Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Well, another Canadian election is over and the result is the same. A Liberal minority government. Man, you could hear the sighs of exasperation across the country that night. Meanwhile, I was rather satisfied.

You see, majority governments suck. Yeah, they do. You're basically giving a party and its lackeys unchecked power to do whatever they want for a full, four year term. Oh sure, they hold committee meetings and discuss policy before they write the next bill, but who are we kidding? They can pay lip service to any suggestions made by committee members who aren't from the ruling party or ignore input outright and there's not a damned thing you can do about it until the next election.

With a minority government , on the other hand, the ruling party doesn't have the leverage to enact any policy it wants. Because all it takes to kill it is for all of the other parties to collectively vote no and it's over. For good measure, if the ruling party starts acting like an ass on a regular basis, the other parties can team up and vote no confidence in the ruling party and that's it. The game is over and it's back to the polls.

So what this does in effect is create a situation where the ruling party has to try and propose policies that at least one other party holding the balance of power can agree to. It creates a climate of cooperation. It demands collaboration and actually listening to committee members' ideas. It creates policies that represent more of the populace. And it prevents the ruling party from getting too full of themselves.

I'm for a minority government every time. Which is why a change in our electoral system to a proportional representation system would better serve our country. Because when a party gets 15% of the popular vote, they would also get 15% influence on policy creation. How is that not fair?

So thank you Canada, for making sure that the ruling party, which also happens to be my traditional party, doesn't get to do whatever it wants. Because they didn't get ALL the votes. And neither did anyone else.