News that the Liberals actively court eight more MP defections to build their path towards a strong majority government makes it time to finally state the obvious: This new government, born in treachery and secret dealings, will not appear legitimate and will lack legitimacy. Canada urgently needs a national election.The first test is this: We all know if the shoe was on the other foot and the Conservatives were in power building a majority government this way, the Liberal and opposition parties, not to mention the entire punditocracy, would scream bloody murder.The Liberal government will now have a weak electoral mandate. Why would one say that? Well, Canadian voters elect MPs from parties with cohesive platforms. Poaching MPs after an election erodes that connection.Defecting MPs are toying with the entire integrity of the party system right now. If MPs switch sides like this through the allure of power and promise, this fundamentally challenges the lines of party discipline and ideological differences.The Liberal government must acknowledge the impacts of what they are doing could extend well beyond this specific government. They create incentives for elected representatives to view politics in a very opportunistic way..To be clear, nothing illegal exists about switching parties or doing what these MPs do. Thus, the options for any time of punitive treatment remain very limited. However, the reason this remains legal is the system has always allowed for moments of great moral and political conscience where party switching remains an uncommon and serious thing. That scenario does not often come around. Up until now, parties generally avoided closing the loophole on party defections because they knew that would obviously bite them back when they held government again.Switching ought to remain permitted for these unusual moments; it also teaches political parties that individual MPs do not belong to them as property. Moments must exist where conscience trumps party discipline on certain fundamental questions. However, switching often makes this a common thing, and it becomes much harder to argue we discuss switching over fundamental morals versus strategic benefit to an MP.The difference was mass defections occurred quite rarely. This whole debacle illustrates the differences between a Westminster system versus the various proportional representation systems out there. In the latter, very little, if any, connection exists between regions or constituencies and political parties. Party insiders create their party lists and do their wheeling and dealing behind closed doors.In our Westminster system, constituency-based voting should create a link between representatives and specific areas. Multiple defections make everything about political parties and insiders and bypass voters who presumably vote for specific parties for specific reasons..Before rounding out this whole argument, let us look at the context here: MPs defect to the government because they say they believe a stable national government in the face of trade issues with the US administration matters more than anything else.However, beyond the whole reasoning of why so many Canadians believe only this Liberal government can handle the Trump White House (which remains very debatable given the evidence), why do so many seem to believe that creating a government that runs roughshod over our electoral system somehow justifies this political belief and calculation?Up to now, the opposition parties have generally allowed the Liberals leeway to pass their agenda that was designed to respond to the "Trump threat." Even minus a stable majority, this government receives latitude to behave like one in terms of a specific agenda.The other option exists for the Liberal government to pull the plug and let Canadians tell us explicitly who they want to lead us into this new trade environment. The reality shows that if the Liberals feel so confident in their numbers, they should test them. The other option maintains a government birthed in betrayal and backroom dealing, not a true electoral mandate, to rule over us. That creates a stink that the government should want to wash off right away moving forward.Joseph Quesnel is a policy commentator based in Nova Scotia.
