... or the lack thereof in our government.
I'm fascinated by what's going on in Ottawa. Aside from the singularly bad timing (uh, it's the economy, stupid), and the fact that I'd feel better about it if the coalition types had pulled the trigger over something meaningful to the rest of us voters, as opposed to the pulling of their party subsidies. Yeah, it's fine to get walked all over by Harper until your own pocketbook is affected, isn't it.
I didn't vote for the Conservatives, and I didn't vote for any of the coalition parties. But I'm offended by those saying what's happening is undemocratic, and I'm really offended by Harper and the Conservative party's hypocrisy surrounding the involvement of the Bloc Québecois. They were open to coalitions with the Bloc years ago (in 2000 as the Canadian Alliance and in 2005) and NOW they're pulling the national unity card? Puh-leeze. Go cry somewhere else.
We live in a parliamentary democracy (Edited 3:14 PM: see here for an explanation of how parliament is constituted and the Governor General's role) and those who can put together the most seats get to govern. Harper seems to have forgotten that it's the job of the official Opposition to oppose. If you look at this fall's election numbers, the proposed coalition will actually be more representative of voter preferences than Harper's minority government. We had 59.1% voter turnout. Of those, 37.6% voted Conservative (which really means 22% of eligible voters voted Conservative - which seems like a very thin mandate to rule). But if you add up the Liberal, NDP and Bloc popular vote you get 54.4% of voters who cast ballots represented by some portion of this coalition. Um. Seems way more representative to me.
At any rate, Canadian politics is finally interesting again. Now if only we could get some form of proportional representation, so the people I did vote for could actually sit in Parliament.
