Where’s Forsey when we need him?

Where is Eugene Forsey when we need him most? Alas, the preeminent constitutional expert and prodigious letter writer passed away in 1991. He would have made mincemeat of Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s claim that the office of prime minister must go automatically to the leader of the party winning the largest number of seats in an election. The fact is that the office goes to the leader who can command the most support in the House of Commons, which is not necessarily the same thing. In 1925, the Conservatives won 115 seats, William Lyon Mackenzie King ’s Liberals 100, but King continued governing as prime minister for six months with the consent of the 22 Progressive members of Parliament and eight others, representing other parties. Doubtless, Forsey would have been able to summon dozens of similar cases, hearkening back decades, from provincial history, from Britain itself, and throughout the Commonwealth. Sheer has failed Political Science 101. Hugh Halliday, Orléans Canadians aren’t just greedy, are we?

A recent column by one of your writers reminded us, and boy do we need it, that we are citizens and not just “taxpayers.” How dispiriting it has been to listen to Andrew Scheer hammer home his one message that he will put more money in my pocket, that finally, “I” will get ahead. Such an appeal to our basest, greediest instincts will not gain traction in Canada, surely?

William Cox, Carleton Place