Some (More) Musings on Canadian Democracy

Let me get on my soap box so you can see me better.  I ask that you hold your questions until the end… I can’t promise to answer all your questions or comments but I can assure that I will read them and consider them…

Friends and neighbours, I’d like to speak for a bit on a subject very dear to me, a subject I feel is very important to all of us, the subject of Democracy.

Now I don’t plan on going into a long winded explanation of how we got Democracy from the Greeks or how it was used throughout the ages, I’m just going to touch upon Canadian Democracy.

Our Democracy.

I came across an item while I was looking for something else about how Members of Parliament, prior to the Second World War, were required to  surrender their seat in the House of Commons and run in a by-election if they were deemed worthy to be a member of Cabinet.

This intrigued me.  Imagine, after winning an election the newly minted Prime Minister comes to you and says “I’d like you to be my Minister of …” and then you’d have to decide whether you wanted to be in Cabinet. 

Today it would be a no brainer, a pay raise, a larger staff, a title, it all sounds good doesn’t it?  But back then you’d have to decide if you wanted the headaches and hassle of running again for the seat that you had just won, and the risk that you might lose.

Why would they do such a thing? 

It was tradition, it was the convention, it was done that way because that was the way it was done.

But this wasn’t some strange idea that Canadians dreamed up to complicate running a Country, it was in fact part of the Westminster Parliamentary system.  This was and is the system we inherited from Britain when we became a Country in our own right.

At that time, the Parties didn’t have as much control over the individual or Private Members of the House of Commons.  An MP’s job was to represent their constituency and to hold the Government to account.   The Government being the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. 

Now if you’ve ever watched Question Period from the House in London, you may have seen vestiges of this.  Occasionally a Member from the Government Side of the House will rise to ask a pointed question about policy or a proposed law which would not be a good thing for their home constituency.  As a Private Member, you have the ability to challenge the Government, as a Member of Cabinet, you do not.

You see as a Minister you are required to support any policy or legislation that the Government brings forward even if you think it is a bad idea, even if it is bad for your constituency.

So there was merit in having these by elections back then.  If the people supported Bob Brown because they thought he would do a good job of representing them even if he belonged to the wrong party, the people could toss Bob out and elect someone else if they didn’t like the Party he was affiliated with, the Government he would be representing.

But things certainly have changed.  At least here they have.

It certainly is a rare event to hear an MP stand up to his or her own Party.  It’s political suicide.  At best you’d likely lose any status you have built up with the Party and be a back bencher for life, and at worst you might have your seat taken away and a new candidate parachuted in to replace you.  Today you cannot run for the Party of your choice unless the leader of the Party signs your nomination papers so it is best to keep the leader happy if you want to be an MP.

So whatever happened to this odd rule?  Well after a number of minority governments in the 1920s, it just disappeared in the 1930s.

You see this wasn’t a law that you had to run in a by-election, it wasn’t even a real rule.  It was merely a convention, like saying “Thank you” or “You’re welcome”, you don’t Have to say these things, but we generally do anyway… it’s the way things are done. 

Many of the “rules” we have in our Parliamentary system are just conventions.  It’s part of the way our Democracy works.

Have you ever wondered why when the Speaker of the House is selected, they are escorted to the Speaker’s Chair by the leaders of the Government and the Opposition?  Have you ever wondered why they pretend they don’t want the job?

It’s part of the same thing.  Traditionally the Speaker was chosen from the Opposition side to weaken the Opposition and to show that the Speaker holds no favouritism to the Government.  The Speaker also surrenders their ability to speak for their constituents in the House.

The use of the prorogue is another example.  Traditionally the prorogue was used by the Government to show that they have met the goals they set out in the Throne Speech and to provide a break with which to draw up a new set of goals and a new Throne Speech.  Often a prorogue would be called when there is a normal break scheduled for the Legislature.  This would give the Government plenty of time to set a new agenda, but there are also examples of short breaks as well, such as a prorogue in Ontario’s Provincial Parliament that lasted only a few hours.

It’s kind of handy for historians too.  A prorogue can break up a Parliament into Sessions, so if you are looking for a specific item, you wouldn’t have 4 or 5 years worth of information to go through, but only 2 or 3.  You could look for the 42^nd Parliament, 2^nd Session for example.

