Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Remaking the rules

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 2:31pm - 0 Comments

Liberal critic Carolyn Bennett has apparently set off on a series of “democratic renewal” consultations.

The workbook that is provided to participants is dominated by question marks, but everything from the senate to electoral reform to open data appears to be on the proverbial table.

Tags: Carolyn Bennett, democracy, elections, electoral reform, open data, Ottawa, Senate

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ColdStanding

From her priorities:
Parliamentary renewal: How to reduce hyper-partisanship? Elect a Liberal majority. CPC says elect a Conservative majority, duh.
Increase number of women: can't they win it on their own? How degrading.
Democracy between elections: Wouldn't that just be another election? Couldn't you just do the job you're elected to do?
Electoral renewal: We aren't going to bother with campaigning nationally, so we would really like a F-P-P system, please, so we can concentrate on our base. After all what's good for LPC is good for Canada.
danby

Lastly, we need to examine means of Electoral Reform, in order to ensure that Parliament is representative of its population and especially the need to have more women elected.

Does the system keep women out of politics? Minorities?

As far as I am concerned everybody should be free to run for office, no restrictions, but electoral reform to ensure Parliament is representative of it's population – that can get kinda scary and I'm not sure what it has to do with "democracy".

Crit_Reasoning

Norwegian political parties have ensured that sexes are more or less equally represented by using a voluntary quota system for many years. All the major political parties have at least a 40 percent quota for both sexes on electoral lists.

I doubt this is feasible in Canada, and I oppose quotas as a matter of principle, but the Norwegian experiment is still interesting.

danby

What is most interesting is that it's voluntary – though I suppose that once the direction is taken, and the public satisfied with the results, it would tend to maintain itself.
It goes without saying that women are just as politically (in)capable as men, and I have no issues in electing female leadership, but not through a legislated quota system.

Emily

The 'system', no.

Riding associations, yes.

Orson Bean

I'd be interested in how or why you think riding associations keep women out of politics. I was heavily involved in a federal riding association for many years. Anybody who wanted to join was more than welcome, the nomination process was open to anybody who wanted to run, and on top of that, it was damn easy to sell memberships to your supporters in order to enhance your chances of winning a nomination. I didn't see a thing that stood in the way of women or any member of any other identifiable group from joining and running.

Emily

There are certainly some riding associations that are open to women and minorities, but many of them aren't. Which is why we have so few women in politics. They want to run, but can't get through the process.

ZestyMordant

Could you provide any specific examples?
Orson Bean

Yeah, I'd be interested in hearing how riding associations aren't "open to women and minorities" and how women "can't get through the process". Examples?
Emily

Okay, a few examples. Culled from several women with remarkably similar experiences.
Waiting until the last minute to nominate the candidate…even waiting until after the election has been called, so she can't get to know the area and the area can't get to know her as the candidate. And some of the ridings are enormous geographically.
Running a woman only in ridings in which there is no hope of winning…if it's been Party X for 50 years, and you're Party Y or Z.
Nominating the woman at the last moment, and then the entire executive announcing their immediate departure for Florida or Arizona for a couple of months.
Not having anyone ever available for street introductions, sign posting, driving, money-raising, book-keeping and all the 1001 other things involved in the process…leaving the candidate to do it all.
If she has young children, this is even more difficult.
Leading questions or remarks to any husband involved. 'So, how does it feel to be Mr. Sally? How does it
Emily

How does it feel to be left out? I guess you're just the babysitter now eh? I guess you'll have plenty of time to entertain 'company' now eh? Wink, nudge. Guess you'll be on your own a lot while your wife is busy in…..eh?'
Telling the candidate she has to spend about $15,000 right up front for signs, ads etc and is then also responsible for raising the money thru donations to 'pay herself back' while running for office as well. She might eventually get enough donations to do so if she wins…if she doesn't win, she now has a debt for nothing because no one is likely to donate to a cause already lost.
No past candidates with any experience in what works in the riding available to help out even with advice.
Or poor advice…trying to take the candidate into funeral homes to campaign, and if she balks at this, dumping her as not 'wanting to win'.
No office space available somehow. Or people not willing to nominate a woman at the meeting.
Emily

An insistence on selling memberships to total strangers before the meeting long before they've thot of any election or who they would support. If you have a big family…and no one notices they constitute the bulk of your supporters at the meeting…..
Whisper campaigns…her marriage is in trouble, her kids are wild, she has no support, she's fat/lesbian/unstable/ dictator/wimpy/sleeps around/doesn't sleep around….

Mostly….no support, or deliberate trouble-making…in spite of the invitations. Then the party people announce they keep asking women to run, but women simply don't want to…so they shrug and say they went with a man for that reason.

LynnTO

Agreed. Just because I have lady-parts doesn't mean I can only be best represented by other people with lady-parts.

