A blog to give a voice to our concern about the continued erosion of our democratic processes not only within the House of Commons and within our electoral system but also throughout our society. Here you will find articles about the current problems within our parliamentary democracy, about actions both good and bad by our elected representatives, about possible solutions, opinions and debate about the state of democracy in Canada, and about our roles/responsibilities as democratic citizens. We invite your thoughtful and polite comments upon our posts and ask those who wish to post longer articles or share ideas on this subject to submit them for inclusion as a guest post.
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Monday, October 3, 2011

Libs reject Coalition

The Ontario Election is coming down to the wire and it is increasing looking like a minority government with an almost equal split between two if not three partys. The headlines say “ The Ontario election remains a three-horse race four weeks into the campaign, with the one and only televised leaders’ debate doing nothing to end the dead heat between the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives or budge support for the New Democrats.
Then we have one of the major parties say in an open letter to the Hudak conservatives that:- “ any instability and uncertainty will take Ontario off track,” adding he is “running to form a Liberal government — and only a Liberal government.
“There will be no coalition with either your party or the NDP”.

Do these folk live in some kind of an alternative dream world that the rest of us know nothing about? It is strongly probable that Ontario is going to land up with a minority government and I have said here many times that minority governments are not necessarily bad, it dependents upon the willingness of those elected to work together for the good of the electorate. That a leader who could well be in a position to form such a government should rule out a formal arrangement with another elected party to govern in cooperation with other elected MPPs BEFORE such a choice become inevitable strikes me as a suicide mission!
I have to this point been very unsure of where my vote should go, they each are promising expenditures that cannot be recouped without major increases in income or major cuts in service but NONE of them will say specifically where these moneys are going to be found. This recent development leave me with pretty much a choice of none of the above! As former bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said insofar as their financial plans are concerned they are all lying (or living in lala land), and now it would seem that some of them at least are doing the same regarding the possibility of a coalition, saying I will not work with the 'other guys' no matter what!
Should, as seems quite probable, we get a minority situation it will be necessary for ALL partys to cooperate to get us out of this mess and avoid a second election in the near future. That one, and possibly two of the major player should reject such cooperation BEFORE the cards are even on the table shows what a state of affairs our political world has come to. We know the federal scene has been in this partisan gridlock for sometime, but I was under the mistaken (perhaps naive) belief that out provincial politics had not quite reached that sad state of affairs, guess I was wrong.

As a rural resident I have not seen a candidate at my door in the 50 years I have lived in this great country (why bother talking to the minorities when the city folks can get me elected without your vote!) , right now the best advice I can give any of the candidates in my area is don’t show up at my door unless you are prepared to hear some hard truths about politics in Canada!
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