Meandering though the Canadian progressive blogosphere I was struck by the amount of gloom and general disgust with our current electoral system.  This response from a commenter Thinking Man Neil on Dawg’s Blawg that  I’m cut and pasting summarizes things quite nicely.

A resounding hurrah for the return to Feudalism.

“A very dark day for Canada. Stephen Harper’s antipathy for democracy is legendary: shutting down Parliament twice to avoid public accountability, being found in contempt of Parliament twice for refusing to release information to the House of Commons, covering the lies and scandals of his MP’s, staff, and advisers, giving his MP’s instructions to disrupt parliamentary committees to render them unworkable, violating campaign laws, eliminating funding for a program that allows ordinary Canadians to challenge unjust laws, legislation, and government policies at the Supreme Court level (now only the wealthy and corporations get heard) and equating dissent of his policies with a lack of patriotism and treason. Those are just a few I can think of off the top of my head.

Sixty years of social progress was lost last night. Harper wants to re-instate the death penalty, scrap universal health care for a for-profit system, eliminate public funding for political parties, curtail women’s rights to abortion, enact draconian “law and order” crime bills and engage in internet surveillance of the populace, give corporations and the wealthy while increasing military spending dramatically and pouring countless, precious Canadian kids into pointless meatgrinder wars just so he can thump his flabby, neocon chest.

Stephen Harper and Preston Manning — his former boss in the Reform Party — set out 25 years ago to polarize Canadian politics and destroy the centrist Liberal Party; they achieved that goal last night. Jack Layton’s 102-seat opposition NDP have been neutered even before they get through the door of the House of Commons by Harper’s overwhelming 167-seat majority. Fundamentalist evangelical Christians and Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists who are strong Harper supporters and have been gaining considerable access and influence in the PMO and Privy Council will demand the advancement of a very socially conservative agenda, expecting the elimination of abortion rights, elimination of same-sex marriage rights and possible criminalization of gays, lesbians, and transgendereds, censorship control over media and culture and the possible re-instatement of anti-blasphemy laws, the teaching of creationism in science classes, elimination of funding for stem cell research, and the re-establishment of the preeminence of religion in society. Corporate interests will get massive tax cuts, an across the board roll back of environmental and consumer protection laws, reduced competition and acquisition regulations, elimination of worker’s rights to organize unions and collective bargaining, privatization of private and public pension plans, and increased foreign takeovers of Canadian natural resources including freshwater. And there won’t be thing one that the NDP opposition will be able to do to stop it.

Harper has worked tirelessly and ruthlessly for many years for this; he won’t allow it to be overturned by an “unwanted election” in four years. He has a tough, disciplined group of MP’s that he micro-manages with an iron fist, and his goal is to keep that in perpetuity in the form of a one-party system. His plans to eliminate the per-vote and election reimbursement public subsidies that will drastically reduce funds available for election campaigns for some parties while his party will reap enormous corporate donations. What we’ll be left with in the end is a situation akin to Saddam-era Iraq: token elections and token opposition with only one possible outcome.

My Canada, the Canada of tolerance, openness, freedom, and respect of and love for democracy, died last night. It’s been handed over to a group that values bigotry, misogyny, power, fear and ignorance over the better aspirations of our species.

I’m hoping it is not all as bad as Neil prognosticates.   The idea though that we have to count on Harper to moderate his policies in order to be reelected in four years seems to be a very weak check on the sort of destructive policies he champions.  It is May 3, 2011 – We’ll revisit this post and see where we are in a couple of months.