Original Publish Date » April 8 , 2025
Last Updated » 2 weeks
Andrew Coyne / The Globe and Mail » Democratic government is impossible if the participants in any election make their acceptance contingent on an outcome to their liking. Donald Trump is rightly condemned for refusing to accept the 2020 presidential election result, claiming, falsely, that the election had been rigged.
But now suppose someone were to warn he would refuse to accept the result of an election, not because he had any doubt about the integrity of the process, but purely and simply because he disagreed with the electorate’s verdict. And suppose this warning were accompanied by a threat: that if voters were to make such a choice, he and others of like mind would seek to break up the country.
That, in a nutshell, is what the former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, Preston Manning, has just done. It had the form of an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail. It had the substance of a ransom note. If the country were to return the Liberals to power under Mark Carney, Mr. Manning wrote, it would lead directly to the secession of Western Canada.
