The coalition

It's finally time for me to weigh in on that coalition that almost replaced our minority government here in Canada. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• In Canada, we technically elect our Members of Parliament (MPs), not our Prime Minister. Parliament has the right and the responsibility to hold the Prime Minister and cabinet accountable. Forming a coalition to defeat the government was within the rights of the parties involved. We don't have rules to distinguish between legitimately holding the Prime Minister accountable and making a shameless power grab. Nor should we. Bad policies and lack of leadership skill are legitimate reasons to defeat a Prime Minister, and I don't think we can make a rule to define these situations. If the opposition parties really do make a shameless power grab, hopefully the public will see through it and punish them for it in the next election.
• In Canada, we technically elect our MPs, not our Prime Minister. But when we vote for our MP, we know which party each candidate is in, and we know who their leaders are. I'm sure many people in my riding voted for Tim Uppal because he's in Stephen Harper's party, not because he's Tim Uppal. Likewise, I'm sure many votes across Canada were influenced by the party leaders more than the local candidates.
• More people voted for the Liberals, NDP, or Bloc Quebecois than for the Conservatives. This gives the coalition some democratic legitimacy.
• More people voted for the Conservatives than any other individual party. This should count for something. While I believe most NDP and Bloc Quebecois supporters would rather have Stephane Dion as Prime Minister than Stephen Harper, there are many exceptions. They voted against the Liberals for a reason.
• When Stephen Harper threatened to take away government funding of political parties, I think that gave the opposition parties a legitimate reason to defeat the government. To do that on such short notice would cripple the opposition. But Harper changed his mind, taking away a major justification for the coalition.
  
• When I saw Stephane Dion on TV during the election campaign, it sounded like he thought Canadians were morally obligated to defeat Harper and make Dion our Prime Minister, because of Harper's lies. (I'm not even going to touch the issue of whether Harper was lying or not.) When he announced his resignation after the election, it looked like he would be only the second Liberal leader in Canadian history not to become Prime Minister. Did he decide to bring down the government because of some post-election bitterness? I suspect a shameless power grab.
• While I don't like the idea of suspending parliament to prevent a non-confidence vote, that's apparently within the rights of the Governor General. And based on opinion polls showing a strong Conservative lead, suspending parliament was probably the only way to keep the government that the most people wanted.
• Without the threatened loss of party funding, the coalition used the government's lack of action on the economy as its justification. I have no idea what would be best for our economy. I would lean toward a small bailout, but I'm no expert. Since I'm not very sure which path to take, I would favour keeping the Conservatives in power because they won the last election.

While I think Harper should remain Prime Minister for now, he hasn't been very cooperative and he seems to take pleasure in hurting the opposition. He needs to watch himself. Meanwhile, I'm glad to see that the new Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is sounding more cooperative than Stephane Dion. Maybe our government can accomplish something this winter, and if not, maybe it will be defeated for a more legitimate reason.