About that coalition thing

This  campaign  may be giving us a new adage (a twist on Kim Campbell's infamous 1993 comments about serious issues and elections). Specifically: elections are no times for civics lessons. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff tried in his interview with Peter Mansbridge last night, but with mixed results.  

 

At the outset of this current  campaign, I (perhaps naively) believed that all the coalition hysteria could be dispelled if voters understood that this is actually the topic of an adult conversation currently under way among some of Canada's leading  constitutional and government-formation experts.   Here's an article about their conversation. Here's one  report. Here's another. (Click on the links. Take your time. This blog post will still be here when you get back.) 

It may well be that people prefer to let these matters be decided by emotion, prejudice, partisanship or grudges, but I'm kind of fond of the cool, rational approach when it comes to the questions surrounding who will run Canada. Tonight, there will be another meeting of cool heads on coalition law and conventions, at U of T's Munk Centre.

 If you're the type to click on those above links, you're probably interested in matters of government, law, civics and such.

And I'll leave you with this thought for today: what's more destructive to the country? People who would like tear up the constitution after  a referendum, or people who want to  rewrite the constitution with a  PR campaign? 

 

 

 

Comments

[Eddy]

Amazing that so many Canadians are ignorant of how their democracy functions.

This country deserves a Harper majority.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

[Rolf Auer]

Harper was the first to think of a coalition, so his continually raising it as the bogeyman is ironic, to say the least:

"[In 1997], [Tom] Flanagan and [Stephen] Harper launched a four-year writing partnership while they were repositioning Harper for his return to party politics. Their first effort was an article titled 'Our Benign Dictatorship,' which was published in the Donner Foundation-financed magazine the Next City. They argue that a coalition between Reform and the Bloc Quebecois was one way for conservatives to seize power."--Not A Conspiracy Theory, Donald Gutstein, 2009, p. 159.

Please vote!--@Rolf_Auer

[Inge]

It is sad, if not frightening, that Harper is so willing to mislead the country purely for personal gain and power. No one can seriously believe that he does not understand how our system of government works. Yet he goen on perpetuating the lie. He is in effect saying that only votes for his party are legitimate, that MP's from other parties get there by fraudulent means!

[John Filliter, Dartmouth, N. S.]

The Coalition non-issue is a Red Herring that Stephen Harper introduced to divert attention from the fact that his government had been brought down for Contempt of Parliament. Shame on the national media for falling for that Red Herring hook, line and sinker. There is nothing wrong, evil, illegal, sinister or undemocratic about a coalition government. Does Mr. Harper suggest that the current government of the U.K. is somehow illegitimate? He accuses Mr. Ignatieff of misleading the people, but it was Mr. Harper himself, not Michael Ignatieff, who sat down with the separatist leader and Jack Layton and persuaded them to sign a memorandum he hoped to use to bring down Mr. Martin's government. He has tried to smear the Liberal Party, claiming that the Liberal-NDP coalition included the Bloc Quebecois. This is false. Mr. Ignatieff maintains that he has no interest in entering a coalition with another party, let alone a separatist one. Who is credible on this point? And who the hypocrite? Machiavellian politicians believe that if you tell a lie often enough, long enough and loud enough, people will begin to believe it. Sadly our media seem to be asleep at the switch, rather than warning the country of what's going on. Personally, I'd like to prorogue the Harper government on May 2nd. I'd be much happier with a coalition commanding 47% of popular support than a first-past-the-post majority regime that garnered 40% of the 60% of eligible voters who cast their ballots - less than 25% of popular support. Is that democracy?