Travers: The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy

[toraerach]

I do not see whats so wrong with one party having power for 4 years???

Even if such Parties act in a stupid way they in the end face an embarrassing or crushing defeat.

Coalitions and such cannot work due to our electoral system. It would make these governments fragile. Plus having a coalition of Ndp'ers and Block members is something I think we should avoid.


However I don't want the electoral system to change because I hate the NDP... Rather Selfish of me, but ...

What's wrong is that a government without the support of the people is undemocratic. A majority government that only received 37% of the vote (for example, the NDP victory in the 1990 Ontario election) is completely undemocratic and cannot represent the people. Extended over a four year term, an unpopular government can cause a lot of damage (think Bush in his final few years) or just result in apathy and disengagement by the people from democratic institutions.

As for electoral reform, I think it is necessary and I do think your selfishness here is a huge affront to the 2.5 million Canadians who voted NDP in the last election. Why should they not have their say? Because they disagree with you? In any democracy there will be people who you disagree with or hate.

With a more proportional system our whole party system will have to re-organize itself. The Bloc, for example, would lose all of those extra seats it doesn't deserve. I think you would also see a migration of more radical elements in both the NDP and Conservatives to smaller parties that would not have to rely on concentrated regional support, allowing both parties to compromise more in coallitions. For example, look at the way the SPD and Die Linke cater to two different leftist elements in Germany - though that relationship is much more complex, I could see a WASG-esque party splitting from the NDP if electoral success was possible. Without a PDS-like force in Canadian politics, I don't know if they could be as successful as Die Linke though.

The point here being that we cannot graft today's political parties or dynamics on to a hypothetical reformed system where co-operation is expected and encouraged. I don't think Canadians are as polarized as Italians or Israelis, and I don't think we would put up with the antics that go on there (as they inevitibly come up whenever electoral reform does). There are many countries the world over that are able to balance democracy and stability a bit better than we are. To use the German example again, the coalition government there represents 52% of the people and has been in power since 2005. To put that in perspective, the last time a Canadian government had that much support was in the 1984 election (the PCs got 50.03% of the vote). Before that, you have to go back to the PC victory in 1958 who had that much popular support. Only a very small fraction of Canadian governments have won with the support of a majority of Canadians - only two in the past fifty years.

 

[jade_lee]

When a fraction of Canadian society starts to question the legitimacy of our human rights, our charter and what it means, it makes my decision easier, I go and I vote Liberal.
That fraction of Canadians who disrespect, for whatever reason, the basic right of individuals to fight for their rights, must be defeated in government.

 

[SunriseChampion]

I do not see whats so wrong with one party having power for 4 years???

.

4 years is a long time in which to inflict a lot of irreversible damage whilst being supported by no more than 40% of the population (the typical popular support level for our majorities).


This is an unfair and, frankly, scary situation.


A concentration of power is never a good thing.

PS:Well said, lesouris.
Don't get me started on us "lost in the wilderness" GPC supporters!

 

[kEiThZ]

4 years is a long time in which to inflict a lot of irreversible damage whilst being supported by no more than 40% of the population (the typical popular support level for our majorities).

Exactly. I am a firm believer in minorities and coalitions, despite how messy they can be. Some of our best policies have come through minority governments....Lester B. Pearson's Liberal minority being the ultimate example of what can be accomplished by minorities.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Also, I'd like to point out to those who grumble about "fringe" parties being somehow able to push through ridiculous agendas (as if that would ever be possible by sheer numbers, and if it was they wouldn't quite be fringe, now would they?) that it is in fact majorities that can push through their extreme ideas by sheer numbers.

Now, it is true that any single party that is likely to get a majority in our parliament is likely to be quite moderate in relation to these hypothetical "fringe" parties but there are examples of how unpopular and dangerous ideas could have come to pass.

Take, for example, the Conservative Party of Canada and the Iraq War. Had they had a majority at the time, God only knows we'd still be bogged down in that sinkhole now, having played lapdog to the Americans quite well.

Also, the fear-mongering about "fringe" parties is disingenous because a democracy is supposed to reflect the will of the people and if a "fringe" party has the support of citizens, then it should be able to represent that support, regardless of what the majority of people might think about any given ideology or purpose.

Half-assing a democracy and being proud of it strikes me as rather odd. Not to mention berating others for the failings of their political systems. A touch hypocritical, that.

 

[lordmandeep]

the thing is those were better times...


The way politics in in Canada, were going to be in this quagmire state for a long time. I do not know about you, but I hate it...


I agree with all your ideals about Canadian democracy. However I like to look at the realities, and I know today nothing will get done at this rate.

Keep dreaming, as sadly they will remain dreams.


Maybe there should be a time limit of at least two years between election in a minoirty situation. If we keep having elections at this rate, people are going to stop caring about government.

 

[SunriseChampion]

the thing is those were better times...


The way politics in in Canada, were going to be in this quagmire state for a long time.


