Canadian Democracy

I think most people living in a democracy expect, or at least are not surprised by, a certain level of corruption in their politicians.  Those elected to represent us in our capitals are, afterall, instilled at birth with all innate aspects of human nature and, occasionally, we will, predictably, be disappointed when they succumb to some of those darker and least appreciated characteristics which have been expressed by humans throughout the ages.  What is more disturbing and deeply disappointing to me, however, is both the individual and collective condonement of such behavior demonstrated by citizens who choose to either ignore the issues of revealed corruption or, worse, vote for a political party which has demonstrated a consistent pattern of succumbing to the dark side of their nature.  So, a ruthless, rule-breaking minority government in Canada whch was held in contempt by the House twice (the first time in Canadian history, by the way, that a leading party has been held in contempt) and which, after receiving a healthy budgetary surplus from the previous government, has generated the largest budgetary deficit in Canadian history, has just been given a majority government by Canadian voters.  What's most depressing about this is that Canadian voters have indicated to our political representatives that respect for the rules of parliamentary process and the support for the civil servants who have fulfilled their mandates is unimportant.  Anyone who voted for this majority governement has, fundamentally, legitimized and authorized the corruption of Canadian politics.  Lest we forget, here are a dozen examples of the type of political behavior which the current election has, essentially, condoned:
(1) Forcing the Chalk River nuclear power plant to reopen despite the fact that it had been closed for violations of safety regs and, furthermore, forcing the removal of Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, for opposing the reopening of the plant on the basis that the risk of a fuel leak was estimated to be "1 in a 1000" rather than "1 in a million" as set in the Canadian atomic energy standards....that is, in her capacity as president of the commission, she had estimated that the risk of a nuclear incident was 1000 times higher than it would have been had the plant been operating within the regulations. 
(2) pro-roguing parliament to avoid certain defeat by a coalition of the opposing parties over the government's failure to produce unredacted reports over the Afghan detainee issue in contempt of the orders from the Speaker of the House.  Richard Colvin, 2nd in command at the Canadian embassy in Afghanistan was ridiculed by the minister of defense and his entire party for claiming, what everyone knew to be true, that Canada knew that the Afghan detainees were being tortured.
(3) veto of the long form census and precipitating the resignation of Munir Sheik from his position as the head of Statistics Canada
(4) the dismissal of Elena Georgis from her party over unsunstantiated claims
(5) Bev Oda unilaterally directed the alteration of a document previously signed by three members of parliament which had approved funds for a foreign aid group...the alteration resulted in the denial of funds to that group.  The Speaker of The House ruled, for a second time, that the minority government was in contempt of parliamentary process.
(6) Jason Kenney used federal assets to solicit donations to his party
(7) 2006 election campaign funds were transferred in and out of the accounts of local ridings contrary to parliamentasry rules...there is the added speculation that these same funds generated tax rebates as expenses by the local campaign offices which were never actually incurred at the local level.  One Conservative candidate, David Marler, was fired from his party for questioning this practice and ultimately refusing the use of his local campaign account for the laundering of $30,000 of Conservative funds.
(8) Conservative MP's required to refer to "The Harper Government" rather than "The Government of Canada"
(9) The issuance of cheques for economic stimulus with the Conservative party logo rather the logo of the Canadian government.
(10) the forced removal by security staff of a female student from a campaign rally for Harper because she had a posted a picture of herself with the Liberal leader on her Facebook page.
(11) in an attempt to justify their expensive budget on the 2010 G8 summit, the conservatives made an inappropriate and misleading reference to the auditior general's remarks after the Sep.09.2001 security costs report from the Liberal government in which the transparency of that report was praised.  In fact, the auditior general took great offense to that reference and indicated in her initial report that the Conservative government's spending was far from transparent and, possibly, illegal in that it appeared on the preliminary analysis that approximately 50 million dollars allocated for G8 secutity had been misdirected towards development in the Conservative riding of Tony Clement.
(12) refusal to release the projected costs report on the purchase of new fighter jets contrary to the orders of the Speaker of the House.  Before this current election, indications were arising that the actual costs would be twice that projected in the budget.
Final thought: this government which has been given a mandate to continue to ignore legal parliamentary process will be in a position to appoint 4 judges to the Supreme Court of Canada during its new mandate.  It cannot be beyond the realm of possibility that the corruption emanating from this government will have the capacity to infect the health of our legal system.
For me, this is, sadly, a depressing day for reflections on the integrity of Canadian democracy.