I have waited the requisite eight day cool-off period – now the storming of parliament may begin. I am both sickened and dismayed by the actions of our politicians – coalition and conservative, ruling and would would-be ruling parties – during this fabricated fray. To obscure personal agendas and juvenile wantonness to hold and dispense power behind the mask of saving the nation is disturbing on a moral level, but insults us all on an intellectual one as well. We bear witness to puerile party politics today; a mad grab for power, or maintaining power, at the expense of the citizenry, the economy, and the environment.
And the populace in question deserves no more than it receives. Our political figure-heads, so concerned with forwarding their own agendas, have sold us a bag of goods that includes a coalition option. This coalition is alternately vilified and praised as a ‘democratic’ solution. To be fair, a coalition system possibly offers the finest form of government, with plurality and concession being the norm rather than the exception. Many successful nations (Denmark, Germany and New Zealand come to mind) consistently elect coalition governments as matter of course. But Canada, perhaps reeling from the partisanship of the U.S. federal elections, is not one of them. Simply put, Canada (the politicians, the population, or the system) is not mature or intelligent enough to make collaborative government work.
Debate in this country, far removed from notions of co-operation and collaboration, is neither conducive nor supportive of coalition government. We are rapidly becoming victims of our own design, where the country is fragmented not along policy lines, but party nomenclature and geographical boundaries. A hangover from the Bush era and the polarizing cast of characters that acted this political drama, Canada has unwittingly and unapologetically embraced the notion of the two solitudes – now east and west, right wing and left wing, liberal and conservative - resulting in campaigns as myopic as ‘anything but conservative’ and the fear-mongering, natio-patriotico diatribes fuelling conservative attacks on the coalition. A sampling of political views in Canada today offers even the casual listener a range of simplistic, partisan banter proposing no constructive alternatives, but much rhetoric and vitriol. We will, at the behest of the privileged few with vested interests in a given political party and a media whipped into a confrontational paradigm by the lure of public spectacle, be led into a bastardized two-party system less productive and more fragile than even that of the United States; a system ripe with back-room dealings and secret power-sharing agreements that ensure the public is ever more detached from the workings of government. In reality, it is not the creation or refusal of a coalition government in Canada that serves as a barometer to democracy. Our democratic virtues left us when we collectively opted for partisanship over the common weal, and the reclamation of these loftier goals of common government are a very long way off.
And the populace in question deserves no more than it receives. Our political figure-heads, so concerned with forwarding their own agendas, have sold us a bag of goods that includes a coalition option. This coalition is alternately vilified and praised as a ‘democratic’ solution. To be fair, a coalition system possibly offers the finest form of government, with plurality and concession being the norm rather than the exception. Many successful nations (Denmark, Germany and New Zealand come to mind) consistently elect coalition governments as matter of course. But Canada, perhaps reeling from the partisanship of the U.S. federal elections, is not one of them. Simply put, Canada (the politicians, the population, or the system) is not mature or intelligent enough to make collaborative government work.
Debate in this country, far removed from notions of co-operation and collaboration, is neither conducive nor supportive of coalition government. We are rapidly becoming victims of our own design, where the country is fragmented not along policy lines, but party nomenclature and geographical boundaries. A hangover from the Bush era and the polarizing cast of characters that acted this political drama, Canada has unwittingly and unapologetically embraced the notion of the two solitudes – now east and west, right wing and left wing, liberal and conservative - resulting in campaigns as myopic as ‘anything but conservative’ and the fear-mongering, natio-patriotico diatribes fuelling conservative attacks on the coalition. A sampling of political views in Canada today offers even the casual listener a range of simplistic, partisan banter proposing no constructive alternatives, but much rhetoric and vitriol. We will, at the behest of the privileged few with vested interests in a given political party and a media whipped into a confrontational paradigm by the lure of public spectacle, be led into a bastardized two-party system less productive and more fragile than even that of the United States; a system ripe with back-room dealings and secret power-sharing agreements that ensure the public is ever more detached from the workings of government. In reality, it is not the creation or refusal of a coalition government in Canada that serves as a barometer to democracy. Our democratic virtues left us when we collectively opted for partisanship over the common weal, and the reclamation of these loftier goals of common government are a very long way off.
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