I agree with all your ideals about Canadian democracy. However I like to look at the realities, and I know today nothing will get done at this rate.

Keep dreaming, as sadly they will remain dreams.

You may be somewhat right about that which is probably why I'm rather disenfranchised and very much against authority, "the system", and people having power over me in any capacity. My old man calls me an anarchist, but I just want to live and let live and think that if we're going to call something by a name that denotes a certain way of doing things then it should reflect that by working in the way its name denotes and not fool ourselves into believing in falsehoods.

I can't stand our system being called a democracy. Maybe it's the poli sci student in me and the ridiculous lectures I've sat through and books I've read but I don't like being lied to nor cheated. That's exactly what our system does: cheat the citizenry of their rightful freedoms and then lie to them about how everything is the way it should be.

I have never had my voice represented at either Queen's Park or Parliament Hill. In no capacity whatsoever. When I've tried to have my representative lobby on behalf of my ideals, I've been rebuked or ignored and I'm no radical either.

Our system is broken, simply put and settling for something that's broken is a sad reflection on our society.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Great commentary from Chantal Hebert. Translated via Google Translate.

http://translate.google.com/transla...ttp://www.ledevoir.com/2009/04/27/247659.html

Harper and the Rule of Law
Chantal Hebert, Le Devoir
The most disturbing feature that distinguishes the regime of Stephen Harper from those that preceded it is not really the right ideology, but its latent contempt for the concept of the rule of law and institutions who connected. The latest example is his behavior in the young Omar Khadr, the federal government persists in not wanting to repatriate Guantanamo and against its obligations under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international conventions.

In this regard, the ruling last week by the Federal Court is overwhelming. Between the lines of the order which is done at the Harper government to fulfill its responsibilities in respect of Omar Khadr, one can decode how the Justice James O'Reilly believes that it faces a serious offense government.

But the Khadr case is not a case. It corresponds to a line of conduct which can not be denied since Stephen Harper held a position of leadership at the federal and whose guiding principle was already visible when he was still in opposition.

**

Unlike his predecessors as prime minister or his colleagues in the opposition, Stephen Harper does not agree with the notion that representatives of institutions like the courts or the Governor General are above the political fray. And according to his philosophy, populism has precedence over the law.

Thus, when in opposition, the Conservative leader had declared that the legal recognition of gay marriage was the result of deviance liberal judges. When he had argued that one of the main signatories of the legal ruling at issue, Justice Roy McMurtry, had long been Conservative minister in Ontario, Stephen Harper had argued that he had always been allowed to doubt the value of convictions of the former Attorney General of Ontario.

In the same spirit, during the election campaign in 2006, the Conservative leader had described the judges as cogs in a great machine set up to impose liberal ideology in Canada, which also included machine, he said, the federal public service and the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

This argument allows the prime minister to behave like a player who does not recognize the primacy of the arbitrator when it applies the rules in line with his perception of right, left to call for lynching People try to win case.

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Upon his arrival in power, the only legal way open to Stephen Harper to fulfill its promise to outlaw gay marriage would have been to place the heterosexual nature of the institution away from the courts through the notwithstanding clause. However, he ruled out the appeal. The advisers of the government had instead argued that judges have a moral obligation to give precedence to the expressed will of Parliament rather than their reading of the Charter.

On the occasion of the parliamentary crisis of last autumn, several government leaders have suggested that if Michaëlle Jean is not made at the request of Prime Minister to extend the House to prevent the fall of the Conservative government or, if appropriate, refer the Canada Votes, he was ready for a collision with the Governor General rather than to comply with an orderly transition to a government coalition Liberal-NDP.

In the eyes of the Prime Minister, the parliamentary and institutional legitimacy is variable. At the time of adoption of the law on gay marriage, Stephen Harper said that the role of the Bloc in its adoption allowed to question its legitimacy.

During the parliamentary crisis, the Prime Minister has again tapped on the same nail for mounting public opinion against the opposition coalition, left to grow, to do this, the role of the Bloc in the project.

As noted by parliamentary experts, misinformation is a special place in the arsenal of government. We saw last December when the Prime Minister said that to satisfy a requirement of Gilles Duceppe, the Canadian flags were removed from the room where the three opposition leaders have signed the coalition pact.

We saw it again Friday when the Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, Omar Khadr has been associated with the recent death of a Quebec soldier in Afghanistan.

All governments sometimes sin demagoguery. No, for against, has gone so far to save democracy in opposition to the rule of law that the current regime. This trend, corrosive to the democratic Canadian trouble, and rightly so, more and more actors of civil society, and even members of the Harper government.

 

[jade_lee]

When a fraction of Canadian society starts to question the legitimacy of our human rights, our charter and what it means, it makes my decision easier, I go and I vote Liberal.
That fraction of Canadians who disrespect our legal opinions, the basic right of individuals to fight for their rights, helping a child caught in the madness of war, must be defeated in government, heres hoping the Harper government is toast next election!.

That sharp right turn is now heading left.