On minority governments and contradictory first principles

This current fuss about a possible early election, like so many fusses, can be blamed primarily on the fact that nobody except me understands Westminster-style parliamentary systems.

Here are a couple of things that I think we can probably all agree MPs should strive for during minority parliaments:
1. Adhering to something approximating the platform that got them elected, and
2. Avoiding unnecessarily frequent elections (four elections in five years probably qualifying as unnecessarily frequent).

Does that make sense? I think that makes sense. We'll call these first principles against which MPs' performance must be evaluated.

How have the current MPs been doing? Well, the Conservatives have been doing very well: they've been able to pass the legislation they want (though you can quibble about how closely that resembles what they were elected on) without having had to make many compromises with opposition parties. They've never voted to defeat the government, and their leader has never asked for Parliament to be dissolved, so they're certainly not trying to trigger an election.

And the opposition parties? Well, since all opposition MPs (unless we're going to broaden the term to include Andre Arthur) ran on platforms quite inconsistent with what the government's been up to, the only way to adhere to principle 1 is to vote against the government, including on confidence motions. So far, the NDP and the Bloc have done quite well at this (though the NDP shows signs of caving). The Liberals, not quite so much (though they show signs of changing this as well). Of course, voting against the government on a confidence vote seems likely to result in an election, which means that the NDP and the Bloc have been failing pretty lamentably at principle 2. In fact, it appears to be impossible to adhere to both principles, as long as the Conservatives show little interest in putting forward legislation consistent with the opposition parties' platforms (and indeed, why should they? They're doing just fine without needing to do that, and doing so would necessarily hurt their own principle 1 performance).

If that was the case, the Westminster parliamentary system would appear to be a pretty lousy way to govern a country. Along those lines, the Globe and Mail recently asked Is Canada Broken?. While, axiomatically speaking, the question deserves a stupid answer, I'll try to give it a good one: no. While I'm no great believer in the Westminster system, it's not so flawed that it provides no solution to situations like this one, and the opposition parties, no dummies, realized it when, in late 2008, they proposed making Stephane Dion Prime Minister. Indeed, that proposal was about the only way they could adhere to both above-identified first principles.

Unfortunately, as it turns out (and, I take some pride in saying, as I predicted) many Canadians also hold a third first principle:

3. The leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons should be Prime Minister.

It's only that third principle that makes the situation untenable for the opposition parties (and enormously advantageous for the governing party). Voters who believe in it have no right to complain about a possible 2009 election.