The NDP has signed a document to support Liberal budgets in exchange for the Liberal's expansion of the welfare state to include, among other things, "universal" dental care. In a fit of purity, the interim Conservative leader has condemned this agreement as "backdoor socialism," and in saying so I can't help but think of the "poor doors" in certain mixed-use housing projects in Vancouver's downtown eastside. Are poor doors something she might be amenable to?
So far I have yet to hear a Liberal supporter say, This is not the government I voted for, because Liberals, like most U.S. Democrats, are generally disposed to bipartisanship (Conservatives, like U.S. Republicans, tend to loathe government and, especially in the case of the latter, have grown increasingly hostile towards liberal democracy). As for voting, we vote for parliamentarians as much as we vote for political parties. And as recent elections have shown, our country is split in ways that make a majority government impossible.
While this seems like a sideshow compared to our current run of war and pestilence, it's a big deal, particularly at a time when liberal democracy -- and that fragile humanitarian project known as the welfare state -- is under siege.
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