Saving the House of Commons (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 4 Comments

Further to this, Mark Jarvis chimes in via email with some of the other ideas discussed in Democratizing the Constitution.

-Adopt legislation limiting the size of ministries to a maximum of 25 individuals and the number of parliamentary secretaries to eight.

-Use secret preferential ballots to allow committee members to select Commons’ committee chairs for the duration of the parliamentary session.

-Adopt a set schedule for opposition days in the House that cannot be unilaterally altered by the government.

-Reduce the partisan political staff complement on Parliament Hill by 50 percent.

-Restore the power of party caucuses to dismiss the party leader.

-Remove the party leader’s power to approve or reject party candidates for election in each riding.

That last one goes hand in hand with amending the Elections Act. It also fits with what I tend to think should be the focus right now: changes that can be made with (reasonably straightforward) legislation and amendment. And, as noted by a few readers, I’d add one other: changing the guidelines to allow for CPAC to show more than the individual speaking. In the interests of objectivity, assigning television directors to show a “televised Hansard” makes a certain sense, but, at the very least, stationary cameras should be setup that feed live shots of the government and opposition sides to CPAC’s website. You shouldn’t have to go to the House of Commons to see what goes on there.

In defence of partisanship

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 26, 2011 at 12:48 PM - 23 Comments

iPolitics publishes an excerpt from Democratizing the Constitution.

There are several reasons why the House performs its critical functions so poorly, but partisan politics in the House is not one of them. Partisanship is to robust democratic politics what competition is to an open economic marketplace. Partisanship flows from the fundamental democratic right to have one’s own political views, to organize politically with others of similar views, and, most important, to stand in opposition to others, whether these others are in power or not, and in the majority or not. This is why the opposition to the government in the British parliamentary system is called the “Loyal Opposition.” In opposing the government, it is not committing sedition, treason, or subversion against the state. On the contrary, it is performing a crucial democratic function. The opposition is recognized as legitimate in its criticism of the government.

In memoriam

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 15 Comments

Peter Aucoin, the celebrated political science professor and scholar, passed away yesterday at the age of 67.

His last book—Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government—was released this Spring. (One of his co-authors, Mark Jarvis, penned a guest post for us a few months ago that outlined some of that book’s ideas for parliamentary reform.)

A few of Peter’s essays, published in the Canadian Parliamentary Review, are collected here. A longer version of his piece on government accountability can be found here.

Don't get cocky

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 15 Comments

Mark Jarvis manages to take issue with both sides of the Brigette DePape debate.

… the point here is simply that of all the reactions that DePape’s actions have generated, it is unfortunate that greater reflection about what is needed to strengthen Canadian democracy and how best to address these needs have given way to overconfidence in the status quo.

You might remember Mark from previous posts like Three-part reform. The book he cowrote with Peter Aucoin and Lori Turnbull—Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government—is now on sale. You can read the first chapter here.