Majority governments make accountability hard

With it being election season here in Saskatchewan my frustration towards government in Canada is beginning to creep back up again.

With our country struggling and most every province in the country also struggling I get so frustrated when I see governments elected to majorities.

How bad is the current state of government in Canada when it comes to majority governments?    

There are currently 13 provincial governments and a federal government, two currently do not associate with a party and are considered all independents, aside from those two the remaining 12 governments? They are all majorities, every single one.

Some people are probably thinking so what?

Everyone calls for accountability in the government, how can you have accountability when governments can do whatever they please because they own a majority government and can get any bill passed they want?

How do you fix this problem? I am not sure.

Maybe the proportional governmental system that has been suggested a number of times in recent years could do the trick in the sense that it would stop governments from so easily getting a majority but after doing a bunch of research it seems very complicated. The way you vote seems easy enough but for people that want an understanding of how their vote counts it is not so easy.

If you look at some of the governments throughout our country the majority system just does not have a positive effect on some of the policies that get passed through the legislature or House of Commons.

In Canada, I have recently heard a number of people complaining about the budget that was just passed. Whether or not the budget is a good idea does not really matter. The point is, who was going to stop the Liberals from passing it?

In Ontario, the Liberal’s have been embroiled in controversy for years and have consistently run the deficit higher and higher and now with a majority government who is going to stop them from running it higher or stop them from raising taxes or, especially, stop them from continuing to raise hydro prices astronomically. Who is going to hold them accountable?

The provincial police have been investigating the government for a couple of years for their part in recent controversy but would the police force really charge their bosses at the government with anything?

So far they have not, just former employees of the former premier. Now some of that blame does fall on the voters of Ontario who elected the Liberal’s back into government despite the many controversies.

Saskatchewan has problems of their own regarding a growing deficit. After the Apr. 4 election results those problems will just continue to grow. With 83.6 percent of the seats in the province owned by the Sask Party any bill that needs to be vetoed would need to see 20 MLA’s, nearly half of the entire party’s current MLAs either abstain or vote in favour of the NDP. That is not likely to happen.

While I do understand that for the most part the parties do a good job working together and have very few issues when it comes to passing bills there are several a year that either should not be passed or the people of the province or country do not agree with.

With the current state of affairs in the country and nearly every province, having majority governments just does not seem to be an effective way to sustain us, especially when you hear people calling for governments to be accountable.

While I agree it would be nice if they could just be accountable themselves most of us know and understand that government usually is not accountable for themselves, they are held accountable by the other parties, who without a minority government have a hard time holding that accountability.

I am not sure what the answer is but the way it is now just is not working.