CPC tried to advance the “he’s trying to steal the election” narrative before the last election cycle. And they’ve used the Chinese election interference saga (a significant national security threat) to undermine confidence in the results of our last election, and suggest that Trudeau was conspiring with China to steal the election. I don’t know why they wouldn’t try to set up the pre-election narrative that if they don’t win the next election, it was stolen from them by the LPC (or maybe the LPC and the NDP.) I’m very worried about the state of our political discourse, because it’s starting to feel more dangerous than in any other point in my lifetime…and I’m old.
I think of the House as representing whole "systems of thought", and if you must dumb it down to "left" or "right", then Canada is a solid 60% left. We 60% deserve a leftist government of some degree. Sandy Garossino harps on that: "over 60% of Canadians voted to the left of the Conservatives".
In central BC ridings that went Conservative, you can actually see the Lefty vote split, allowing a minority to win the seat. (More in '19 than '21)
The column seems to be going on about what would be a just outcome for a *party* that played the game and won the most game-points. The game is supposed to serve the people, not the parties: turn out a government that matches the people's attitudes. For every two Canadians that voted CPC or PPC, three Canadians voted LPC, NDP, or Green. So the '19 election, with a government of LPC affected by NDP, matched that Canada fairly well. The legalization of cannabis was very popular, and has gone OK, relieving millions from fear of their government; recall that Harper was still doing frying-egg commercials on the subject.
We did not have a giant Convoy demanding those FPTP reforms when they didn't come. We didn't have a small demonstration. It served the 60% when Trudeau got CERB out like lightning, and Singh made him double it. It served the 60% when they finally passed cheap day-care.
A March 2023 article on the carbon tax notes that it remains over 50% popular, and that "some form" of making emitters pay (cap-and-trade, also popular) polls over 75%. We would not get ANY of these very popular climate response policies, from the 40%-popular ideology.
So, then the 60% sent back the same Parliament in '21. It is not clear to me what injustice was done.
The folks I'm not taking governance-system advice from, are the ones who wanted the Governor-General to rule as a dictator, responsive to a crowd outside.
I fully agree that the when you look at the vote of the LPC, NDP and Greens nationally, the majority of Canadians don't agree with the horse and buggy days where governing nationally was about small government, low taxes and less regulation nor are they wanting the culture wars bubbling below the surface with the CPC.
Canada must get to at minimum a guaranteed income scheme something I believe we'd have been closer to but for Covid. Now studies are showing how CERB was used by many to get ahead while many were just keeping their heads above water. We'll not get there with a right wing government.
Thanks for this thread. I agree with the direction of these policies (which puts us in the same filter bubble) but am concerned we have not spent the time to establish fundamental and shared 'process' values with those who would disagree with our policies. Politics for most people are weak rituals of periodic elections where we cross our fingers and hope the right people get elected. Maybe FPTP wasn't the right answer but we need to spend more time than we have discussing, improving the rules of the 'game' called democracy while there is still hope (yes I'm that naive) it will lead to broad agreement and greater legitimacy in our institutions. We need to do that before there are more 'winner take all' contests where the losers that have lost faith in the rules of the game and also take a purely tactical approach to participating in politics. Now that would be worth organizing a Convoy for! ;-).
The parliamentary system despite any imperfections is still superior. I long believed as many MPs who served in the first PM Pierre Trudeau government from '68-72 believed that there should be more free votes on government bills rather than every vote a confidence vote. A rule along the lines that if the government is defeated on a vote on a piece of legislation, then the ball can go to the opposition to move non-confidence to trigger a vote. This might improve legislation as a government might fix unintended outcomes in legislation before taking it to the house. This would mean that the party in power would have to know all its members are onside (or enough to get it passed) before it's ready for prime time.
In this era though, I'm not sure of this idea any longer as facts matter less than a good rant.
The one key change that voters can drive is to force parties to reveal their platforms and not reward the likes of the rage farmers like the CPC put up who don't focus on facts.
How Canadian democracy is actually structured is an important reminder as we try to navigate the flow of BS narratives and tactics from south of our border.
What if we tie together full per-vote funding (formerly subsidy), as opposed to donations (with or without non-refundable tax credits), to the most votes win thing? After all, if one party can buy votes more than all others possibly could, it isn't a free and fair election, is it? And of course, ending donations would need to be done at least a year ahead of an election. I guess party memberships would be okay, but with a limit on the fee parties could charge.
