Conservative myth #1 – A minority government has a mandate to govern unopposed

With all the misinformation being put forward by the Harper Conservatives and the Conservative media, I thought it would be useful to counter some of the myths and lies with a little taste of reality. So in this first instalment, I will debunk the Conservative belief that being elected with a minority government gives a party the right to govern as if they had a majority. To counter this myth, a little education about how our parliamentary system works is in order. In the Westminster model, the model we use here in Canada, the party that can command a majority of support of the members of the House of Commons forms the government. Now if that party has a majority of the seats, currently 155 of 308 seats, it is fairly straight forward. Since the party has a majority of the seats, and the members of that party vote as a bloc, then it is easy to say that particular party commands the confidence of a majority of parliament. This is the basis of responsible government, the government is responsible to parliament for it's actions. Again, with a majority of the seats, it's easy for a government to command the confidence of the House, and hence, be as non-responsible to the House as it wants.

This of course changes if the government is a minority one. Since in a minority parliament no one party can guarantee a majority of MP support, the governing party, usually the one with the most seats, can't do what it wants with impunity. The governing party must gain the support of one or more other parties to stay in power. This usually means some compromise on policy in order to gain that support. Failure to compromise or just running roughshod over the House usually ends in that party losing the confidence of the House and being forced from office. This usually results in an election.

This is the situation the Harper Tories have found themselves in. They were handed by the voter a minority government. This means they must maintain the confidence of the House to remain the government. This means they can't just do whatever they want. The Tories may be used to it, since they were able to bully the Liberals in the last parliament into sitting on their hands, but that was a unique situation. Now that the Grits have grown some stones, it's not going to happen again. This means that unless Harper compromised and collaborated with the opposition, he was doomed to fall flat on his face, as he did. A government that received a minority of the votes and a minority of the seats does not have a right or a mandate to govern as it sees fit, only to govern as the opposition is willing to let it.