Occupy democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 28, 2011 at 8:52 AM - 0 Comments

Jeff Jedras questions the suggestion that Occupy protesters would simply be better off voting.

Yes, they should get involved, but we should also reform our political system because, the fact is, it is viewed as irrelevant and ineffective by many Canadians, and not just the young folk. If we want greater engagement by citizens of all ages, we need to start doing something differently.

Off the top of my head, I’d suggest loosening the oppressive yoke of party discipline, empowering individual MPs to have personalities and agendas and represent their constituents and causes, and making the policy development process in political parties actually connected to their election platform instead of an exercise in pointless tedium. For starters.

Difference of opinion alert

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

A few weeks ago, the official opposition suggested a difference of opinion on the government side perhaps indicated that the Prime Minister had “lost control of his caucus.”

Yesterday, with a difference of opinion on the opposition side, the government sent up Rob Merrifield to declare the NDP was consequently unfit to govern.

Mr. Speaker, our government is focused on what really matters to Canadians; that is, creating jobs, creating economic growth. Instead of working with us, the NDP caucus members have become so disunited that they are contradicting each other on important issues that are important to Canada, particularly, western Canada.

Yesterday, the NDP leader tried to argue, wrongly, that Parliament could not amend legislation that would give farmers marketing freedom. One of her own colleagues, the member Winnipeg Centre, said that he actually did not buy her argument. Now, I seldom agree with him, but on this one I do. In fact, he recognized that our legislation can give farmers the freedom that they are asking for. Unfortunately, his leader does not agree with him.

This contradictory position from the NDP is just yet another worrying example of how weak and disunited the NDP is and that it is nowhere even close to being fit to govern.

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 11 Comments

David Berlin proposes a new kind of parliamentary government.

Provincial and federal systems are more complex. But consider a no-party system in which the public votes directly for MPs and provincial members, and then the members themselves elect the cabinet ministers, who would then elect the prime minister or premier in the same way. Each would-be minister would specify proposals and what portion of a projected four-year budget (estimated by the national bank) it would take to accomplish them. Each MP’s or provincial member’s ballot would have to name a set of candidates whose estimates added up to no more than 100 per cent of that budget.

Berlin’s primary complaint is the party system itself. But the problem isn’t political parties, so much as its the power those parties have to control individual MPs. And while the proposal here might make things somehow better—though I suspect parties would still take shape—it’s also difficult to imagine how so drastic a change would ever come to pass.

A smaller—and thus more plausible—reform might be pursued first. From my February piece about the House of Commons. Continue…

‘The reality of mass politics makes parties absolutely necessary’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 14 Comments

Andrew Potter defends the existence of political parties.

Nenshi also pointedly refused to affiliate himself with any particular party. He re-emphasized that line while giving a speech in Toronto last week, saying in the Q&A after the talk that the absence of parties is the one thing he likes best about city politics. Parties, he said, are of interest to academics, to the media, and to politicians themselves, but to the average citizen they are useless.

Like almost all popularly held views, the only problem with this is that it’s wrong, and based on a serious misunderstanding of what parties are for. Most people think that parties are supposed to advance a specific ideology, like left-wing egalitarianism or social conservatism. Some parties do this, but that is mostly just a side-effect of their primary role, which is to translate popular support into political power. They do this by delivering a cohesive and disciplined block of support sufficient to sustain a government for an extended period of time.

See previously: In defence of partisanship

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.

The centre in crisis

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 29, 2011 at 5:13 PM - 47 Comments

Bob Rae draws lessons from the U.S. debt crisis.

The deep partisanship that has marked the crisis in the United States Congress has some lessons for Canadians.  Polarisation is not the “new normal,” as New Democrats and Conservatives are preaching.  It corrodes the body politic and takes us away from the simple truth that most people want a moderate, intelligent politics that’s based on facts, evidence, good values and compromise … we need to understand that most goals in politics, as they are in hockey or soccer, are scored from the centre.  That’s where the action is, and that’s where most Canadians are. But not the dead centre where it’s safety first and always ‘on the one hand and the other hand,’ but rather an action-filled, resilient, and lively centre that is not afraid of ideas, debate, and looking at issues afresh.  And that’s where the Liberal Party needs to be as well.

Ideological purity and governance

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 7 Comments

In light of the U.S. debt crisis, Fareed Zakaria compares the American system to parliamentary governance.

