Andrew Coyne, columnist at the National Post, hits the nail squarely on the head today as he often does. And of course I only mention this because he backs up my own sentiments as I’ve been expressing here regarding the Liberals clinging to power. It heartens me to know that I’m not completely berserk in my thinking despite the emails indicating the contrary, so I like proving it. It’s all about my ego.
Let’s say the government is right, that a vote of the majority of the House of Common expressing no confidence in the government does not count as a vote of non-confidence; that although the House may have demanded “that the government resign,” it forgot to preface this with the critical words “Simon says.” What does this mean?
It means that we now have a new form of government in this country: government by technicality. The government can no longer claim to govern with the consent of the governed, the traditional standard of legitimacy in a democracy. It governs with the consent of itself. It is the constitutional equivalent of a circular argument, a government that rules solely on the strength of its own assertions.
[…] A majority of members of the House clearly believe they have passed a motion of non-confidence. Yet the government, with the support of a minority of the House, assures them they are mistaken: No, no, no, old chaps, that’s not what you meant at all. No, trust us: what you meant was merely to instruct a committee to report back to the House with a demand that the government resign. But that doesn’t mean you want the government to resign. Trust us.
[…] It is a statement of the disrepair into which our democratic institutions have fallen that a government should have the power to decide on its own when or if it will face the judgment of the Commons—and having at last been corralled into a vote, to construe that judgment as it prefers. (Imagine if it were to interpret an election defeat in the same way: What’s that you say? We can’t hear you …) But it is a statement of how low this government has sunk that it would use that power.
And for all his Joelness he gets the Quote of the Week Award (new, just started this week, may not be weekly, side effects may include my being accused of being a “homophobe”, on approved credit, not valid in Quebec, vote liberal) for this turn of phrase:
…that it is not actually a government, in the constitutional sense, at all, but merely a gang of press-releasers in temporary possession of the Treasury; that the Prime Minister is not the Great and Powerful Oz, but just an old man pulling levers.
… which puts me in the mind of those freaky crazed monkeys flying around… and yet even after I shake my head and wake up, I realize I’m thinking of our own real-life government of my own country.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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