Not cool Michaëlle Jean

This has been an especially distressing week for me. Commentary from all over the country has been unified on a single topic: the coalition government. Debates are fierce and well they should be but an overwhelming amount of the opinions I've heard being shared by people all across Canada is that the coalition doesn't have the right to claim leadership of government. Earlier this week I had no doubt that this contest was a healthy exercise in democracy but all that has been thrown sharply into question with the governor general's decision to prorogue parliament.

The prorogue in itself is not the problem. Both the Coalition and the Conservatives have the right to request these things from the governor general. The context of it, however, leads me to a more depressing conclusion: Canada does not function as a parliamentary democracy should. The ruling party, no matter how many seats they own, are expected to govern as if we were a two party system.

Obviously my statements require a defense. The way I see it, other parliamentary democracies around the world accept coalition governments as a normal way to compose a parliament. Switzerland, Germany, India, Ireland ... all of these generally elect governments composed of a four party coalition. Canada has not had joint rule since World War I and even then it was under dire circumstances. Canada, despite it's claim to a parliamentary democracy, has rarely ever had a need for the minor parties to utilize their right to challenge the sitting government with a coalition.

This hesitation on the behalf of minor parties is often understandable. Canadian leaders do not tend to rock the boat on any issue and both parties fall at more or less the same stance on important issues within a shade or two of liberalism or conservatism. Rarely does it come to such a boiling point that minor parties even want to remove power especially when it means compromising on issues for the satisfaction of all members of the coalition.

Regardless of all this, the right to form a coalition is inherent in our system. This aspect of parliamentary democracy (indeed, perhaps the entirety of how Canada functions politically) seems lost on, or at least ignored by, many people. I've heard many commentators go on about how the coalition has no right to contest the government, how the country has elected Stephen Harper as prime minister and that the coalition is usurping democracy. Before now I would have said that all these were untrue but with the governor general evidently putting a roadblock in the way of the coalition one can only wonder how much of this was dictated by public opinion. Certainly the choice was her own but with a position as transitory and vestigial as Governor General I remain unconvinced that Jean has the capacity to make a completely unbiased opinion.

Which leads me back to my original point. If the rights of the parties to use their democratic tools to influence government are being unevenly influenced by those who do not know how a parliamentary democracy works, how can we be one? The country has already used its power of the vote to remove complete power from Harper. More then half the seats in the house belong to a party other then the Conservatives. The very purpose of the Coalition is to use this fact to demand a change of leadership for Canada. What the Governor General has said with this decision to approve the prorogue is that the will of the single party with MOST of the seats is more important then the will of all the other seats unified but without a single party. How can we truly think of ourselves as possessing anything other then a system where the plurality rules supreme.

As I've said, the actions of our political players have greatly distressed me. Canadian democracy has been melting away from all but the parliament for a long time now, removing checks and balances and rendering whole branches of government useless. If we truly are shearing another level of accountability off of government I can't help but worry for us all.