Some political scientists long hoped that American parties would become more ideologically pure and coherent, like European parties. They seem to have gotten their wish – and the result is abysmal.

Here’s why: America does not have a parliamentary system like Europe’s, in which one party takes control of all levers of political power – executive and legislative – enacts its agenda and then goes back to the voters. Power in the United States is shared by a set of institutions with overlapping authorities – Congress and the presidency. People have to cooperate for the system to work.

See previously: Debt and responsibility

Different system, same problems

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 12 Comments

This lament for their current situation and call for congressional reform in the United States, written by former congressman Mickey Edwards, reads a lot like many of the laments for our current situation and calls for parliamentary reform here.

If we really want change—change that will yield a Congress that is more representative and more functional, change that can be replicated in state and local governments—we need to rethink the party-driven structures we have so casually accepted for decades. This change would produce another important effect: it would strengthen Congress’s ability to discharge its constitutional role … In a democracy that is open to intelligent and civil debate about competing ideas rather than programmed for automatic opposition to another party’s proposals, we might yet find ourselves able to manage the task of self-government. Our current political dysfunction is not inevitable; it results from deliberate decisions that have backfired and left us mired in the trenches of hyper-partisan warfare. Political parties will not disappear; as a free people, we will continue to honor freedom of association. The goal is not to destroy parties but to transcend them; to welcome their contributions but end their dominance; and to take back from these private clubs control of our own elections and our own Congress.

The post-party era

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 21, 2011 at 11:08 AM - 25 Comments

Donald Savoie laments for the decline of the political party.

The problem is that the economic and political interests of the political, intellectual and economic elites are heard at the expense of the broader community. The power and influence of political parties and even formal policymaking processes have given way to powerful individuals and actor-centred institutionalism. This, in turn, has made it virtually impossible for many elected representatives, let alone ordinary citizens, to play any meaningful role in shaping public policies or even holding government to account. We ought not to be surprised at voter apathy and the growing cynicism about government in society.

The precise nature of the problem

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 11, 2011 at 3:03 PM - 7 Comments

Glen Pearson notes the misdirection inherent in fretting about decorum.

I’m all for more decorum – been fighting for it for four years – but it’s useless if the Parliament of Canada can’t discover compromise and move ahead progressively with legislation. My friend had only taken a placebo and was imagining the rest. The true test of professional political behaviour is whether representatives can find accommodations on the vital issues of the country. That is not happening in Ottawa.

Tribal politics

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 4, 2011 at 1:48 PM - 48 Comments

Shankar Vedantam argues that partisanship is the new racism.

When partisanship is seen as a form of social identity—I’m a Democrat because people like me are Democrats, or I’m a Republican because people like me are Republicans—we can understand why so many blue-collar Kansans are Republicans and why so many Silicon Valley billionaires are Democrats, even though each group’s rational interests might be better served by the other party. Partisanship as social identity helps explain why, if you’re a black man in America, it’s really, really difficult to be a Republican. Same goes if you are a white, male, evangelical Christian in rural Texas who supports Barack Obama. Social identities are not deterministic—there will always be some black Republicans and some born-again Christians who are liberals—but most of us stick with our social tribes. Any liberal who supported George W. Bush’s adventure in Iraq would have been ostracized by his friends. A conservative who feels Barack Obama is a cool president will be made to feel like a traitor at church.

Things we worried about in the 1960s

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 3, 2011 at 4:38 PM - 15 Comments

A bit late to the Ngram party, but here are the English references to “partisanship” between 1800 and 2008.

Necessary partisanship (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 14 Comments

Matthew Yglesias makes the case for labels.

Normally, how much you’re willing to pay for a good or service depends on the quality of the good or service in question. But there’s no way to sample the quality of a can of soda without buying it first. So how am I to know whether or not I want to buy that can of Diet Coke? Well it’s simple. I may not have had that can of Diet Coke before, but I have had many other cans of Diet Coke. And I can infer that the Coca-Cola corporation, having invested a great deal of time and money in building the Diet Coke band is going to make a good-faith effort to turn out a consistent product … The rise of recognizable and coherent parties creates some challenges for American political institutions, but the correct response is to tweak the institutions not to spend time wishing for label-free politics.

