Coalition governments are not undemocratic

Canadians might not like the idea, but it can and does work, writes David Moscrop.

We Canadians love our inane rituals. Drinking the burning swill that is a Tim Horton’s coffee, being heartbroken by whichever dreadful domestic hockey team comes “just a few” (usually many) wins short of the Stanley Cup, suffering a heart attack while shovelling snow, and mischaracterizing our political system every time a national “debate” breaks out.

The latest offence against our system is the eruption of populist disgust — encouraged by the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party — at the potential of a coalition government this fall. Prime Minister Harper calls the idea “undemocratic” and likens it to stealing an election; Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau has rebuffed the possibility of entering into such an arrangement, which he characterizes as a “backroom deal.”

Shame on them for throwing around such fatuous untruths. Either Mr. Harper and Mr. Trudeau are deeply cynical — playing politics by cartooning coalition governments — or they’re clueless about the nature of our political system. I’m going to be charitable and assume it’s the former, but who knows?

Canadians, however, might be forgiven for knowing little about the constitutional history and democratic theory behind coalition governments. Canada hasn’t had a federal coalition government since Prime Minster Robert Borden — the staid and moustachioed head of government who navigated the country through The First World War and whose image now enjoys prime real estate on our $100 bill.

But now, nearly 100 years since Borden’s Union Government, with Canada’s first competitive three-way election all but officially underway, the possibility of a coalition government at the federal level is real. It’s time we had a grown-up conversation about that option. What are we going to do if we find ourselves in the fall or early winter with a hung parliament featuring one party with a narrow plurality of seats and several other parties who are unwilling to co-operate with them?

In that case, one option is to hold another election — which presumably no one would want, with the possible exception of political sadomasochists and professors of Canadian political science. Another option is to set up an informal arrangement in which one or more parties agree to work with another to keep them in power — which seems possible, but unlikely. The third is a coalition government.

In a coalition government, a formal arrangement is made between parties who form a government, but the parties do not merge. Typically each coalition partner receives cabinet appointments and the parties co-operate on legislation, appointments, and so forth.

Coalition governments are common globally: Germany, Denmark, Australia, India, Japan, Israel, Ireland, and several other countries have had or do have such arrangements (and they’re real, live, grown-up democracies and everything).

Coalition governments are legitimate and democratic because it is elected parliamentarians who decide to form them or not, and who later have to face the electorate and defend their actions. Canadians might not like the idea of such an arrangement, but that doesn’t make it undemocratic or unconstitutional. In Canada we elect members of Parliament — not a government, not a prime minister, not a cabinet. Those members get to decide to whom they give their support in the House of Commons; a government is then formed. That’s the (brief ) formal, constitutional argument for coalitions.

But let’s play the populist game for a second. A coalition arrangement between two parties with, say, 50 per cent of the popular vote would represent a greater percentage of voting Canadians than even a majority government with fewer votes (for instance, the typical 38 to 40 per cent that generates a majority government) — and certainly more than a minority. Not that any of this ultimately matters; aggregate popular vote is meaningless: it’s the distribution of parliamentary seats that counts.

So the parties and the populists can scream about “democracy” until they’re blue or red in the face; coalition governments are democratic and legitimate. And in October one might be necessary.