The Prime Minister is a Liar

There is only one thing that makes me angrier than the lies promulgated by the Conservative government these days, and that is the ignorance of the Canadian people about our own country that allows them to be accepted.

Harper’s latest line comes as he fills 18 Senate seats that he certainly has no moral right to touch at this juncture, whatever the legal position.

"If Senate vacancies are to be filled … they should be filled by the government that Canadians elected rather than by a coalition that no one voted for," Harper stated in a news release.

The only people that voted for Stephen Harper are (some of) those few people in his riding. And no one voted for him for Prime Minister. That is not the way our electoral system works.

We vote for a Member of Parliament for our riding. If one party receives a majority of seats in the Parliament, it becomes the governing party, and the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister. If there is no majority, one of two things can happen: the party with the largest number of seats can try to run a minority government (usual in Canada), or two or more parties can form a coalition to create a majority, and the coalition can rule (common in some other Parliamentary democracies). Either is perfectly legal. A coalition, is, in fact more representative of the people than a minority, not less.

So Harper is simply lying when he claims the people of Canada voted for him and the Conservatives rather than a coalition, and he is well aware of it. Unfortunately many of those in his audience, raised on American television, are not. And he is taking full advantage of this.

The media, who print Harper’s quotes without explanation, are failing in their job. An impartial media should be explaining the system to the people, and pointing out that the governments' remarks are incorrect.

Our eduction system is apparently also failing, if the population needs to have this explained. Most of us know how the American electoral system works, yet apparently do not understand our own, which is shameful.

But none of this excuses the Prime Minister of the country standing in front of cameras and lying to the people, not once but repeatedly. This man needs to be replaced, either by a coalition or another party, before he can do any more damage.