I might be older! I'm also reflecting on the culpability of the Liberal Party (mine until recently) and their mishandling, in fact negligence, managing the democracy file over all the years they have been in power. Governments seem to inexorably get stale, lose touch and defeat themselves. Parliamentary democracy requires a viable alternative that can differ on everything except the sanctity of the democratic process and rule of law. The Trudeau-Liberals have lost that plot. They are holding up divisive and contestable policies (ie. vaccines and gas pipelines) as principles, but if we don't like those they have others so long as it keeps them in power. However, unlike the time of the King-Byng affair, it's a shallow, opportunistic and tactically competent populist that will serve up just desserts to smarmy Liberals who only seem to understand the 'elite accommodation' style of governing we learned in Canadian Politics 100 (I took the same number of years ago). While Arthur Meighen was out-foxed by Mackenzie King and mis-stepped badly with the 'ready, aye ready' (to follow Britain into war) quip, he was also instrumental in making the Conservative party 'Progressive' and a viable alternative government that, led by Diefenbaker and his 'unhyphenated Canadians' did a much needed house cleaning after Louis St. Laurent's Liberals had become stale and foundered on their own mishandling of a pipeline (funny thing about Liberals and pipelines). This time we don't seem to have the underlying consensus on democracy. Stephen Harper, in addition to taking the progressive out of conservatives in Canada is a fan of the Orban/Trump populist-autocracy which has taken over conservatism around the world. His protege Poilievre is likely going to slag and slander his way into power but he was enabled by a Liberal Party that also thinks only about democracy in terms of tactics and self-interest and not a value in itself. We are sleep walking into a legitimation crisis the way supercilious, entitled Clinton-Democrats made Trump possible. Should we really focus on the procedural issue of who the G-G should recognize when FPTP produces a murky result? Or should we try and get to the root of the legitimation crisis? How can we have informed civic engagement that results in sane, humane and effective collective decision-making at any level of government? What can we point to as the glimmer of hope for a better way? I realize I might have made a compelling case for sticking with debating parliamentary procedure and G-G discretion;-) Cheers!
Isn't one of the questions, "should someone who is deliberately dallying with decisive factors be GIVEN first chance to govern?" That isn't good for democracy.
CPC tried to advance the “he’s trying to steal the election” narrative before the last election cycle. And they’ve used the Chinese election interference saga (a significant national security threat) to undermine confidence in the results of our last election, and suggest that Trudeau was conspiring with China to steal the election. I don’t know why they wouldn’t try to set up the pre-election narrative that if they don’t win the next election, it was stolen from them by the LPC (or maybe the LPC and the NDP.) I’m very worried about the state of our political discourse, because it’s starting to feel more dangerous than in any other point in my lifetime…and I’m old.
I think of the House as representing whole "systems of thought", and if you must dumb it down to "left" or "right", then Canada is a solid 60% left. We 60% deserve a leftist government of some degree. Sandy Garossino harps on that: "over 60% of Canadians voted to the left of the Conservatives".
In central BC ridings that went Conservative, you can actually see the Lefty vote split, allowing a minority to win the seat. (More in '19 than '21)
The column seems to be going on about what would be a just outcome for a *party* that played the game and won the most game-points. The game is supposed to serve the people, not the parties: turn out a government that matches the people's attitudes. For every two Canadians that voted CPC or PPC, three Canadians voted LPC, NDP, or Green. So the '19 election, with a government of LPC affected by NDP, matched that Canada fairly well. The legalization of cannabis was very popular, and has gone OK, relieving millions from fear of their government; recall that Harper was still doing frying-egg commercials on the subject.
We did not have a giant Convoy demanding those FPTP reforms when they didn't come. We didn't have a small demonstration. It served the 60% when Trudeau got CERB out like lightning, and Singh made him double it. It served the 60% when they finally passed cheap day-care.
A March 2023 article on the carbon tax notes that it remains over 50% popular, and that "some form" of making emitters pay (cap-and-trade, also popular) polls over 75%. We would not get ANY of these very popular climate response policies, from the 40%-popular ideology.
So, then the 60% sent back the same Parliament in '21. It is not clear to me what injustice was done.
The folks I'm not taking governance-system advice from, are the ones who wanted the Governor-General to rule as a dictator, responsive to a crowd outside.
I fully agree that the when you look at the vote of the LPC, NDP and Greens nationally, the majority of Canadians don't agree with the horse and buggy days where governing nationally was about small government, low taxes and less regulation nor are they wanting the culture wars bubbling below the surface with the CPC.
