Election Results and My Disappointment

My personal opinion on yesterday's election: disaster. I was shocked when I checked the news this morning to find out we now had a Conservative majority, an NDP opposition, a negligible Liberal party, a practically non-existent Bloc Quebecois and a Green MP.

I knew that a Liberal majority (ha!) or even minority wasn't happening. I was hoping for a reduced Conservative minority, and polls showed the NDP were doing well so I expected them to increase their presence. I think I was really hoping for a centre-left coalition, a government that could actually hold on for more than a year and that could be effective. Instead...this.

A lot of undecided voters, or disaffected Liberal voters, or people who didn't like Michael Ignatieff and didn't believe Jack Layton could really be Prime Minister, in the end seemed to think that there just wasn't really any choice besides Harper. Really? Harper? The one whose party has been found in contempt of Parliament, who has muzzled cabinet ministers and MPs, who has limited access for the press? The one who has cut funding to women's organisations and squandered a budget surplus, who claimed to have steered Canada through the recession by taking credit for policies enacted by the previous Liberal governments and then denied there was a recession at all? The one who twice prorogued parliament to avoid disclosing information and losing power? Yes, that one.

This is what has really disappointed me. It's not that the party that I don't support won. It's democracy, that can happen (though, to be fair, just under 40% of the country voted Conservative, which means about 60% did not. If that's not reason enough for an AV or PR system, I don't know what is...). No, it's the fact that, for whatever reason, Canadians decided that transparency, openness, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, respect for parliament and democracy and truthfulness were not really that important. (True, again, for 60% of people these things were important, but about 200,000 more people voted for the CPC in this election, so there's that.)

From the Globe and Mail's April 27 endorsement of Harper: "Mr. Harper could achieve a great deal more if he would relax his grip on Parliament, its independent officers and the flow of information, and instead bring his disciplined approach to bear on the great challenges at hand. That is the great strike against the Conservatives: a disrespect for Parliament, the abuse of prorogation, the repeated attempts (including during this campaign) to stanch debate and free expression. It is a disappointing failing in a leader who previously emerged from a populist movement that fought so valiantly for democratic reforms."

To me, these are not small failings that can be shrugged off. These are some of the most fundamental principles in a modern democracy. We don't say suppression of dissent and debate is okay as long as we have stability. That's what dictatorships do. And no, of course I'm not saying that Canada under Harper is a dictatorship; I'm saying that it's very important not to lose sight of the closed nature of Harper's government just because we didn't suffer as badly in the economic crisis as everyone else.

Now that we have four or five years under a Harper majority, it'll be interesting to see how these issues play out - will he relax his grip now that he doesn't have to fight tooth and nail for his government, or will he tighten it because, frankly, he can?