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12/3/08 12:34 pm
The subject line, by the way, is random. It has nothing to do with the subject of the post, nor do I actually miss Paul Martin.
The possibility of a coalition government consisting of the Liberal party, the New Democratic Party, and the Bloc Québecois replacing the current Conservative minority government has some excited, and some up in arms.
( Blather about politics )
Current Mood: blah
12/3/08 03:04 pm
Some problems with arguments about the current political crisis.
'Millions of Canadians...'
We will be told, by the political parties, by Facebook groups, by people or organisations in favour of either the Conservative minority government (such will be, as a rule, in favour of the Conservative party generally) or the possible coalition government, that 'millions of Canadians' prefer their option.
Strictly speaking, this is true. But as an argument in support of either option, it is fallacious. First of all, of the approximately 23 million eligible voters, nearly 10 million of them did not vote in the 2008 federal election. Based simply on the numbers, more 'millions of Canadians' don't care one way or another than cared enough to vote for any one party. More to the point, saying that 'millions of Canadians' think one way at best cancels out the 'millions of Canadians' claim made by the other side. I suppose it does, then, have that negative role in argument and debate. The problem with using it as a positive argument is that it doesn't necessarily have any ethical or moral strength in fact, as in, 'millions of Canadians support anti-Semitic measures', or, 'millions of Canadians are in favour of residential schools', both of which were probably true for a long time, but which are ethical disasters. The fact that 'millions of Canadians' support a venture does not tell us that it is good. Therefore, arguments for or against the coalition (or the Conservative minority) must needs be otherwise framed. The claim also, so far as I can tell, not been substantiated by a public, representative, or scientific poll. Except, of course, the 2008 federal election, when a sufficient number of 'millions of Canadians' preferred the current elected government, i.e., a Conservative minority.
Meanwhile, the poor voter turn-out of the last election affected the would-be coalition more: compared to the 170,000 votes lost to the Conservatives, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc lost 1,090,000 votes between them. In other words, more people cared not to vote for the parties which now wish to make a coalition than cared not to vote for the Conservatives in 2008 than in 2006. This further undermines the claim that 'millions of Canadians' prefer a coaltion. Add to this the fact that, when we went to the polls, the idea of forming a coalition was denied by the leaders of the parties now planning on forming a coalition, one really wonders how representative the coalition will be.
As for the problems with the popular vote, this seems to be more of a concern with those who support the coalition. The claim seems to be, 'why should a Conservative minority be considered legitimate when a coalition represents a greater percentage of the popular vote?' The present government won the election with 37.65% of the popular vote, to the tune of 5.2 million voters. The question could be fairly asked in 2004, when the Liberal minority government had 36.73% of the popular vote, and just under 5 million votes. (As an aside, back then, Harper considered some kind of coalition with the NDP, so his pother right now seems downright hypocritical.) In 2000, the Liberal majority won with a popular vote of 5.2 million voters, or 40.85% of the vote. At that time, there were around 21 million eligible voters, of whom 13 million voted, for a turn-out of 61.2%. So, in 2000, the number of people voting, and the number of people voting for the party which formed the government, was nearly the same as it was in 2008. (# of voters: 12,997,185 in 2000; 132,832,972 in 2008; # who voted for the governing party: 5,252,031 for a Liberal majority, 5,208,796 for a Conservative minority).
The question of the legitimacy to govern is a fair one to ask, but in the context of a coalition replacing the elected government, should have been asked at the polls. What the results of the 2008 federal election would have been if the issue had been at the forefront, who can say, but they would have been surely different. Moreover, the numbers show that a majority government is capable of being formed with those numbers. If things had turned out differently on Oct. 14, the Dec. 1 agreement by the Liberal, NDP, and Bloc would never have happened because the Conservatives would have enjoyed a majority - which, thank God, they do not. And, of course, individually, none of the coalition parties has a greater percentage of the popular vote than the Conservatives do, which is the context in which we should interpret the data, given that the coalition parties did not run on a coalition platform in the 2008 federal election.
All this is not to say that a coalition government would be worse than the current Conservative minority government, although I suspect sadly that this would be so, but since the debate is important, we should at least be aware of the facts (something which seems lacking at times; e.g., if you read replies to articles posted on cbc.ca or entries in groups on Facebook, &c.), and be careful of which arguments we use in favour of one side or another.
Current Mood: blah
12/3/08 04:25 pm
I need to correct a few statements which I made in my previous posts.
1) '[I]t should be a little worrying that the coalition's statement only mentions the current economic crisis in the title'
The coalition (which in fact consists only of the NDP and the Liberals; they have an accord with the Bloc) has produced a document regarding economic policy. I leave it to better minds to determine how useful it will be. However, there was no mention in either document as to what the Bloc gets out of this; while I would like to think that Gilles Duceppe is doing this out of the goodness of his heart, it is more probable that his agreement has been assured based on, as they say in hockey trades, 'future considerations'.
2) 'The claim also, so far as I can tell, not been substantiated by a public, representative, or scientific poll.'
As if to condemn my forgetting the 'has' in this sentence, it turns out that there has been a poll regarding the formation of a coalition government. The results of the poll barely favour the coalition.
I promise, this is the last I'll be blathering about the current political crisis.
Current Mood: still 'blah'
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