Necessary partisanship

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 21 Comments

Christopher Beam picks apart the No Labels movement. His argument that it’s the incentives that have to change could be copy-and-pasted to the present situation in Ottawa.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of No Labels is to show why labels exist in the first place. They’re so busy talking about what they’re not—not Republican, not Independent, not conservative, not liberal—you never get a handle on what they are. Labels are a useful shortcut for voters who want to know what a group is all about. The lack of a positive mission beyond bipartisanship and civility (which both Republicans and Democrats also call for) makes it hard to know what they really want.

Will the prorogation of Parliament set off a populist revolt?

By John Geddes - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM - 96 Comments

Of all the possible issues to trip him up—the deficit, stubbornly high unemployment, Afghan detainees—who would have predicted that a four-syllable term for a parliamentary procedure would send Stephen Harper’s poll numbers tumbling? Yet prorogation, the antique-sounding word for suspending Parliament, has done it. Harper’s Dec. 30 decision to send MPs on an unscheduled break until March 3 galvanized dismay over both his leadership style and the state of a democracy in which the Prime Minister feels free to wield such unchecked power. “It’s solidifying a very deep sense that there’s something wrong with the way we govern ourselves,” says Rick Anderson, a long-time advocate for democratic reform who, like Harper, worked for Preston Manning back when Manning’s Reform party embodied a grassroots desire for politics less dominated by prime ministerial power.

Harper, though, never really swam in that populist Reform current. Manning wanted to change the way Ottawa worked in order to give more clout to ordinary MPs, and in turn make them more responsive to voters; Harper was mostly interested in economic policy and conservative ideology. Later, after uniting the right to create a winning new Conservative brand, he proved himself an uncommonly disciplined top-down organizer, first of his party and then of his government. Harper’s underdeveloped populist instincts never seemed a serious liability—until lately. He clearly underestimated the backlash against proroguing for the second time in about a year. In late 2008, he suspended Parliament to avoid being defeated in the House by an opposition coalition. Last month, he resorted to it again, this time, his critics say, to cool the Afghan detainee controversy until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Continue…

Baldly going where no senator has

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:34 PM - 49 Comments

Is it too soon to nominate the 2010 Maclean’s Parliamentarian of the Year? Because I vote for Senator Mike Duffy. Other politicians may achieve the improbable—passing a private member’s bill, for instance, or shutting up for two consecutive seconds (keep trying, John Baird)—but the former TV show host has done the impossible: he has made the people of Canada actually pay attention to a senator.

For decades now, being appointed to the upper chamber has been like joining a club—not a cool club like the Friars Club or even a useful club like the Hair Club for Men, but a club whose proceedings go entirely unnoticed by society at large. Think of it as Fight Club but with naps instead of fist fights. Continue…

Disturbance in the House

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM - 8 Comments

In the autumn issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review, Evan Sotiropoulos applies a little qualitative and quantitative analysis to the spectacle that now is the 15 minutes before Question Period reserved for statements by members.

My extensive review of parliamentary transcripts showed that unparliamentary or partisan discourse is on the rise during Members’ Statements in the House of Commons. Policy differences and their expression in a democratic society should not be used as cover for mean spirited attacks. All Members, regardless of party affiliation, should strive to arrest this decline in political discourse and help to cultivate a political environment conducive to cooperation.

The Speaker has the power required to sanction those parliamentarians who violate Standing Order 31. Throughout the 38th and 39th Parliaments, however, many examples can be found of violations of the spirit of the rule. It is no wonder then that when Speaker Milliken issued his warning to House Leaders, most Members simply ignored his advice and continued to follow the pattern set over the past five years.

Elsewhere in the CPR, an expansive attempt to rethink Question Period. More on that once I’ve read it all.

New politics

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 1:51 PM - 10 Comments

Bit late to this, but here is John Manley reflecting on his time in office, the current state of play and the way forward.

Many of the changes in political culture were healthy. We ceased to spend what we could not afford. We no longer assumed that growth was inevitable and learned that we had to have the right mix of public policy and investment if we wanted a strong economy. We demanded results and high ethical conduct from our public officials.

All of this is good. But what I see as the erosion of public space — the declining importance we attach to collective action, and the growing distrust of the state — are dangerous if left unchecked. If the past year and a half of turmoil in the financial markets has taught us anything at all, surely lesson number one is that public policy matters.

