Coalition blues

This one's about the coalition, waaaaaaaaay back when. Since it had to go in the paper, it's completely different from the one on my Facebook.

-----

Who says Canadian politics is boring?

Most everyone, I'd imagine ... until last week, when the firestorm over the budget erupted.

While there's a lot of facts, counterfacts, rhetoric and emotion over the possible fall of the Harper government under a sustained opposition assault, I think the main story is the fact that everybody knows, and everybody is talking about it.

People I've never known to be interested in politics are suddenly weighing in on what has rapidly become a full blown, made-in-Canada political crisis.

Everywhere you go, online and in the dailies, news agencies are focussed on the issue, and people are paying attention. Comments on some news websites number in the thousands. Every day on TV, the radio and in the newspapers, a new chapter in the drama, or a new feature ("THIS is how parliamentary government works." "THIS is what the governor general can do.").

In everyday conversation, through Facebook, over drinks at the pub, in offices across the country, people are talking politics.

Not just talking. Reacting. Wasn't long before someone got the pro- and anti-coalition facebook groups up and running, and changed their facebook statuses from the mundane to the political.

There'll be protests and rallies, too, by both sides. Students, unions, political parties, the whole nine yards.

Now, sure, the larger the group of people having an argument, the more likely are the chances some of the comments will be outrageous, or insulting. It's certainly polarized Canadian society, and the invective is flowing like the Reversing Falls.

But in between the charges and counter-charges, people are talking about the system, or the governor general, or the parties' past records and performance, or what should be done and why.

Best of all, aside from talking about the issues, people are educating themselves on the system and how it works.

And a lot of people have been surprised at some of the details that have come out in print or on the air about exactly how parliamentary democracy works. They are surprised it is actually possible (though not guaranteed) for a coalition to come to power without an election.

I would imagine even more have been shocked to find out the governor general actually has the deciding power she apparently has, and how past governor generals have dealt with similar situations.

And the overwhelming charge we've been hearing from either side is "undemocratic," whether it be levelled at the coalition or Harper's supposed behaviour in parliament in the years leading up to this crisis.

That says a lot about how little some people know about our system and its possibilities.

But it also shows Canadians have an idea of how the system ought to work, and are disturbed to find that it doesn't. If enough of those people feel strongly enough about how the system should or shouldn't work, will MPs and parties get the message and make changes down the road? Should they?

For my part, before this crisis blew up in everybody's faces, I apparently only had a partial grasp of how the Canadian party system worked, and I had no idea a coalition was even legally possible. I didn't even know what "prorogue" meant. And I was a poli-sci major.

This is a revived, nation-wide political discourse we badly, badly needed.

The last time we had an election (remember that one? The one that put us pretty much right back where we started?), voter turnout was a record low, at just over 59 per cent, according to Elections Canada.

In the provinces, the highest turnout for the federal election was Quebec, at just over 61 per cent, with Newfoundland and Labrador trailing the pack at around 48 per cent.

Nationally, the total percentage was down from almost 65 per cent in the 2006, or around a million voters less than the 2006 election.

Granted, that's still higher than most European countries, but when almost a million people who voted in 2006 decided it wasn't worth it last time around, that's a bit of a problem.

Whether they're just generally apathetic or genuinely annoyed with the way their politicians are behaving, that kind of voter turnout at a time when people are supposed to be choosing the men and women who are supposed to lead this country doesn't bode well. Can we now expect more people to get on their feet and head to the polls next election? Whether it is called next week or next year?

Parliamentary legalities aside, is the coalition undemocratic, or isn't it? Like everything else in politics, it seems to depend on where you stand. But if this many people are asking that question, and asking it loudly, I think it shows, one way or another, that democracy is alive and well.