Obstruction of justice legislation
I agree 100 % with CTF president John Williams, in that:
"Although the opposition is blocking these sensible reforms, the government should not yield --it is one thing for the opposition to tie a bill up in Parliament and an altogether different ball game to explain in an election why senators ought to remain appointed or that aboriginals are not entitled to the same legal protections other Canadians take for granted. The Conservatives are well positioned here, but it will be a protracted campaign.Aside from senate obstruction, with the NDP continuing to block vote (three line whip) in a minority parliament, it will be next to impossible to deliver on such things as broad-based tax relief, scrapping ACOA and the long gun registry, serious senate reform as well as expand human rights laws to native Canadians. It's funny, because I can remember NDP House leader Libby Davies, on a number of ocassions, state that her party "will continue to work for average Canadians in the House of Commons to get things done." Hmmm, I wonder just who her party considers an average Canadian?
7 Comments:
As long as politicians of all colours
and callings continue to believe that politics is all about the confrontation (some well rounded local legislature personalities even blogged about the "fight") and not about service before self (or party)- then the concept of good order and government is a dream.
You're right kit. Since televisions were introduced in the HoC, it really has become all about QP drama (or sound bites), confrontation and one liners.
Hardly anobody, even the press, pay attention to the debate that goes on outside of Question Period.
And that is unfortunate.
It diminishes us all. No one then sees the vast amounts of work - and most of it pleasantly non-partisan, that occurs outside QP, in committee and such.
This is a big country and it it takes a fair bit of work to govern it.
The media, and its appetite to have a story that is no longer than it take a pop-tart to toast, is culpable.
The tone is seldom civil in the chamber, with the only barbs aimed at ministers who show weakness.
The 'average canadian' is not John Williamson, not even close. There's a reason all those things are being done, and its called 'votes'. IF those policies resonated with voters then they would have been enacted.
It's interesting that John throws in the 'equal rights for natives' line, because he knows the vast majority of canadians don't agree with the other policies.
Only 38% of people agreed with Harpers principles, and like in the states, I can guarantee you that lots hoped he wouldn't enact his legislation. Remember, the tories fought most of the last two elections on liberal scandals, NOT on tory policies (which changed with the wind).
For Senate Reform, that is far more complex than it seems. I was all for elected Senates until I really did some research and until the Republicans won both houses in the states and we saw what happened.
The ONLY way I'd support elected Senators right now is if Proportional Representation is the GUARANTEED way of electing them. The FPTP method would only make things worse. They are 'elected', sort of. They are 'nominated' by the elected party, which is the same way virtually every political position outside of 308 jobs.
So, when do we get to vote for the Bank of Canada? When do we get to vote for Cabinet Ministers? The problem right now is that virtually all decisions have been framed by media, which means most people never read outside the bylines.
But back to the CTF, we can note that canadians support the government spending MORE, not less. Canadians support MORE services for mothers, as evidenced by the 60% who rejected the tory deal.
There is always the argument that 'but people always vote for lower taxes'. That's not true, but the media wants you to think it is. Those things that the tories are 'given credit' for by the CTF are hugely unpopular. We can note that virtually identical 'law and order' legislation was drafted by liberals (and opposed by the tories-how come nobody was calling them 'soft on crime').
The difference there is that like the republicans, the tories simply refuse to compromise, hoping instead to pick up some votes that may come if they scream and yell that the other parties are being soft on crime and holding them up.
So take for example the child pornography law that the liberals were looking at. It was very far reaching, and was extremely 'tough on crime', in fact so much so that it flew in the face of everything we know about the issue. Yet the tories refused to support it for one simple reason, and that was the 'artistic license' argument. The tories wanted it 'swept under the rug', they wanted to try to ensure that even of whisper of the reality couldn't get out. Under their version if you were sexually molested as a child you couldn't even write a book about what happened, which is obviously a serious infliction on a person's freedom of speech.
It's laugh out loud hilarious to think that any of the current politics has anything to do with 'natives getting rights we take for granted'. Duh, natives get ALL tha rights we do, the govenrment just doesn't enforce the laugh and doesn't join in the treaties that it was ordered to. In case you didn't know, THIS government, Harpers government, just voted at the UN against basic Discrimation Rights against Aboriginals.
Gee, does that sound like a guy really worried about native rights? This guy is the WORST thing to happen to native rights in decades, even hamstringing the Kelowna Accord.
