The fat lady. She has sung.
The election’s over and we have a Liberal minority government, the first such parliament in my memory (I wasn’t paying attention during 1979). Should be interesting, but I’m not looking forward to another election any time soon. I suppose the Liberals and NDP will form a coalition. The NDP has barely enough seats (or do they?! It’s very close now!) to give the Liberals a majority and I can’t see the Grits working with the Bloc, who vocally put Quebec’s concerns ahead of Canada’s.
The weekend paper had a summary of each party’s policies and promises. They are all depressingly similar to each other. I think the only point of regular elections is to keep the ruling party on their toes so they attempt to act honestly during their tenure. It doesn’t matter so much who wins.
This minority government will give the country a small insight into what proportional representation may bring. Some sort of government reform is part of most of the partys’ policies (except the governing party, interestingly enough) and is also being discussed in other forums. The huge downfall of such systems is the never-ending minority governments and frequent elections as coalitions fall apart (witness Israel). On the other hand, smaller parties would finally get a representative or two in the house.
I’m all for trying out a new system, but can we switch back if it doesn’t work out?