oh canada.

The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois have formed a coalition, sending a letter to the GovGen stating that should there be a vote of non-confidence in the current Conservative minority goverment, there is an exisiting viable option rather than calling a second election in three months.

Makes me nervous.

Of the three parties making up the coalition, the biggest is the Liberals, who are themselves outnumbered by the NDP and Bloc.  So we’d have a minority minority (minority) government.

The agendas of the disparate parties are incompatible in all sorts of ways.

The fact is the Conservatives have dropped the ball, pissing a lot of people off with talk of passing laws outlawing civil service strikes and gutting the public funding of the opposition.  This on top of a long term of ineffectual government.  Harper’s arrogance has tanked his already fragile administration for the sake of political hair-pulling.

This highlight a broken electoral system.  We have a fractured government, pulling in too many directions.  What is most staggering about this for me is that it makes the US two-party system look good.  And that’s saying something.  A two party system lets way too much fall through the cracks and leaves way too much vulnerable to corruption, but at least there’s the illusion of direction.  We’ve got…

We’ve got a playground brawl.  As Rex Murphy said, calling it undignified would be giving it too much dignity.

We’ve got a four party (plus) federal system, where the main stated purpose of one of the parties is to break the federation.  And we’re going to be beholden to that separatist party when they become the hinge pin that holds the coalition together against a very battered and snarly Liberal party.  How does that makes sense?

oh canada.