Dear Conservatives: Please Stop the Whining

daniel on Dec 3rd 2008

Dear Conservative Party, can we stop throwing the word “democracy” around like a football please? Is that okay? You know how the Westminster Parliamentary system works: You know it’s not about who “got elected” but that it’s about “who can form a government”. If the people had given you a majority you could steam-roll everyone as you please. But the people in their infinite wisdom (I’ll go along with the trope for a moment, but there’s some bile rising here) decided not to. So that means that you get to form a minority government.

Seats in Parliament are what matters, not which single party got the most votes in the election. We don’t have a presidential-style system where the guy rules as long as he gets the most votes. If the Conservatives have the most seats, but not 50% + 1 of the seats, they form a minority government. If the Liberals and NDP get together and form a coalition, they suddenly have more seats and they can form the government. This is called “having the confidence of the House”, and if the ruling party doesn’t have that confidence, then the ruling party falls and is replaced by another party or coalition that does have the confidence of the house.

This is why, for those Canadians who seem too dense to understand this, we have a Governor-General. She’s there to oversee and make judgment on abnormal situations like this. She’s the ultimate arbiter of our democracy… and she wasn’t even elected. Gasp! Horror! She doesn’t have to answer to the people of Canada — she has to answer to the Constitution, the Ministers of the government, and (theoretically) the Crown. (Not to mention that the Senate isn’t elected either. Gasp! Horror!) She’s there so that, for instance, a Prime Minister can’t just dissolve Parliament and call an election every time he gets a vote in the House that he dislikes. You can google the King-Byng affair for a time when the Governor-General did just that.

The Governor-General is going to be making some interesting decisions. But there’s nothing back-door or anti-democratic about the proposed coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. It’s how the Parliamentary system was designed to work. The opposition doesn’t like a heavy-handed minority government, and doesn’t feel like being jerked around for the next three years with a confidence motion attached to every bill, budget, and bulletin that gets tabled in the House? Well, they’re free to topple the government.

There’s nothing anti-democratic about it. And if the people of Canada really feel like this is a bad idea, they’re going to punish the NDP and the Liberals in the next election. Which, of course, there will always be. A next election.

In the meantime, the Conservatives can jolly well stop their whining, and stop their deceitful attack ads. The Governor-General doesn’t make her decisions based on what the people think, okay?

Filed in main,polemics | 2 responses so far

2 Responses to “Dear Conservatives: Please Stop the Whining”

  1. # Elsewhere in Dreams » Blog Archive » One more quick note.on 04 Dec 2008 at 9:07 am

    [...] Let me say one more thing to cap off my last post about the situation in Ottawa. [...]

  2. # Kon 07 Dec 2008 at 2:06 pm

    i whole-heartedly agree with the idea that people should stop acting like the coalition is evil for doing what our “democratic” system has been set up to allow them to do.

    but i don’t think what they’re doing is fine.

    first, because said “democratic” system is stupid. and not very democratic… the brilliant Greco-Roman contributors would be ashamed.

    second, because — largely due to the system in question — the parties involved in the coalition are proving themselves to be unfit for leadership, far more so than Harper is, regardless of your opinion of his government.
    let me explain:
    i read a rather intelligent letter to the editor in a newspaper during the last federal election this side of the border. a candidate in the author’s riding apparently said that he had a brilliant solution to solve problem X, and that if he was elected, he would share it with everyone and put it to work. the author made the following point: if that candidate actually gave a rat’s a$$ about his country and making a difference, it wouldn’t matter to him who was elected — he would be a civil servant of some faculty either way, and either way would provide the solution to those equipped with the power to put it to work. no, he was selfish and wanted power.
    the coalition is that candidate. don’t kid yourself: they aren’t seeking to better the government. they’re selfishly seeking power. if they really cared about their country and were the self-sacrificing civil servants (say that five times fast) that they make themselves out to be (and thus, fit for national leadership), they’d be seeking to help Harper, not to pull some retarded coup d’etat, regardless of legality.
    for aunt sally’s sake, party leaders, spend your time doing something productive, not having little plotting meetings because you don’t like the outcome of an election.
    we all laughed at the States when Gore was so the centre of his own universe that he demanded a recount — the dope thinks he can’t possibly have lost, so something’s wrong. well now we’ve one-upped the States: Dion, Layton, & Duceppe seek to act in the interest of the people **muffled laugh** as they get rid of the Conservative government that Canadians couldn’t possibly have wanted in power. i got news for you: it doesn’t matter if they won by a large margin or a small one; the point is THE MAJORITY of Canadians supported the Conservatives. so yes, that means they don’t want you in power.
    more news: the media likes the colors red and orange. not blue. so that’s what you hear about. but we have real people in real homes who actually have real opinions of their own that aren’t expressed by the “reporters” of our day. that’s why bills are passed when the majority of citizens oppose the issue (abortion? homosexual marriage?), and then opinion changes once it’s legalized. and that’s why you have a country of people who support Harper being shown to hate him. that’s why you have a country of people who like George Bush, Creed, and American Idol despite the fact that the media ridicules them and you can’t seem to find any supporters anywhere.

    so i don’t think the coalition is bad for doing what our “democratic” system has been set up to allow them to do. i think it’s evil because it is representative of what kind of “leaders” they are: bad ones.