I will have more to say about this in the very near future, but for the time being, let me say that I am very upset that the Prime Minister of Canada is lying to the people of this country about the way our system of government works.<\/p>\n
In our system of parliamentary democracy, a government is formed by the leader of the party that can command the confidence of the elected legislature – traditionally, the leader of the party with the highest number of seats following an election.\u00a0\u00a0 In situations where the government is formed by a party with a plurality – but not a majority – of the available seats, we have a minority government.\u00a0 Minority governments depend upon the support of others for their continued existence;\u00a0 should the government lose a vote on a “matter of confidence” (typically, but not always, a vote concerning money), the government is defeated because it has lost the confidence of the House.<\/p>\n
If this happens in a time period shortly after an election, the Governor General has a responsibility to the country and to the elected House to see if someone else – another leader – can form a government that will command the confidence of the House.<\/p>\n
That is precisely the situation that is unfolding in Canada this week.\u00a0 Stephen Harper is telling Canadians that there is something anti-democratic, unconstitutional and un-Canadian going on here.\u00a0 He is wrong and he knows it.\u00a0 It is shameful that a sitting Prime Minister would stoop to such despicable tactics in a naked attempt to hold on to power for power’s sake.\u00a0 He has shown himself to be an ideologue who cannot be trusted to act with integrity and respect for our system of government and its traditions.<\/p>\n
He has to go.\u00a0 Resign, Mr. Harper.\u00a0 Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I will have more to say about this in the very near future, but for the time being, let me say that I am very upset that the Prime Minister of Canada is lying to the people of this country about the way our system of government works.<\/p>\n
In our system of parliamentary democracy, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[102,576,575,578,579,574,577,573],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}