Minority is not a Majority

Polls suggest that today's result will be a minority government. In today's politics with its extreme partisanship and absolutes it seems that those who win a minority charge forward as if they had received one hundred percent of the vote. They claim they received a strong mandate from the citizens of the country to enact there exact platform. They seem to forget that in a minority parliament more than half of the ridings voted against you: voted for a totally different platform. When I went to school when my assignment got 34% of the teacher's vote I failed. A government must take this in to account. We are a country that prides ourselves on compromise and accommodation. If you want to one day win a majority you must earn the respect of the voters that did not vote for your platform in the last election by doing things for them. Canadians do not like to waste money on elections every 2 years. A minority government will not win their votes by bulldozing legislation past the opposition, threatening to call an election when they do not get their way. A majority of Canadians voted for that opposition. The opposition is the voice of the voters you want: listen to them. They may not have done everything right, however, they must have got something right if you still have a minority. If a government wishes to govern a country with the people’s interests in mind a government must compromise and respect the opposition: there is no more room for one extreme than another.