Re: Rick Tone’s In defence of the realm of prorogation, (letters, Yukon News, February 3):
It is disappointing to see that Rick Tone doesn’t care to possess education in civic matters, nor respects the young people who may have been reading the reckless misleading diatribe.
He claims that a parliamentary majority in December 2008 constituted or supported a coalition agreement in order to “disrespect the democratic choice of the voter and illegitimately seize power.”
In truth, our country was built on the idea of civic and public education of citizens who are grounded in the knowledge of where our country comes from.
In his address from 1840 to the electors of Terrebonne, Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine said: “Education is the first public good that a government can confer on the people É.”
Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, in 1848, had been charged by Queen Victoria to form the first Canadian administration under the new responsible government policy, which was based on parliamentary accountability.
Too bad in Tone’s and Harper’s neocon party the head demagogues think they can write their own laws and facts.
Kicking around our constitutional conventions is an insult to Canadians who respect and conserve our traditions by building on them.
Before Harper, prorogation was never used to keep a government in power that had lost majority support in the House.
Here is a friendly, little reminder as to how governments are chosen in Canada’s representative system. The citizen electorate elects members of Parliament who in turn may support a candidate for the position of prime minister.
In case that support has majority weight, following party lines or not, majority or minority position of a particular party or not, the Governor General will charge the candidate with forming a government, and failing that will call an election.
The citizens do not elect a prime minister or a president in a presidential election like in France, for example à not yet.
Peter Becker
Whitehorse