Governor General designate David Johnston arrives with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday Oct. 1, 2010, for his swearing in ceremony.Sean Kilpatrick
In June, as CP's Joan Bryden reported, Michael Ignatieff said that "coalition governments are 'perfectly legitimate' and he'd be prepared to lead one if that's the hand Canadian voters deal him in the next election."
Today, Althia Raj reports in the Toronto Sun that Governor-General David Johnston - echoing Mr. Ignatieff's views almost exactly - agrees that there's nothing wrong with coalition government:
"Any governor general who has that role in a constitutional system like ours, from time to time will be confronted with questions where there is an element of discretion...I think that most jurisdictions that have a system of first-past-the-post or proportional representation will from time to have time have coalitions or amalgamation of different parties and that's the way democracy sorts itself out."
From a constitutional point of view - as we're now seeing play out in the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster -- both the Queen's Representative in Canada and the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition are completely correct. And, while Prime Minister Stephen Harper was empirically correct in noting, after the May election in Britain, that "losers don't get to form coalitions," a Liberal Democrat coalition with Prime Minister Gordon Brown's outgoing Labour Party - which had fallen from first to third place in the election -- would have been constitutionally valid, notwithstanding that its political legitimacy would have been seriously called into question.
What this means for Canada is that the prospect of a coalition government - which Prime Minister Stephen Harper raises regularly and both the Bloc and the NDP did not rule out as recently as two weeks ago --will figure as a major issue in our next federal election. Which Mr. Ignatieff appears eager to bring on, notwithstanding a poll in today's edition of La Presse that has him as the least popular of the federal leaders in Quebec.
In the lead-up to that election campaign and during it, Liberals and New Democrats will be competing with each other (and against the Bloc in Quebec) as well as with the Conservatives - as Mr. Ignatieff made abundantly clear on Sunday. Meanwhile, across the pond, the Guardian is reporting today that:
"Support for Britain's first peacetime coalition in 70 years has fallen dramatically since David Cameron and Nick Clegg launched the government in the Downing Street rose garden last May, according to the latest Guardian/ICM poll.
The poll finds that after six months of Conservative-LibDem rule just 43% think coalition government was the right decision for Britain while 47% now disagree. In May, in answer to a slightly differently worded question, 59% backed the coalition while 32% disagreed with the decision to form it.
Rising Labour support has cut into the government's popularity. Other results from the poll, published earlier this month, put Labour support at a three-year high of 39%. Lib Dem support was at a five-year low of 13%. The Conservatives were on 37%, up one point from November.
There is a mixed picture for Clegg and Cameron among their party's supporters in the poll, which was carried out before Christmas. A slim majority of Lib Dem voters still support the coalition. Among people who voted Lib Dem last May - many of whom have now switched support - 46% think the coalition was a mistake, while 47% remain in favour.
David Cameron can take comfort from continued strong Tory backing for coalition rule: 76% think forming the coalition was the right thing to do."