The first issue that truly stands out for me is the description of the coalition. The coalition is a joint accord between the Liberals and the NDP to form the new replacement government with support of the Bloc when it comes to 3 confidence motions (Throne Speech and 2 Budgets Source: CBC). The coalition does not include the Bloc, but in order to stay in power will either need the Conservatives or the Bloc to vote the same way in Parliament.

Prime Minister Harper in his national televised address simply stoked the misinformation about the coalition with a quote: “…a coalition[,] with seperatists…” (Apologies for lack of timecode in his speech). With the speech it’s hard to tell if there is a comma meant to be there as the punctuation denotes whether or not he’s referring to that the coalition is made with the separatists (a glaring lie) or that it’s a coalition with the support of the Bloc Quebecois (truth).

I use the word “voted” in quotes because it’s a bit of a misnomer that Canadians vote for their government or even for their Prime Minister. The reality is that we vote for our Member of Parliament - our vote helps decide who our Member of Parliament will be and under current Election laws it also gives the party your Member of Parliament represents $1.95 from the Federal coffers. To reiterate we do not explicitly vote for our Prime Minister (although that can be the reason you voted for your MP), nor do we explicity vote for the party to run the government either.

The government is created from the party (or parties) that hold the confidence of the house - which is nearly always the party with the most seats but if that party fails at keeping confidence the government can be handed to the next party in line (Liberals in this case) who can then do what they can to make a government that will have the confidence of the house (by coalition or something similar). In the end whether it goes to election or is passed to the next party is up to the Governor General. So my second issue, the proposition that this replacement coalition government is illegal, undemocratic or anything else is a lie. There are several flies in that ointment however as I’ll cover later.

Personally this past election I chose to not vote for Jim Prentice for the sole reason that he was in charge of Bill C-61, the proposed copyright bill I opposed. The bill never passed into law because the government called an election discarding any possible legislation. My riding is also a very strong Conservative stronghold, meaning that it was well known that Jim Prentice would win the riding and that a vote for anyone else would not be a vote to actually make someone else the MP for my riding. The $1.95 to the party I liked, the popular vote, and the privilege to participate in our democratic process were my reasons to go out and vote.

You may recall that there was a standing idea put forth by Stephen Harper (at least publicly) to save some money on the budget by removing the public funding for political parties (that $1.95 I mentioned earlier). Given how much smaller parties depend on this (eg. Green party), or people like myself use that as a way of deciding whom they wish to vote for when knowing that my vote would not help change who was going to represent me in Ottawa. That would be best defined as the turning point that pushed the House of Commons into the lack of confidence required to continue the government. (It will be decided at the next confidence motion)

Earlier I mentioned there were several flies in the ointment for the possible coalition government; first being that the Liberal Party leader Stephan Dion will be stepping down, meaning a change of Prime Minister in the middle of the term. Not overly uncommon (eg. Chrietien handing things off to Martin) but definitely a possible tripping point. The other fact is that a coalition government taking over from the present government is unprecedented as the rules for the Parliament are rather flexible. There are several others that I am sure the Conservative Party is looking long and hard at, but I’m not a political analyst. I’m just a voter annoyed with the misinformation, rhetoric and wish that the Conservatives would put forth their arguments without the misinformation and rhetoric trappings that mask any valid arguments into just spun words.

For more information about what else is making the coalition government even more shaky in terms of new ground I recommend: CBC’s FAQ About the Coalition.

Conservatives: Stop with the rhetoric and misinformation and convince your opponents instead of whipping your supporters into a polarized misinformed fervour.

Coalition: Convince everyone that if you do take over that you can do a better job than the Conservatives.