I’ll quote just a few of the statements below.

First, the Conservative message says

“Canadians passed judgment on Stephen Harper when they awarded the Conservative Party a strengthened mandate.”

I’d argue that in our last election while Canadians may have passed any type of judgement on Stephen Harper, we didn’t award the Conservative Party a strengthened mandate. The Conservatives ended up with only a plurality of the seats, it did not win a majority government, thus its mandate was no stronger than before the election. If anything, I’d argue it was weaker. Why weaker? Because it was well publicized how before the election the Conservatives tried to govern as though they were a majority. Playing political games to force policies through without obtaining agreement or concensus from the other parties. What they did accomplish, they accomplished without the will of the majority of Canadians. To trigger an election and end up back where they started should have been received as a message that they haven’t won the majority of Canadians’ support and needed to work with the other parties in order to find that support.

Second, the Conservative message says

“Voters offered no mandate to Stéphane Dion and the Liberals to govern the country.  They offered no mandate to Jack Layton and the NDP to influence the economy.”

It’s a bit of an odd thing to say. Like the Conservatives, neither of these parties won a majority, however upon forming a coalition with the support of the Bloc Québécois, they do have a majority. So this coalition represents the majority of Canadian voters, and that is not something the Conservatives can claim⁴ for themselves. It seems like the coalition has more of a mandate than the minority Conservatives do.

Finally, the Conservative message ends with

“The Liberals, NDP and separatist must first face the Canadian voters.  Otherwise any coalition will be an illegitimate regime without any mandate to govern.”

Actually the Liberal/NDP and Bloc already faced the Canadian voters (see above). Their coalition is not an illegitimate regime. It’s a democratically elected one, where the majority of the parties are working together (the Conservatives failed to do this). In fact, it’s in keeping with our Parliamentary rules².

“If no party gets a clear majority, the Cabinet that was in office before and during the election has two choices. It can resign, in which case the Governor General or Lieutenant-Governor will call on the leader of the largest opposition party to form a Cabinet. Or the Cabinet already in office can choose to stay in office and meet the newly elected House — which, however, it must do promptly…

…if a minority government is defeated on a motion of want of confidence very early in the first session of a new Parliament, and there is a reasonable possibility that a government of another party can be formed and get the support of the House of Commons, then the Governor General could refuse the request for a fresh election. The same is true for the Lieutenant-Governors of the provinces.”

Finally, Ed Broadbent wrote a concise and well formulated article³ that reveals the facts on the situation that Harper and his Conservatives have been trying to distort. Broadbent observes:

Instead of following constitutional precedent and allowing a democratic confidence vote to take place when it should, we have a power-hungry man who will be recorded as the first prime minister in Canada’s history to deliberately create a political crisis and set the fire of national disunity.

Follow the links for more details

1) PDF of the Conservative page of errors, for reliable reference, review, and criticism.

2) PDF of the Parliament of Canada Web page explaining how parliamentary government operates, for reliable reference, review, and criticism.