However, the prorogue has also been abused, used as a “get out of trouble card” if a Government is having a bad go of it.

Jean Chrétien prorogued Parliament during the Sponsorship Scandal, but he was on his way out as Liberal leader and Paul Martin could very well have used the same tool to set his agenda as he was coming in to replace Chrétien.

Stephen Harper has also used the prorogue to get out of trouble twice so far.  Once when the opposition parties were lining up to bring down his minority government and then again when the Afghan detainee situation was threatening to boil over.  Lately Harper has said he will prorogue again this summer, he claims it is so he can set a new agenda but the Senate Scandal that is knocking at his door suggests other motives are at play.

Listen, as a people we have seen some great changes in our electoral system.  We have gone from a show of hands at a local beer hall to the secret ballot.  We have gone from a time when only men of wealth or property were the only ones who could vote to a time where virtually all citizens have the right to vote and there are not a lot of places that can say that.

But, while our electoral system has been improved, our governance has gone the other way.  Our individual MPs , our voices in the House are for the most part muzzled.  If you want to be more than a backbencher for your political career  you pretty much have to toe the Party line and that rings true for pretty much all the parties, but even more so for some.

I would love to see at least one backbencher on the Harper side of the House stand up and say "No" to limiting debate, to say "No" to omnibus legislation.

We need our MPs to have voices again and not just parrot the party line regardless which party is handing out the talking points.

So how do we do this?  I don’t know.

I don’t even know If we can do this. 

We have seen the gradual diminishment of the MP to the point where they are little more than place markers in the House of Commons.  After we find out how many seats each party won, we don’t need ‘em any more.

The power in Ottawa appears to be getting so concentrated that we may not even need a Cabinet any more other than to reward good MPs for reading their talking points and not being an embarrassment to the Government.  It seems all they do is read their talking points anyways, and that includes the Cabinet Ministers.

Short of pointy sticks or cattle prods, how do we remind our MPs that we sent them to Ottawa to represent us and not to just send us periodic reports on what a wonderful job their leader is (or would be) doing.

Maybe we should go back through the long forgotten conventions of our Parliamentary system and make them use them again, in the ways they are supposed to be used?  Maybe 39 by-elections for Cabinet appointments would make people wonder what the devil is going on in Ottawa?

So endeth the Rant for Today,

I appreciate your time.

Cheers! BC

More Harper equals Less Democracy

[Preamble:  I’ve had a number of thoughts running loose in my head and I’ve tried to stitch them together somewhat here.  At the risk of having Godwin’s Law or one of the corollaries tossed at me, I even read about Germany in the 1930’s.  There are parallels… look it up for yourself.

We as Canadians have taken our democracy for granted.  It seems our government was based on the idea that no party would go outside the mostly unwritten rules that have been followed for over 140 years.  Ooops.

Democracy in Canada is at risk, if it still exists today. 

This is a bit of an omnibus rant, a catchall for my thoughts. 

If you have any thoughts to add, please do.  I’d like to hear what other people thinking.  B.C.]

In a recent post, I wondered about the cost of the F-35 JSF program to Canadians.

What I was thinking was Dollars and Cents, but the biggest costs are to Truth, Honesty and Integrity of our government and our system of government.

We live in a Parliamentary Democracy.  Or at least we used to.  The voice of every member of the House is supposed to be equal and every member is supposed to be representing the voice of their constituency.

These members are charged with the responsibility of listening to and taking part in the arguments for and against proposed legislation and policy of our government both at the committee level and as part of the House.

How can this be done without the actual information that backs the proposals made by the government?

This pulls me right back to the F 35 fiasco as well as just about any legislation that the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) puts forward.

How can you realistically decide on what kind of aircraft we can afford when the numbers being provided by the SHP don’t agree with anything outside of the SHP’s little scenarios?

And now we get yet another ominous omnibus bill.

This time it’s a budget bill… 498 pages of budget bill (or so I’ve read) which contains over 100 pages of changes to the way environmental assessments are performed in the future.  Basically, the Harper Party doesn’t want interlopers like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace from having a say in any assessments, only those who are directly involved.  So if they want to run a pipeline through Your community, you can say something, your neighbours can too… then the corporate lawyers representing the corporate interests get their say.

