There's a cute fantasy circulating around the internet right now. It's the fantasy that minority governments are good things. They're particularly popular among Unionists NDP supporters, like this one:
1. The Freedom of Information Act was brought in under Pierre Trudeau's majority government in 1983 as part of a NATO wide set of initiatives so that isn't even close to being correct.
2. The Canada Student Loans act was an update of the Dominion-Provincial Student Loan Program from 1939 so also a bogus claim.
3. Same-Sex Marriage came about under a majority government under Liberal Paul Martin, despite NDP's Jack Layton signing a coalition agreement with Harper and the Bloq to bring Martin's government down in favour of their own failed coalition.
4. The rest were brought in by Liberal Lester Pearson, a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize, and would've been enacted them even sooner if he'd had a majority government.
Tommy Douglas' only valid part in any of this is that he introduced Universal Healthcare to Saskatchewan and was a proponent of it in the Federal Parliament, but since the committee that recommended it to the Government was begun by Progressive Conservative (and fellow Saskatchewaner) John Diefenbaker and passed into law under Pearson by 177 votes to 2 the NDP were irrelevant to its success by that point.
And our current Canada Health Act which ensured stability and accountability to Universal Healthcare in Canada was passed by Pierre Trudeau's majority in 1984.
The only thing all 13 minority governments have in common is that each and every last one of them blew the budget to hell, raising the debt at least 3 times faster than would've happened under a Majority government AND allowed the "allies" to point the finger of blame at each other the next election.
Minority Governments are not safe, good for productive. They certainly aren't desirable. At least not by any responsible citizen familiar with history. But hey, if we actually learned the lessons of history instead of repeating the mistakes over and over again we wouldn't be on the verge of making half-American and Trump-Lite Conservative Andrew "I don't even know what the truth is anymore" Scheer our next Prime Minister! Would we?
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