Time For a New Minority Government

I had always thought that the worst possible thing that could happen was a Tory Majority government. That might still be true but I’m not sure that we can survive another Tory minority government either.

Let’s look at their record. In minority government they have given $60 billion dollars in tax cuts to corporations, neutered the parliamentary committee process, and systematically silenced their critics inside and outside of government. They have even co-opted the media so that any opposition to their plans has to be justified before it can be made public.

Their up-coming plans include spending billions to build prisons when the crime rate is going down and billions more on fighter jets. Who are we defending ourselves from or more importantly who are they planning to attack in our name?

The Conservatives have managed to stay in power by playing to their base and forcing the other political parties to fight amongst themselves. They got here by uniting the right in Canada and to get them out we need to unite the left and centre left.

How we do that I’m not quite sure but despite the fact that no opposition party is supporting it and all of them are actively running against the idea of a left of centre coalition, recent polls have shown that even though the Conservatives are ahead in a first past the post poll there is almost a dead heat when asked if they would support a Liberal/NDP Coalition. See the Jan 13 EKOS poll below.

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/full_report_january_13.pdf

Together we have the numbers to beat the Conservatives and stave off disaster but do we have the political will? One thing is clear and that is if we do the same thing we did the last time we know what the result will be. Isn’t it time we actually started building for success instead of accepting our ultimate demise?