My views, as have often been pointed out to me, are very rarely a reflection of my gender. Or, at least the stereotypes thereof.

ColdStanding

Here's another cute one:
Protecting civil society: The current government has attempted to muzzle as many dissenting voices within civil society (eg advocacy groups, research institutes) as possible by threatening or simply ignoring them. What should the relationship be between the government and civil society? How should the government decide which institutions to fund, if any?

Answer: If said advocacy group was approved by and/or funded under a LPC lead government, then, nach, it should continue to get funding regardless as to the LPC continuing to lead the GoC. Especially because they will be so very useful in critisizing the new government.
Mike T.

The liberals weren't always the best at ATI, but Harper brought it to new levels of obfuscation after promising the exact opposite.
Orson Bean

It's certainly true that the parties that consistently push the issue of democratic reform, etc. in Canada are . . . opposition parties. The Reform Party was consisent and front-and-centre on this issue, and of course they never came close to forming a government. Chretien's Liberal government basically ignored everything that Reform ever had to say about anything.

Harper ran on a platform which contained some of those Reform-initiated ideas, and we know what happened to that once Harper became PM.

Now that the Liberals are an opposition party, they think democratic reform is really important. Go figure. Forgive me for being cynical.

ColdStanding

Worse yet, the parties that are really gung-ho can't get elected through the established means. I realize that that is why they are arguing for it, but I would not welcome a situation where an extreme minority party ends up being kingmaker.

Mine is not a partisan position. I simply challenge ANY political party to come up with a platform that Canadians want to vote a majority into power on. Simple. The rest is window dressing.

danby

I don't see any of the parties coming up with that platform given the current leadership.
What would make the difference?
Personality. Given the current state of affairs, it would take someone to capture the imagination and mood of the public. Love him or hate him, that's exactly what Barack Obama did.

Emily

We used to have a party like that, until Reform came along.

I don't know that a leader would make the difference in Canada. People liked Ed Broadbent, but they weren't interested in electing the NDP

tobyornotoby

Staying with the MagnaCarta analogy on her web site, I have to say it's difficult to take any of this at face value because the underlying question is how can any government be compelled to live up to what it proposed as a party before an election? And what government will seek to limit its own power?

My understanding is that King John was facing a grab for power by influential Lords and somewhat inadvertently gave us citizen's rights to appease them.

I'm sure some scholar wil be along to correct me about the Magna Carta history, but my point is, what will it take to get King Harper, or King Ignatieff to similarly relinquish control?

I'm not seeing the potential for benevolence, especially since our elections are now much more about the spoils of victory than the sobriety of governance. So what is it that will force them to shift power the other direction?

Mike T.

The Magna Carta was an agreement between a few noblemen (including the King) for a few specific things. The idea that the document subjects a sovererign or government to the law was invented in the early 17th century by Edward Cooke.

Orson Bean

Another analogous shift of power from king to parliament was the so-called Glorious Revolution in 1688. But that too was in the context of a very specific set of facts: the overthrow of James II, the ascension of William of Orange etc. Because William was a foreigner ascending the throne, among other things, he was highly motivated to acknowledge the principle of parliamentary supremacy in order to win support of the rich & influential white guys who made up the parliament at the time. But it's one of those happy accidents of history that ended up having a decidedly positive effect on the subsequent development of British democracy.
tobyornotoby

Just so you know, the thumbs down wasn't me, i gave you a bump.

I'm genuinely interested in the dilemna that we are dependent on the people who are most interested in having power to agree to relinquish some. I can think of a few examples when that has happened in modern times — the Sandinistas submitting to election for instance, or de Klerk negotiating the end of apartheid or Gorbachev undoing the Soviet Union (further than he planned) — but always when the leadership was under serious pressure internally and externally. I don't see where that pressure to do the right thing will come from in Canada.

LynnTO

And further to your query, my own is whether changing the institutions is really the solution, if the real issues we're having lie in the functions and traditions within them. Surely the same attitudes that made those functions and traditions will carry over into any new institutions; why, then, do we almost exclusively consider institutional, rather than functional change?

Jenn_

You've never been to a roundtable, huh? Well, consider this your personal invite. Wearing my Canadians Advocating Political Participation hat (and putting my Liberal hat on the rack for the evening) we are hosting Carolyn at a roundtable in association with FairVote Canada. This is, in other words, not a Liberal event and not exactly a part of this tour. Carolyn will be asking the questions (I presume the same questions) but it is your table that comes up with the answers! So why not come out and Participate?
November 11, 7 p.m., Adult Recreation Centre, 185 King St S, Waterloo.

ColdStanding

You are right. I have not been. But thank you for the gracious invitation. Circumstances being different, I would attend with relish.

I hope your event is a great success.