Who will have a better argument?  I’ll bet on the lawyers.

And if some organization wants to stick up for you?  They’re not directly involved, they don’t get to speak.

And then there are changes for EI in this “budget bill” as well, such as moving changes in EI rules from legislation to regulation.

Meaning what?  That now the changes to EI will be decided behind closed doors by Ministers rather than being debated and voted on in the House.

Oh yes, they’ve limited debate on this bill as well.

Is this what the Reformers wanted?  I thought Reform was all about grass roots democracy, more say for the people.

What we are getting is less debate, more decisions behind closed doors and no say for the people.  Less democracy.

What we are getting are omnibus bills with limited debate and whole provisions added with no formal announcements or explanations from the government.  Again, less democracy.

For the first time in history we’ve have a Prime Minister who was found to be in contempt of the House of Commons for failure to provide information requested by the House.  We have Bev not Oda who lied to the House and earned a charge of contempt as well.  A government who privately boast of doing “God’s work” in promoting the Tar Sands… the list just goes on and on.

Whenever things got bad in the House for Lord Stephen in a minority, he locked the doors.  In a childish tantrum he picked up the ball and went home…  Well actually he ran to the Governor General and hid behind her skirt… twice.

Now that he has a majority, he no longer needs to run away, he just yells “Shut Up!” and limits debate and then we go to the Marionette Theatre once again.

Look, this old cat has been around long enough to see his share nonsense floating around in Ottawa.

I just want an honest and open debate about why they are doing what they are doing… without invoking closure or limiting debate.

That is democracy Stephen.  If you don’t like it, take your Party and leave.

On an aside, I wonder if instead of calling them the Stephen Harper Party (SHP) I should have called them the Stephen Harper Team?

Dear Stephen: Bev Oda is not fit to be a Minister

Interesting tidbits from Tuesday’s Winnipeg Free Press

Apparently the ability to cut and paste is important to the Stephen Harper Party, however the ability to proofread is sorely lacking…

//"Our government treats taxpayers' money with the upmost (sic) respect and we require that travel on government business be done at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers," Ritz's spokeswoman, Meagan Murdoch, wrote in an email.//

//"Our government treats taxpayers' money with the upmost (sic) respect and we require that travel on government business be done at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers."// Flaherty’s spokeswoman, Mary Ann Dewey-Plante

Even down to the typo.

Same words they used in the House of Commons while defending Bev Oda as well.

You remember Bev not Oda, the Minister who signs has her underlings use “the arm” to sign documents and then toss a not in there when they realize they shouldn’t have signed it after all?  She was found prima facie to be in contempt of Parliament over the lies she used to cover her indiscretion. 

Well Bev was in London England last year and decided the 5 star hotel she was to stay at wasn’t to her taste.  So she upgraded to the Savoy.  Word has it she could get a smoking suite there.

Oh, she needed chauffer driven limousine to get back and forth to the conference she was to attend.  Oddly enough, the meetings were at the hotel where she was originally booked to stay.  I don’t know if she could smoke in the limo.

The room cost us (you and me) about $2300.00 for a 3 day visit.  $665 per night for the Savoy, $287 for the last minute cancellation at the Grange St. Paul’s, and $16 for an OJ at the Savoy. 

Now Bev says she is really sorry and paid back the difference this week, $1353.81 which included the orange juice but not the chauffeur driven limousine.  The car and driver cost us about $3000.00.

Oddly this was shortly after the press found out what she had done.

So Bev, are you sorry you spent taxpayer money recklessly or just that you got caught? 

I’d bet on the latter.

In the real world, if you go to a business meeting and the boss puts you up, if you don’t like the place you can upgrade.  But when the bills come in, you square up then, not eight months later when you get caught.

This apparently is not done in Ottawa under the Stephen Harper Party.  Apparently under Stephen Harper, no one even bothers to look at the bills when they come in.

This is not the first time that Bev Oda has tried to live a champagne lifestyle on the taxpayer’s dime and it has to stop. 

Bev Oda is not fit to be a Minister and Stephen Harper needs to demand her resignation.

The saddest part of this is the fact that the conference she was attending was for donors to an organization that helps fund immunizations for children in the developing world.  Places where people live on $1.00 a day or less.

$4300.00 is almost 12 years income to someone in a developing country.