Ignorant or hostile?

As Prime Minister Harper continues to tour the nation to denounce the idea of coalition governments, I notice there has been a lot of heavy sighing and head shaking from the country’s left-wing intellectual set.

Their popular refrain, often said with great patronizing frustration, is that the public “doesn’t understand” our parliamentary system, a situation they say is only being worsened through our country’s tragic over-exposure to American political traditions, coupled with conniving Conservative Party demagoguery. A good example of such liberal bluster can be found in a column by John Pepall in today’s Globe and Mail, in which he sneeringly denounces the idea of fixed election dates. (A more reactionary defender of the parliamentary status quo would be hard to find; Mr. Pepall has actually written a book entitled “Against Reform”).

What such types fail to appreciate, however, is that one of the things that makes Canada unique as a nation is how widely and popularly disdained our own constitution is. Far from not being “understood,” much of our system of government is understood all too well, and is actively rejected by large margins of Canadians.

For example:

In summary, the problem is not that Canadians are ignorant of our traditions, it’s that they flat-out don’t like them. And in a democratic society, the style of government should be moulded from the bottom up, and be broadly compatible with the values of the people over which it presides.

The idea that government is something the public has to be “taught” to like (many liberal apologists, stone-faced, insist the public’s dislike of our constitutional practices is fundamentally an “education” problem) is such a profoundly backwards and anti-democratic sentiment. It is, however, also very tragically Canadian.