The Madness

Nearly half of Canadians support the idea of a coalition government

My review of Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis is in the current issue of the LRC, on newstands everywhere. Christopher Moore has a note about the review on his blog, and for the most part he gets what I was trying to do with the review.

Time to check in on what those useless humanities profs and social scientists are up to.

“Manipulation of public opinion by a well oiled and resourced propaganda machine has no place in the profound and critical constitutional decision making of the Governor General. It is simply unstatesman like to exploit the public’s misconceptions about parliamentary democracy.”

… you know, the one we’ve all been yammering on about over at Colleague Wherry’s place? Anyway, the background data is now available, including full regional and party support breakdowns. Enjoy!

Here’s a link to my Q&A with Peter Russell, one of our foremost constitutional scholars who has a new book out on the virtues of minority government. Prof. Russell’s previous book, Constitutional Odyssey, is one of the best primers on the quest to patriate the constitution; it wasn’t till I read that book that I fully grasped how the amending formula is essentially a definition of the country. 

As we lead up to the return of the House, battle lines are being drawn over the legitimacy of the forgotten-but-not-dead coalition. Two clear positions have emerged: On the one side, there is a group we can call the Democrats. The Democrats believe that while the coalition may be constitutionally  ok in a narrow, legal sense, it violates basic principles of democratic legitimacy. Two prominent Democrats are Michael Bliss and Norman Spector.

Here are the best two sentences I read this week:

While everyone was staring at their televisions yesterday waiting for the PM to emerge from Rideau Hall to tell us all whassup, I was crammed into a CBC booth doing Radio Q along with Tory spindoctor Tim Powers and his NDP counterpart Brad Lavigne. It was supposed to be a non-partisan look at the nature of the messaging coming out of the government and coalition camps, and Brad and Tim were both great. I was a bit of a third wheel and didn’t have much to add, but you can listen to it here if you like. 

I’m trying to piece together Harper’s theory of democratic legitimacy in a minority situation in Canada, given the existence of the Bloc Quebecois.

This is from Peter Loewen. He sent this last week while I was away, so it is a touch dated. I present this for interest and discussion, but Peter’s a friend so please make some effort to be polite. –ap

 

Ten thoughts on a coalition government in Canada

BY ANDREW POTTER