Minority report

For the fourth time in seven years Canadians are suffering through yet another federal election campaign.

Watching party leaders and a media desperately trying to get our attention, one is inclined to agree with the sentiments expressed in the title of humorist PJ O'Rourke's new book, Don't Vote, It Only Encourages the Bastards.

The problem is, if many of us stay home on election day or vote the same old same old, we'll likely end up with the same results, a minority government that spends most of it's time placating the other three parties.

Of those, one is intent on regaining it's place as Canada's Natural Governing Party (Liberals), the other seeks to put it's socialist stamp on Canada by forcing the government to adopt policies that most Canadians have rejected, and the third is an alleged separatist party that continues to demand hush money from the rest of Canada as the price for keeping Quebec in Confederation. As if.

Meanwhile, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, the only man capable of making Stephane Dion look good, muses aloud about how he might lose but still form the next government. Bollocks.

By threatening to defeat what pollsters are predicting will be another Tory minority government, Iggy is counting on the Governor General to offer him the chance to form a government, rather than subject Canadians to yet another election.

Similar to the Senate, the boneyard for old party hacks, or as Hughie Segal calls it, "a task less thanks", the Governor General is a toothless tiger.

While theoretically having the constitutional power to do as Ignatieff suggests, the political reality is it will never happen.

The last time the GG tried to play more than a "ribbon cutting" role in Canadian politics was in 1926 when then Governor General Lord Byng refused a request from then Liberal Prime Minister Mckenzie King to dissolve Parliament and call a general election.

King had failed to win a majority in the 1925 election, receiving 101 seats to Conservative leader Arthur Meighan's 116.

Hoping to govern with the support of the Progressive Party and their 28 seats, King refused to concede defeat.

By June, with his government rocked by scandal and losing the support of the Progressives, King went to the GG and requested that Parliament be dissolved and an election called.

Byng refused, and instead invited Meighan to form a government.

Shortly afterwards, King with the support of the Progressives, defeated the government and an election was called.

King, making the most of the "constitutional crisis", and running on a campaign for Canadian independence from Britain while insisting that the GG had no right to refuse the prime minister's advice, won a majority.

Byng was recalled to London and King went on to become our longest serving PM.

Whatever the outcome of this latest round of political chicken, one thing is clear, Canada needs a majority government in order to avoid the merry go round of watered down policies, constant bickering and the disgrace of having a separatist party holding the rest of us hostage.

We are faced with enormous opportunities and challenges in this country that only a majority government with a strong mandate from the voters will be able to handle.

On May 2nd, let's hope that we get one.