Our Prime Minister practices his deer-in-headlights look

Part one: A brief history of previous Canadian parliamentary power-plays

Apparently there is a chink in King Stephen Harper’s sweater-y armour, because a Liberal-NDP coalition is about to usurp his minority government. The Conservatives are calling it a coup, but whether they like it or not the Canadian constitution provides for a majority of seats — any majority — to control the government (by the way, a Conservative-Bloc coalition could have done the same in 2004).  

Why is this even an option? Well, it all has something to do with responsible government. Since our government simply refers to "the party with the most seats," and we don’t directly elect a prime minister, the definition of both is somewhat malleable. First off, each party chooses its leader, and the party with the most seats is in charge. Consequently, the party’s leader becomes Prime Minster.

But if Stephen Harper decided to step down as PM, and the party embarked on an epic game of paper-scissors-rock to determine the new leader, that’s their prerogative. Or, if more than half the MPs suddenly abandoned their respective parties and became independents, we’d have anarchy. Come to think of it, it doesn’t really seem all that responsible on our part as voters. But it does mean that at least the government is responsible to whomever we voted into office. And when any majority of parliament members disagrees with the government, they have the option of voting it down or taking over.

Usually, the former happens and we have an election — something annoyingly familiar during this century’s brief political history. Actually, the latter has never happened, until now. But that’s not to say that a coalition is totally unprecedented. Since Canada’s infancy, inter-party mergers have occurred at least as often as we get to host the Olympics.  

Towards the end of the American Civil War, Canada’s main parties got together in an effort to reform the entire political system and alleviate the deadlock of French versus English voting. This was also probably not a bad idea if things in the US went, ah, south, and the proto-provinces had to make some diplomatic decisions about their neighbour. Setting aside political feuding, they created what was dubbed The Great Coalition; essentially the precursor to Confederation.

Again during wartime, PM Robert Borden’s efforts to introduce conscription (Canada’s version of the draft) and top up the troops during WWI required a bit of bolstering from some willing opposition members. Creating the Union Government out of Conservative, Liberal and Independent MPs, Borden was able to win the 1917 election, and send more young men to slaughter. OK, so maybe coalitions aren’t always awesome.

The most notable coalition — with a snappy title to boot — was the King-Byng Affair of 1926. Amidst government corruption and a progressively unsupportive opposition, William Lyon Mackenzie King’s minority government was denied the request to dissolve parliament and call an election. Instead, Governor General Lord Byng, in a rare exercise of the royal powers, appointed the opposition leader Arthur Meighen as acting Prime Minister. This “government” lasted only a week, as Meighen lost his first confidence vote by just one “nay.”

While some say the Summit Series may have saved Pierre Trudeau in the 1972 election, the reality is that his minority government was propped up by NDP support. A sort of pseudo coalition, Trudeau’s government relied on the NDP’s confidence votes in exchange for such initiatives as regulating election expenses and the creation of Petro Canada. Not a bad legacy, even if it was only a prelude to an exciting political future.

Though he’s unlikely to lead the merged party, Bob Rae has a history as a coalition enabler with his provincial NDP party. In the mid-1980s he supported the Liberals with the “Liberal-NDP Accord,” a contract that allowed for David Peterson and co. to end the Conservatives’ four-decade reign over Ontario. Of course, this eventually led to Rae’s own disastrously short-lived stint as premiere of the province — something we will hopefully try to avoid this time around.

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