Have read two blog posts this morning, both referencing this article in the Winnipeg Free Press. In turn, it references "an explosive new book" which assesses December's "constitutional showdown."
We are told that this book was written by "15 of Canada's leading parliamentary experts." Actually, it's 17 and here they are.
Canada's two solitudes are no longer Quebec and English Canada. Today, the two solitudes are Historic Canada and The West.
Polls taken during the crisis found that Historic Canada - Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes - backed parliamentary democracy and the Liberal-NDP coalition supported by the Bloc Quebecois. Under parliamentary democracy, the government of the day must win and maintain the confidence of a majority of the members of parliament to retain power.
The West overwhelmingly supported the populist outcome - a two-month prorogation allowing the minority Conservative government to avoid defeat on a confidence vote. Populist democracy, as promulgated by Reform Party leader Preston Manning, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his former chief strategist Tom Flanagan, favours the American presidential model of one directly elected leader not responsible to the legislature but answerable only to the people.
I am sick and tired of British Columbia being lumped under "The West."
The HarperCons did NOT do well out here. It's Alberta which is Harper country, not "The West."
Damn it all! I wish people would stop perpetuating the myth that The West is one big Harper love-in! Or that British Columbians, Albertans, Saskatchewanians and Manitobans all hold to the same political, neocon ideology.
Note to all of you in "Historic Canada" - or in Alberta, for that matter: Alberta is NOT The West.
Got it?
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