, we stand at risk to lose it all (just look at how the stock market registered the biggest one day drop in 20 years on Monday when the coalition talk took hold). If you don't think that the stock market matters to social policy, then you are wrong. If outside investors lose confidence in Canada, our economy will suffer. If the economy tanks, so does our capacity to maintain social programs. Every Canadian will be worse off if this coalition idea takes hold.
Now, back to our election. We only just went to the polls a month ago. Canadians increased the number of conservatives and overwhelmingly rejected the Liberals and Dion. Seems like a pretty clear message.
What caused the coalition talk in the first place? Well, it's really all about one thing. The attempt by the conservatives to eliminate the political party tax. It was a shameful idea in the first place when Chretien brought it in. The idea that all Canadians, rich or poor, should have to support political parties financially so that they could sell their spin during elections is reprehensible. Cudos to the conservatives for trying to eliminate it. Of course, the other parties are too greedy to let that go, so they manufactured an excuse to try to take power away from the party we just voted in. Really quite shameful.
Now, I know that Harper may not be the most charismatic or feel good prime minister we've ever had. But, he does understand economics better than most. That is exactly what Canada needs over the next few years if we are to maintain the quality of life for all Canadians during these difficult economic times.
This is more complex than the previous comment allows. There are things for and against a parliamentary system, and if you prefer a democracy like to the south that’s fine, but as long as we have a system like we have, a well-funded, active opposition is very important-crucial in fact, and considering the amounts of money that flows through the federal government, 30 million for a functioning parliament is chump change. In fact, the notion that parliament is divested of all interest groups and is funded by affixed amount sounds rather appealing-members should be elected by ideas, by character, and ultimately by ballot, not by the amount of cash a party holds. The current situation in which the guy with the biggest pockets wins.
I mentioned “functioning” parliament. While I wasn’t happy about the conservatives forming the government, I think it was pretty clear that they were the most organized, stable and arguably most qualified to govern-as a minority, where their redneck roots could be kept in check by parliament. Obviously most people felt the liberals weren’t yet ready to take the helm.
If the conservatives had a different leader I think this could have been a successful parliament. With everything going on in the world this country needed leaders that would put aside differences and work together to keep the ship afloat.
But stephen harper is who he is, and while he puts on a fairly decent show in front of the cameras we constantly get rumours of a cold, anger, hateful man behind closed doors. It shows up here and there, but it took a crisis like we have in the world today for him to show more of who he really is.
Those whom purport to support democracy must condemn him as a man and as a leader. His attempt to gut the funding for the opposition is reprehensible, not only for what it means as a raw power grab in the midst of a global crisis, but for his attempt to paralyze the opposition, an integral and necessary part of a parliamentary system.
Personally, I think the best thing for the country right now would be to replace this mad-dog prime minister with someone else in the conservative party who knows how to work with others and believes that they all have an important job to do and they need to be getting at it.
Although politically more reflective of my values, I feel that the “coalition” is too disorganized, disparate and at odds with each other to be effective to govern properly. But they are still better than having harper at the head of government. The people knew him better than we gave them credit for, twice denying him his majority that he so craves. harper must go.
But given his personality, hate, power lust and massive ego, that will not happen. What we will see until next year is a mad scramble to retain power, regardless of the consequences to his party and to the country. He will prorogue parliament and cling to power as long as he can, hoping that enough poison and damage will somehow translate into a conservative victory.
Nathaniel tries to sound reasoned and wise, but falls short. Most of your comment is nothing more than personal shots at someone we don't really know. How do we know he's mean, hateful, etc?
The notion that he was gutting the funding of the opposition is just wrong. The whole funding thing is quite new for Canada (just a cheap cash grab by Chretien). We have had fully functioning parliaments and oppositions for years before this whole tax-payer funding idea came along.
The idea that this funding is used for the opposition's day-to-day costs while in opposition is simply wrong. That's different money that has always been there and is not in jeopardy now. The money Harper wanted to cut was the automatic transfer of taxes to campaign coffers. Again, we don't need this in Canada. The parties have always done just find without taxpayer money to run their campaigns. And, by the way, $30 million chump change could go a long way to funding a needed social program - much better use for the money than giving it to politicians.
Finally, you comment "Peronally, I think the best thing..." says it all. You are basing everything on you opinion, not on facts, logic or reasoning. To think for even a minute that political turmoil would be good for the country is ridiculous. There's an old saying - when elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. When the liberals and ndp play politics, Canadians suffer.
Funny things happen in politics, under the conservatives children became dependants again for tax purposes, this helps kids and families, this was something the liberals had dropped. Fhose nice fuzzy liberals also changed EI rules and made it very difficult to be eligible for EI, now of course they complain about scary Stephen and the conservatives. the 70's gave us trudeau and we are still paying for his legacy, debt (30 billion per interest a year and a province that still has not signed the 'new' constitution).
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