I also loved the line about how canadians 'aren't interested in regulatory legislation'. Well, thats SORT OF true, because of course the majority of canadians are so poor they don't own stock.
However, everybody's heard of Enron, and everybody knows what happens in unregulated markets. Of course the difference is that media never talks about, oh, say the fact that corporate crime costs the canadian economy about TEN times what all the robberies and thefts cost in the average year.
Seldom discussed is the fact that the Vancouver and Alberta stock exchanges are quite well known to be among the most crooked enterprises in the world. A mining regulator in the states called the Vancouver Stock Exchange the most criminal enterprise he'd ever seen, and this was a guy who is involved in mining in the third world.
Ask all those people who got burned on Bre-X about that, a well known case which got, well NO recomendations made for the mining sector although canadians lost millions.
Canadians care very much about corporate crime, the problem is, we're at the point where nobody believes EITHER party will do anything about it, and the NDP have no chance of winning (they at least TALK about it). So we can mention those uncertified lamps that were showing up in stores, and burning when people got them home. One woman made a career out of tracking down the owners, and marketplace did a followup, and its virtually impossible for 'the law' to do anything about illegal lamps being sold in stores.
Now, compare that to, say, smoking pot, which most canadians now couldn't care less about (and keep in mind that Harper has killed the decriminalization bill and word is has told RCMP to step up arrests, which they have). So on the one hand we have smoking some pot which most canadians don't care about, and we have a legally purchased lamp bought in a store that you can bring home and can very likely burn your house down and perhaps your family and pets and all your possessions. All because its never been safety inspected.
Suuuuure, canadians don't care about stuff like that.
kit: so true.
Mikel, you said: For Senate Reform, that is far more complex than it seems. I was all for elected Senates until I really did some research and until the Republicans won both houses in the states and we saw what happened.
Translation: I was all for senate reform until the guys that I didn't want in got in.
Please.
For a guy who claims to be all about democratic reform, you sure don't trust the voters to make the proper decisions. I think the word for that is "dictatorship". However, that doesn't surprise me since most of the atrocities of the world occured under socialist despots like Hitler, Mao, Castro and Joseph Stalin to name a few.
For the record, I'm sure there are just as many ppl on the other side of the [partisan] divide who see the mid=term elections as foul. But that's not the point. The point is that they have a chance to vote out the bums when they screw up. We don't.
And judging from the political environment over the past few years, there very well could be a few senators taking up space in the senate (and wasting our tax dollars) that would probably have been voted out.
Btw, if the senators were appointed in the US like they are here in Canada, there would be a lot more unaccountable Republicans in there because they have held power [recently] a lot longer than the Dems. So your above statement makes no sense.
Dude, you really have to look up 'socialist' if you think any of those guys were socialist. However, they don't hold the deck on atrocities, just ask any Iraqi or Nicaraguan.
And it has nothing to do with not trusting the voters, it has to do with not trusting the SYSTEM. In Canada, what it typically has meant is that when a new party gets into power it finds itself with a senate held by the opposition. Since we've got one of the lousiest electoral systems in the world, one that gives undeserved power to a party with a minority of votes, then any check on power is a GOOD thing.
Again, if we had proportional representation then that wouldn't be the case, and when we DO have PR then I'll re-evaluate. I absolutely have extreme trust in voters, unfortunately, voters wishes are not represented in our federal government much more than the US. We occasionally get lucky because with more parties we get minority governments.
So if Harper, like Chretien, got a majority with maybe 40% of the vote, then obviously we need all the checks on that we can get-thats also a feature of democracy, and one that outweighs the value put on a lousy electoral system.
So it took Chretien a couple of years to turn the Senate back into a liberal stronghold, which now has the same effect to control Harper. It's not as crucial since Harper is in a minority position, but when a party can gain total power with less than half the votes then you can't pretend that simply because its an election that its 'democracy'.
The same is true in the states. There its even worse, hell, the guy who won in 2000 did so by completely illegitimate means. And the corruption in US elections is a long unseemly one. Back in the 1800's they called it 'democratic' too, even though you could get killed or beaten for voting for candidate X. You can call that democracy if you want, but corruption cancels out all claims to democracy in my book, and an unrepresentative system of election is only marginally better than that.
So absolutely I support voters, and when voters actually start getting their way then I'd support a system that lets lets them. Until then I'd support a system that at least provides a check on the absolute power of the PMO. Control of dictators is also a feature of democracy.
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