Minority of voters elected majority Tory government

I awaken with a postelection hangover, with grave concern for Canadian democracy with Stephen Harper's Conservative party forming a majority for the next four years ["Stephen Harper promises to govern for those who didn't vote Conservative", web-only].

I fear for the further erosion of democracy as Harper, besides continuing to thumb his nose at the very institutional practices that define parliamentary governance, takes away the voice of the people with the removal of government funding to support the varied political voices that form our country.

The right wing will be delighted with this move because the only party guaranteed financial support is that which appeals to the chambers of commerce. That special-interest group has deep pockets to finance its political puppets in Ottawa.

How is it that we can say we have a democracy when 60 percent of the electorate disagrees with the party in power? Forty percent dictate to the majority. Is that not the definition of a dictatorship?

How can I feel other than disenfranchised as a Canadian citizen? The Conservative motto was "Here for Canada". Am I not part of Canada? Or am I only Canadian if I happen to agree with the Conservative agenda?

How can I support a government whose economic-development plan is to increase the punitive component of the justice system, create jobs by imprisoning more Canadians, and privatize the operations to reward those who financed the Conservative election machine? How is that progressive or even humane?

I know that the likes of Jon Ferry and other right-wing media pundits will reuse the term wingnut on me, but here goes: what would be progressive is a change in how we elect government, moving away from first past the post to a proportionally representative type of governance.

Until then, we are faced with a dictatorship. The damage that the Conservatives will do now that they are in a majority is yet to be discovered.

> J. Evanochko / Langley

Comments

2 Comments

kask

May 5, 2011 at 10:31am

It's how our system works unfortunately. The only way is for the left to unite... NDP and liberals will eventually become one party

Migzy

May 5, 2011 at 1:46pm

While I don't want the conservatives in power, I don't want the libs and NDP to join together, as it would essentially make us a 2 party system like the US where the centrist voters are left to choose between 2 parties neither of which fit them. We need that extra voice in Parliament.

What we need to do is have electoral reform like proportional representation. Which would more align the seat counts with the percentage of votes a party got. Some conservatives say this cuts both ways but honestly having nearly absolute power(ie.majority) for any party is not a good idea and well I don't agree 100% with any party so I think having to compromise with another party or parties is a great idea. It also keeps them more honest as they can be held accountable by the other parties.

We also need to reform the senate to either throw it out, or make it elected as well. I think making it elected would be better and have equal # of senators for every province so that its makeup is different from Parliament which should stay strictly representation by population but with a minimum of 2 or 3 per province/territory to ensure some representation for the smaller populations. But it should also be pro-rep.

Along with that I think we should have a separate vote for PM with the PM not being an MP, sort of like the President in the US and that cabinet ministers should not be MPs but people who are experts in their fields and they have to be vetted by the elected senate. Supreme court justices should also need to be vetted instead of simply appointed by the PM(Harper now gets to appoint 3 of them in this term and 4 if he again ignores his fixed election law and goes the full 5 years). I don't like a lot of what happens in US politics, but I think we can take some of the better points of their system to improve ours.