On discourse

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 9, 2009 at 4:02 PM - 151 Comments

Bit late to this, but here is Andrew Steele considering the state of modern political discourse.

The left and right appear not just deadlocked intellectually but actively ignorant of what motivates their opponents. In a world where the Internet, talk radio and micromarketing allow us to restrict our exposure to those with whom we share opinions, it is increasingly incumbent upon us to seek out other points of view and challenge our own assumptions.

Or, we can just resort to calling our political competitors crazy.

By the numbers (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 5, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 19 Comments

Stephen Harper, Friday. “We just had an election. What we’re looking for from Ignatieff and the other parties is, obviously, an opportunity to work together to advance the interest of the country. We do think that, rather than this kind of partisanship, people should be seeking ways to work together to advance our shared interests at this time of recession.”

Since returning in January, the House has been in session for a total of 49 normal business days.

On each of those 49 days, the schedule, as dictated by Standing Order 31 of Parliament, has dictated that 15 minutes before Question Period be reserved for “statements by members”—time typically used by MPs to publicly celebrate local bake sales, pass on congratulations to noteworthy constituents or champion personal causes.

Through yesterday, Conservative members have used 81 of these statements since the House returned to cast aspersion or accusation on the Liberal opposition or its leader.

Loyalty

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 13, 2009 at 12:41 PM - 2 Comments

James Bow considers partisanship, politics, democracy, civil discourse and blogging.

On partisanship

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 11:52 AM - 3 Comments

Reginald Stackhouse: The purpose of the opposition is to prevent the government and its supporters from using their near-absolute power to govern that way. It cannot be done by sweetness and light. It demands that the opposition have adequate access to information and adequate opportunity to articulate its critical analysis of government proposals – especially when the government doesn’t want the opposition parties to be in the know. That means politics has to be war. It means we, the public, are served best when our parliamentary representatives keep each other honest, making all aware they are living on a firing line where battle is done every day.

Janice Kennedy: Instead of counter-arguments, we get monosyllabic slurs. Instead of witty repartee, catcalls. Instead of inspired ideas coherently expressed, grunts from mouth-breathing goons. The tone is raucous, the atmosphere chaotic. And the daily brass ring goes not to the most verbally adept, but to the one with the most capacious set of lungs. The corollary is obvious. When all you can hear is shouting — that moronic braying that goes on and on the whole time some member is trying to express something — you can be sure there’s precious little listening going on. And zero dialogue.

Rex Murphy: In this war – for war it is – all the petty arts of innuendo, exaggeration and allegation, refined to the highest degree by the stagecraft of scrums and Question Period, are called into play. Partisanship magnifies disagreement into zealotry. Personal rivalries metastasize into raging hatreds. Governments play an identical game in reverse. Slay the opposition from the moment it arrives in Parliament. Mock the leader, traduce the idea, demonize the eccentric. People outside politics cannot fully appreciate how total this game is, how swiftly partisanship twists otherwise benign and decent human beings into angry spouts of bluster and recrimination. Politics shrinks the human soul.

Grey skies are gonna get even darker. Put on an angry scowl!

By selley - Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 2:17 PM - 4 Comments

Everybody hold hands
Fear not, Canada. As soon as we’re back in the black, our politicians will go back to hating each other.

“Glittering through [the] bleakness” of recession, deficit and abandoned election promises, the Toronto Star’s James Travers also espies Stephen Harper’s “commitment to suspend the politics of division in favour of partnership.” It’s nothing less than a “seismic shift,” he enthuses, as evidenced most compellingly by his recent meeting with the premiers. And with the opposition parties in no position to trigger another election, Travers expects a new, congenial tranquility to descend over Ottawa. We’ll all be living in abject penury, of course, but you can’t have everything.

The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin believes yesterday’s Throne Speech arrived safely at the midway point between “timidity” and “rash action.” And, like Travers, he detects unusually low activity in the Prime Minister’s Van Loan lobe, the part of the brain that regulates hyper-partisan blather. “The economic crisis has focused his mind,” he suggests; “he is a more mature leader. … He understands the country better.” And as such, Martin believes he now “realizes the necessary response [to the crisis] is consensus-building at home and abroad.” However, as if sensing Canada’s collective skepticism, Martin hastens to add “it’s by no means certain” that this new conciliatory tone will take hold throughout Ottawa.

Continue…