Azih said:
Thing is Memles, it's precisely long term stable governments that have the opporutnity to become corrupt (Cretien Liberals), it's only in the current minority government that accountability has been introduced.
That is, if you're convinced that the entire Liberal Party was corrupt. I'm not; I, maybe naively, believe that a bulk of the problems and cocncerns lie in the hands of a concentrated number of individuals. For this reason, I think that even in a majority there would be enough public outcry for the Gomery Inquiry to take place and for people to be held accountable. All a minority situation is doing is allowing it to be placed firmly on the shoulders of people not directly involved, and that forces no more proper accountability in the situation.
Plus with the immense amounts of voter fatigue that has arisen out of modern politcal campaigns opposition parties are now extremely leery of forcing elections. Hell take a look at the current situation, if Canadians weren't so completely sick of elections the Liberals would have fallen EASILY. That in and of itself provides a significant amount of stability.
But Minority Governments aren't that easy. This one has actually been pretty damn successful, all things considered. It has been able to pass a budget due to its conservatization, and has been out there working through that situation. I don't think Voter apathy will ever be taken into account. I think Proportional Representation simply is not a realistic alternative; some combination of the two systems, I think, might well be a good move. Even a system where you actually have to get a majority of the votes in your riding to win would be a good step, IMO. People winning with 40% of the vote has to stop.
I'm also just a really big admirer of the Pearson/Douglas days.
I'll comment on this a year from now when I've taken Canadian History in University, rather than the bullshit one in High School. Or, I likely won't, because I'll have forgotten about it.
Plus there wold be more variety in Parliment which would actually enhance stability. Imagine a parliment with PC, CA, Liberal, NDP, Bloc, and Green. The PC and CA might combine with the Liberals to push through a tax cut while everybody else would gang up on the CA on social issues. the NDP, Bloc and Green would be a significant force for leftist issues (supported by the Liberals when public polls demand such).
Except that it isn't that damn easy. You speak of it purely theoretically. It can work, I'll admit, but it isn't just as easy as total agreement. I don't buy these scenarios, I'm afraid. I don't think it would all go down that easily. It would be an interesting experiment, but I don't think that the NDP can really do anything about it in the first place. It warps the parties we voted for; nobody who voted will be really happy. Sure, their party gets its way sometimes, but the rest of the time they more or less get hosed because they have so many people to please. That doesn't create good policy; it creates haphazard policy. Look at Martin and Kyoto; he had to pull it off the budget bill because the Conservatives were planning on killing it. How is that getting something done when one party has the power to stop policy from occuring?
The reason the PCs died after all was not because they didn't have a significant percentage of support, it was because their support wasn't concentrated in any region. The NDP faces the same problem, while the Bloc has Quebec, the CA had Alberta, and Liberals have (had?) Ontario.
This is likely because I live in Nova Scotia, but I will challenge almost all of this. Yes, the Alliance is Alberta, Bloc is Quebec, and Liberals is/was more or less Ontario. However, the NDP is concentrated entirely on the coasts. It performs well in British Columbia, and also in Halifax (Former Leader Alexa McDonough has been winning here for years). Generally urban areas, with large populations, as well as rural areas with a socialists history. The PCs also had a fairly large support based in rural Atlantic Canada and in some parts of Ontario. They were the conservative alternative to the Liberals for many years, and were supported well. For instance, the riding in which I currently type belongs to Mr. Scott Brison. Before he turned to the Liberals, this riding had been Progressive Conservative for 75 years. It is now Liberal. Clearly, the PC had a base for support, and lost it. Mulroney drove the party into the ground, and its image was its problem, not it's lack of a base. It simply lacked the proper image to move into any other larger areas of the country on a wide scale.
Also there's nothing stopping the LIberals from campaigning on a 'stable government' platform and syaing 'look if you want things to get done, then the liberals are your only choice' in an attempt to get a majority.
Within a PR state? It's physically impossible, dude. Proportional Representation simply does not create majorities. You can campaign all you want, but the reality is that the people are not going to all vote en masse for one party, no matter what you tell them. PR is a finicky system whose name seems nice, but the realities are not so easy.
