"Not so. The impetus behind it is to prevent the government of the day from manipulating elections by calling them when they're high in the polls, even when they currently still have a mandate. That's exactly what Chretien did for years."
That's the stated impetus, but not the real one. Harper's a real player, who's not above complete hypocrisy in using the rules he claims to detest to his advantage.
If it were really an honest attempt at election reform, it wouldn't come from the man who put Michael Fortier in the Senate after years of criticizing the Senate.
Harper was also at the forefront of the unite-the-right movement, which aimed to manipulate a flaw in our system of democracy (the first past-the-post system of voting) to get his party into power.
It worked -- the Conservatives got the lowest share of the popular vote of any ruling party in Canadian history. About 61% of the country voted farther to the left.
"As I understand it, there are still provisions for a new election if the government falls on a vote of confidence."
True, but an election can never be called early. I'd have had no problem with limiting terms to four years -- it's guaranteeing that they have to extend it to that length of time, regardless of circumstance.
"Did they? I wasn't aware that the Senate forced anything. They certainly didn't manage to stop the GST, which was at least as controversial. They also didn't force any elections when the Liberals broke all their major promises after 1993."
I'm not a fan of the Senate -- I'd like to see it turned into a body for proportional representation. Not into another region-based body, since the House of Commons already does that.
That said, yes, when Mulroney attempted to ram economic integration with US into our policy without having warned us, the Senate refused and sent back the legislation, saying it couldn't approve it because Mulroney had no mandate from the people for such a drastic change, having never mentioned it during his election.
Mulroney dissolved parliament and ran almost exclusively on the Free Trade Agreement. He essentially used the election as a referendum, which the Senate had told him to do.
Mulroney won, but only because of our first-past-the-post system which is part of why I favour proportional representation). Back then, the Liberals were anti-Free Trade, and so were the NDP.
If it was a referendum, Mulroney lost. He got 43% of the vote, compared to the 51% combined of the Liberals the NDP. That contributed to the NDP's total defeat in 1993 -- people were afraid of vote-splitting, elected Chrétien, and kept him there for ages as a bulwark against the Reform/alliance party.
As for the GST, the Senate tried. They voted down the law.
Then Mulroney realized there was a constitutional loophole that allowed him to temporarily increase the number of senators by eight. That was enough to force it through.
You're right, though, that the Senate didn't rein in Chrétien. They ought to have, but I'd just as soon see them abolished replaced as part of a PR system.
"There can still be a federal referendum, can't there?"
A favourite philosopher of mine once called direct democracy "an appealing idea that has been unworkable for 2000 years."
The same philosopher pointed out that referendums reduce complex questions to simple a "yes" versus "no," when most people have a more complex and nuanced idea of what should happen. To this end, they elect public officials.
Also, I should note that a true referendum is not legal in Canada. It would be illegal under our constitutional monarchy to require the government to approve a bill if the people voted yes. It's considered to illegally abrogate the power of the queen.
Technically, what we have here are "plebiscites" -- very expensive suggestions that the government is free to ignore as it chooses. It cannot ignore the results of an election, however.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-09 06:46 pm (UTC)That's the stated impetus, but not the real one. Harper's a real player, who's not above complete hypocrisy in using the rules he claims to detest to his advantage.
If it were really an honest attempt at election reform, it wouldn't come from the man who put Michael Fortier in the Senate after years of criticizing the Senate.
Harper was also at the forefront of the unite-the-right movement, which aimed to manipulate a flaw in our system of democracy (the first past-the-post system of voting) to get his party into power.
It worked -- the Conservatives got the lowest share of the popular vote of any ruling party in Canadian history. About 61% of the country voted farther to the left.
"As I understand it, there are still provisions for a new election if the government falls on a vote of confidence."
True, but an election can never be called early. I'd have had no problem with limiting terms to four years -- it's guaranteeing that they have to extend it to that length of time, regardless of circumstance.
"Did they? I wasn't aware that the Senate forced anything. They certainly didn't manage to stop the GST, which was at least as controversial. They also didn't force any elections when the Liberals broke all their major promises after 1993."
I'm not a fan of the Senate -- I'd like to see it turned into a body for proportional representation. Not into another region-based body, since the House of Commons already does that.
That said, yes, when Mulroney attempted to ram economic integration with US into our policy without having warned us, the Senate refused and sent back the legislation, saying it couldn't approve it because Mulroney had no mandate from the people for such a drastic change, having never mentioned it during his election.
Mulroney dissolved parliament and ran almost exclusively on the Free Trade Agreement. He essentially used the election as a referendum, which the Senate had told him to do.
Mulroney won, but only because of our first-past-the-post system which is part of why I favour proportional representation). Back then, the Liberals were anti-Free Trade, and so were the NDP.
If it was a referendum, Mulroney lost. He got 43% of the vote, compared to the 51% combined of the Liberals the NDP. That contributed to the NDP's total defeat in 1993 -- people were afraid of vote-splitting, elected Chrétien, and kept him there for ages as a bulwark against the Reform/alliance party.
As for the GST, the Senate tried. They voted down the law.
Then Mulroney realized there was a constitutional loophole that allowed him to temporarily increase the number of senators by eight. That was enough to force it through.
You're right, though, that the Senate didn't rein in Chrétien. They ought to have, but I'd just as soon see them abolished replaced as part of a PR system.
"There can still be a federal referendum, can't there?"
A favourite philosopher of mine once called direct democracy "an appealing idea that has been unworkable for 2000 years."
The same philosopher pointed out that referendums reduce complex questions to simple a "yes" versus "no," when most people have a more complex and nuanced idea of what should happen. To this end, they elect public officials.
Also, I should note that a true referendum is not legal in Canada. It would be illegal under our constitutional monarchy to require the government to approve a bill if the people voted yes. It's considered to illegally abrogate the power of the queen.
Technically, what we have here are "plebiscites" -- very expensive suggestions that the government is free to ignore as it chooses. It cannot ignore the results of an election, however.