If anything, this sums up pretty well how despite all the squawking about not wanting another election, very few of the current party leaders actually want to work to avoid one in the coming weeks.
The article details how Jack Layton (head of the New Democratic Party) broached the topic of working with the Cons to keep them in power in the face of increasing hostility from the Liberals and Bloc, only to be shot down by the PM. It illustrates pretty well for me the fact that Harper is not going to stop until he gets a majority.
More interestingly, and less surprisingly, is the fact that nobody seems to have figured out that while minority government may actually be the most democratic way to run the country, it only works when all parties are willing to accept the results of an election for more than a year and settle down into actually working out policy, rather than engaging in neverending smear campaigns. Unfortunately, given the vast ideological differences between the Conservatives and the other parties, and the fact that this incarnation of the party is the first time there have even been such large differences between the major players in the Canadian political scene, it doesn't look to me as though minority government will be a workable option. Which, as far as I can see, leaves a few options, none of them attractive:
1) Harper wins a majority, declares women second-class citizens, apocalyptic predictions, bloo bloo blah.
2) The Conservatives win a minority government, refuses to cooperate with anyone else, and the same ridiculous charade is repeated ad nauseum (or ad bankruptium, whichever comes first).
3) The Liberals win a minority, manage to work with the NDP and Bloc. We are subjected to Ignatieff's pompous narcissism, which is (marginally) better than Harper's creepy, soulless narcissism.
4) The Liberals win a majority and hell freezes over.
5) The NDP win a majority and the Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup.
Options 1, 4 and 5 notwithstanding, I believe that there is a fundamental problem with the Canadian political system in that the institutions no longer match the reality. It is becoming increasingly clear that no one party is popular enough to win a majority government. That, combined with the inherently unfair and biased nature of the electoral system seem like two very good reasons to scrap our current system and look more closely at proportional representation, or at the very least an MMP system to more accurately reflect the views people across the country.
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I'm sure, considering it was printed on the exact same page as the article you're talking about, you read the John Ibbitson analysis piece about this horrible curse we're currently under as a country. I thought it veered a little towards the bland and universal by the end but all the stuff about how little legislating parliament actually does nowadays was incredibly interesting and depressing. He makes an excellent point that Canada has survived all this federal insanity because Ottawa long ago ceded most authority to the provinces, but that in the long wrong this set-up will only exacerbate the problem.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it's particularly troubling that the only major party not in a shitty situation right now is the Bloc, as its the only regional party in a group of at least nominally ideological party. Its success, and the pressure it puts on the entire system, guarantees that we'll see increasing regional fragmentation unless options 1, 4, or 5 come to pass.
I suppose you think you'll get a rise out of me with the Leafs jab.
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