What Democracy? Harper to Stack Senate Seats With Tory Loyalists

First Stephen Harper gets a figurehead Governor-General to enforce an unprecedented prorogue on Parliament and now he has vowed to fill 18 vacant Senate seats before Christmas. 

All the while his party is holding fast to the outright lie that a Coalition Government would be an "unelected" government.  Maybe Harper and the Conservatives need a crash course in the basics of Canadian democracy.

One of the most frustrating things about the Conservative campaign against a coalition government is the persistent assertion, and outright lie, that an opposition alliance would be an "unelected" government and that the chosen coalition leader would be an "unelected" Prime Minister.

Here is the reality; every member of any coalition government was elected by Canadians somewhere, and contrary to what Harper and the Tories want Canadians to believe, NOBODY except the people in Harper's riding of  Calgary Southwest, voted for him directly.

Stephen Harper is only Prime Minister because his party has the most seats in Parliament.  The Conservative Party did not win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons meaning that contrary to the current party line, the Tories do not have the majority of Canadian support.  This is why we have a "minority government" and this is why the elected members of the opposition parties are able to band together to form a coalition government.

In Canada we do not elect our Prime Minister; the party faithful choose a party leader and the leader of the party with the most support in Parliament becomes Prime Minister.  In a majority government the Party leader with the most support is a given, but in a minority government it is up for debate.

In a minority government if the leader of the party with the most seats (not to be confused with a majority of the seats) can not get enough support from the opposition parties to pass legislation it is known as a "non-confidence" position, and that leader can no longer be Prime Minister.  In Canadian democracy non-confidence can only result in one of two things; an election or a coalition government. 

The Tories have spent a great deal of effort pandering to the lack of understanding that many Canadians have of their own political system.  That is a shocking abuse of public trust and Stephen Harper should be ashamed.  The only Canadians who chose Harper for Prime Minister are the Conservative Party faithful who elected him leader and the electors in his riding of Calgary Southwest who voted for him. Not a single Canadian outside of those two groups voted for him directly.

All the other party leaders currently sitting in Parliament, including the now removed Liberal leader Stephane Dion and his newly appointed successor Micheal Ignatieff, were elected in the exact same fashion.  In Canadian democracy any party leader who is able to gain the support, or confidence, of the majority of the MPs in Parliament is an elected leader and it is time that the Conservatives stopped stating otherwise. 

In a minority government situation the parties must work together to rule; a formal coalition is simply an agreement in kind to work together as one party until the next election is called.  A coalition is not an unelected government, it is not illegal, and it is not undemocratic (at least not in the Canadian sense of the word).  In Canada a coalition government is democracy at work.

There have been many questions raised however, about the democracy of having a Governor-General who is only intended to act as a figurehead, call a halt to Parliament via an unprecedented prorogue. And what is definitely undemocratic is a holiday rush to appoint Conservative Loyalists to an unelected Senate, which is what Stephen Harper has pledged to do.  So much for the Conservative Party of Canada as vanguards of democracy!