heureusement, ici, c'est james

Whoever allowed Dion to appear on national television like that should be kicked in the stomach. Is it Dion or his staff who don't understand how political wars are won in the 21st century? He's lucky he has reason on his side, because that looked pathetic.

It's pretty obvious the NDP have been charged with the coalition's web strategy, because when you compare that with what the liberals have come up with, there's no competition.

Get a real bloody communications team already.

Labels: communications, constitutional crisis, Stephane Dion

"While it’s true that during the campaign the leaders all said they wouldn’t form a coalition, and it’s true that Mr. Dion won less support in the election than any previous Liberal leader, those are not arguments against the democratic legitimacy of the coalition.

Consider that Winston Churchill governed throughout the Second World War as the head of a coalition government without ever winning an election.

Mr. Harper himself sought to participate in a coalition with the Bloc and NDP in 2004.

Many similar countries, including New Zealand and Ireland, are governed by coalitions."

Labels: canada, cons, constitutional crisis, dictatorial tendencies, Stephane Dion, Stephen Harper

Seems that a solid chunk of people don't have a faint clue what's going on, and it terrifies them. So let's address that: the notion that the country will "implode" or that this all amounts to an anti-democratic "power-grab" is nothing more than ignorance. It's just a self-reinforcing, self-defeating fear.

Canadian constitutional conventions have been described as less-than-democratic, but the fact is we have a popular majority with this coalition (44% Lib-NDP; vs. 37.6 for Cons. And if we include the other parties, that's 54% including Bloc; 61% including Greens). That's a popular majority essentially shedding their pre-packaged ideologies in favour of working together to achieve a common aim - when our government refused to do that very same thing.

The fact that the NDP and the Liberals do not have the majority of seats despite their popular vote share only highlights the sad inadequacy of our first-past-the-post system. And while I'm quite in favour of significant reforms, that doesn't negate the fact that this new arrangement is quite unequivocally democratic.

In Canada, we DO NOT vote for a Prime Minister the way Americans vote for a President. We vote for individual members of parliament.

This is democratic.

Labels: canada, conservative doublespeak, constitutional crisis, political change