Subject: Support for the Coalition
Date: December 2, 2008 11:39:49 PM GMT-05:00
To: "Paul Dewar" <Dewar.P@parl.gc.ca>,
"Stéphane Dion" <Dion.S@parl.gc.ca>,
"Jack Layton" <Layton.J@parl.gc.ca>,
"Gilles Duceppe" <Duceppe.G@parl.gc.ca>,
"Stephen Harper" <Harper.S@parl.gc.ca>
Dear members of parliament,
I am writing to express my support for the proposed coalition of a Liberal-NDP government led by Stéphane Dion and backed by the Bloc Québecois. There is a lot of talk coming from each of the parties right now about the exact nature of the mandate given to the current government by the people of Canada. I can sympathize with many members and supporters of the Conservative Party when they protest that no one voted for a coalition like the one being proposed; it's true that very few people could have anticipated this turn of events and indeed, no Canadian successfully managed to mark that non-existent option on their ballot. However, each and every one of us who voted in October did decide to put a certain amount of trust in other people to represent our individual and collective interests, and I for one am glad that the opposition parties have chosen to band together and do what needs to be done.
I did not vote for either the Liberals or the NDP or the Bloc in this recent election. I am very grateful, however, to be represented by Paul Dewar of the NDP here in Ottawa Centre. Each Canadian has a rich and complex set of opinions about how this country should be governed which can rarely be reduced to single party's platform and certainly not to a single "X" on a ballot. I have confidence in the opposition parties to successfully lead this country in a coalition and I hope that such a government will address the systemic issues in our electoral process which underly all this confusion about what the Canadian people really want.
Sincerely,
James C. MacAulay
Ottawa, Canada
