Rick Mercer on Democracy

This weeks rant on The Mercer Report is particularly worth repeating, Rick always cuts to the heart of the matter with his commentary and this one is no exception. We must indeed “wake up and protect our democracy.”
Ricks Rant….
So a month before Christmas it actually looked like the Harper government was going to collapse and be replaced with a coalition. No doubt about it a very interesting scenario, and for a lot of people not a very nice one. But like it or not our system is designed that way.
The truly astounding thing was, in the middle of the whole fiasco, the Dominion Institute did a poll and they found out that a majority of Canadians had no idea what was going on and in fact lacked a basic understanding of our parliamentary system. This is a crisis.
And what did our own government do? They went out of their way to make it worse. They had ministers go on TV and say this was a coup d'etat, that coalitions were illegal and undemocratic. John Baird said his government had the right to ignore the will of parliament altogether and go over the head of the Governor General. None of which is true.
How can a country function when half the population doesn't know what the hell is going on and their own government actually likes it that way?
Being a good citizen is like driving a car. We all have to know the basic rules of the road. We don't have to like the rules, we can even get together and change the rules. But we all have to know how to proceed when dealing with a four way stop or a blinking red. And it doesn't matter if John Baird is in the back seat saying, no, no, no; go straight on through, don't stop – we know we have to stop, look both ways, and then floor it.
Canada is no different. We are a parliamentary democracy. And that system has served us well for 141 years. But clearly we've fallen asleep at the wheel. And if we want to protect this democracy, we all have an obligation to wake up and get informed; because quite frankly our members of parliament can't be trusted with it anymore.
http://www.rickmercer.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/1/14
Let me repeat Ricks words…
A majority of Canadians had no idea what was going on and in fact lacked a basic understanding of our parliamentary system. This is a crisis. Wake up and get informed; because quite frankly our members of parliament can't be trusted with it anymore.

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