coalitions might be the answer

After Harper’s Government Crumbles, What’s Next for Canada?

OpinionsTom Llewelin — Published March 29, 2011

The first government in Canada’s history to ever be found in contempt of parliament crumbled on Friday. As it happened, party spin doctors raced past the government’s record and the reasons why it fell and focused on the elephant in the room: a potential coalition government.

Conservative party messaging since the last election has demonized the concept. The idea has been painted as an undemocratic, banana-republic option that has resulted in the potential coalition partners squirming in their seats. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff used his first pre-campaign announcement to categorically bury coalition talk.

Meanwhile, Parliament has degenerated into a rude, obnoxious circus. Unsurprisingly, voter engagement and interest is at an all-time low. Parties need to ask themselves how to bring the conversation of Canadian politics up to a level that doesn’t cause the bile to rise up in the backs of people’s throats.

As long as support for all the major parties is split in such a way that makes winning more than 40 per cent of the vote a gamble, a coalition government would be the best answer.

Freedom from minority governments, which want to ensure their survival before anything else, would give us more leeway to put together policies that take the long-term into account.

Canada is a huge country with regions whose interests often oppose one another. Quebec’s rejection of Alberta’s oil tar sands in favour of imports is one of many examples. Economic health and social views vary wildly. Parties that claim to be able to bring all Canadians under their banner have never really been able to succeed at it. Even the Liberals, masters of inclusive politics during their days under Trudeau, burned their bridges with the West.

In the case of Stephen Harper holding the torch for “real Canadians” while cutting corporate taxes and letting northern pack ice melt away, the doublespeak gets to absurd levels.

In the straight-majority system we have now, where only two parties can realistically win government, real diversity of views and opinion is hard to maintain. The NDP and Bloc Quebecois, the two “third parties” with the positions that diverge the most from the two biggest players, exist in a strange alternate reality.

They represent clearly defined viewpoints, and exist in regions of the country with particular traits that endear people in them to their policies. However, they’re stuck between playing kingmakers, obstructionists or impediments to laws getting passed—these parties really have no other substantial role to play.

Rather than wring our hands, we could constructively acknowledge the character of our democracy and provide a seat for them at the table.Either in government or opposition, they’d have a reason to exist as part of something larger and more inclusive by its very definition.

By extension, the Greens and other outsiders would become more relevant, and the narrow liberal-vs.-conservative orthodoxy would be more easily challenged.

We’d be better off for it. During your next study break, call your Member of Parliament and tell them what you think.

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 28, published March 29, 2011.