Canada must get to at minimum a guaranteed income scheme something I believe we'd have been closer to but for Covid. Now studies are showing how CERB was used by many to get ahead while many were just keeping their heads above water. We'll not get there with a right wing government.
Thanks for this thread. I agree with the direction of these policies (which puts us in the same filter bubble) but am concerned we have not spent the time to establish fundamental and shared 'process' values with those who would disagree with our policies. Politics for most people are weak rituals of periodic elections where we cross our fingers and hope the right people get elected. Maybe FPTP wasn't the right answer but we need to spend more time than we have discussing, improving the rules of the 'game' called democracy while there is still hope (yes I'm that naive) it will lead to broad agreement and greater legitimacy in our institutions. We need to do that before there are more 'winner take all' contests where the losers that have lost faith in the rules of the game and also take a purely tactical approach to participating in politics. Now that would be worth organizing a Convoy for! ;-).
The parliamentary system despite any imperfections is still superior. I long believed as many MPs who served in the first PM Pierre Trudeau government from '68-72 believed that there should be more free votes on government bills rather than every vote a confidence vote. A rule along the lines that if the government is defeated on a vote on a piece of legislation, then the ball can go to the opposition to move non-confidence to trigger a vote. This might improve legislation as a government might fix unintended outcomes in legislation before taking it to the house. This would mean that the party in power would have to know all its members are onside (or enough to get it passed) before it's ready for prime time.
In this era though, I'm not sure of this idea any longer as facts matter less than a good rant.
The one key change that voters can drive is to force parties to reveal their platforms and not reward the likes of the rage farmers like the CPC put up who don't focus on facts.
How Canadian democracy is actually structured is an important reminder as we try to navigate the flow of BS narratives and tactics from south of our border.
What if we tie together full per-vote funding (formerly subsidy), as opposed to donations (with or without non-refundable tax credits), to the most votes win thing? After all, if one party can buy votes more than all others possibly could, it isn't a free and fair election, is it? And of course, ending donations would need to be done at least a year ahead of an election. I guess party memberships would be okay, but with a limit on the fee parties could charge.
I might be older! I'm also reflecting on the culpability of the Liberal Party (mine until recently) and their mishandling, in fact negligence, managing the democracy file over all the years they have been in power. Governments seem to inexorably get stale, lose touch and defeat themselves. Parliamentary democracy requires a viable alternative that can differ on everything except the sanctity of the democratic process and rule of law. The Trudeau-Liberals have lost that plot. They are holding up divisive and contestable policies (ie. vaccines and gas pipelines) as principles, but if we don't like those they have others so long as it keeps them in power. However, unlike the time of the King-Byng affair, it's a shallow, opportunistic and tactically competent populist that will serve up just desserts to smarmy Liberals who only seem to understand the 'elite accommodation' style of governing we learned in Canadian Politics 100 (I took the same number of years ago). While Arthur Meighen was out-foxed by Mackenzie King and mis-stepped badly with the 'ready, aye ready' (to follow Britain into war) quip, he was also instrumental in making the Conservative party 'Progressive' and a viable alternative government that, led by Diefenbaker and his 'unhyphenated Canadians' did a much needed house cleaning after Louis St. Laurent's Liberals had become stale and foundered on their own mishandling of a pipeline (funny thing about Liberals and pipelines). This time we don't seem to have the underlying consensus on democracy. Stephen Harper, in addition to taking the progressive out of conservatives in Canada is a fan of the Orban/Trump populist-autocracy which has taken over conservatism around the world. His protege Poilievre is likely going to slag and slander his way into power but he was enabled by a Liberal Party that also thinks only about democracy in terms of tactics and self-interest and not a value in itself. We are sleep walking into a legitimation crisis the way supercilious, entitled Clinton-Democrats made Trump possible. Should we really focus on the procedural issue of who the G-G should recognize when FPTP produces a murky result? Or should we try and get to the root of the legitimation crisis? How can we have informed civic engagement that results in sane, humane and effective collective decision-making at any level of government? What can we point to as the glimmer of hope for a better way? I realize I might have made a compelling case for sticking with debating parliamentary procedure and G-G discretion;-) Cheers!
It might be a good idea to have a post election House of Commons vote to elect the PM. Changes nothing but makes explicit what is happening
No, we should know the leaders of the parties and where they stand before any voting!
Look at the skullduggery that goes on within the right wing parties and voting leaders in federally and provincially.
MPs wheeling and dealing on the PM will not produce better government.
Isn't one of the questions, "should someone who is deliberately dallying with decisive factors be GIVEN first chance to govern?" That isn't good for democracy.