Modeling Journey

Harper is clearly wrong with his facile assumption that a party which wins more seats than any other party in the House is the winning party and deserves to govern. His statement shows his ignorance or deliberate disregard for our parliamentary conventions. As the Prime Minister, he has the right under our conventions to try to put together a government that will gain the confidence of the House.

This means that he gets first crack to talk to other parties if he wants to cobble together some form of governing agreement with one or more parties (including the Bloc, whose MPs are legally and morally entitled to sit in our parliament, and to participate or not participate in governing our country). Gordon Brown had this right, as members of his party stated after the election resulted in a hung parliament.