Political realities and political mistakes.

I have made it clear how I feel about the idea of a coalition government. It is not only constitutional but beneficial. The Conservative government is little more than a criminal organization full of thugs and bullies.
Having said that, I believe that Dion and Layton made a political blunder almost as significant as that made by the Prime Minister last week. If the Coalition partners really wanted to oust the government and bring in an alternative they should have kept that entirely quiet until they had defeated Harper in a normal house vote. In the mean time they could have sent their letter to the Governor-General and probably gained the outcome they were hoping for. However, now with all the hype they have given the Harper government all the ammunition they could want to discredit the Coalition forces and undermine democracy. They will run radio ads and maybe even television ads trying to portray the coalition effort as a coup and they will most likely succeed. And they will succeed in large part because Canadians don’t understand their own form of government. They think that the people elect the government in Canada, when in fact in the British parliamentary system, the people have never elected the government. Rather the people elect a set of representatives and whoever has the confidence of the majority of those representatives elects the government. You may not like it. You may think the system needs reform but that is the system as it exists and has for hundreds of years. Before this system worked in Canada it worked in England. By all means reform the system but make no mistake, the Conservatives are just wrong when they say this is a coup. People forget that Winston Churchill himself, often considered one of the great leaders of any parliament at any time, was elected not by the people but by a majority of the representatives in the House, many of them in the party he opposed, to lead a coalition government. But now, because of the prematurity of the coalition partners, we will now have to watch the Harper bullies and thugs misrepresent the very nature of our political system as well as the opposition parties.

And one last thing – I wish the Tories would stop suggesting that the Bloc somehow has no right to be in parliament and represent the people who elected them! Many people may not like the Bloc and may disagree with their political program. However, they have as much right to be elected and represent their electors as anyone in the house.