Parliamentary Reform
The controversy around whether Canadian Forces sent prisoners of war to countries that torture only serves to highlight the systemic problems facing our national institutions.
I think it’s time to put Parliamentary Reform back on the Conservative agenda!
As Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells and others have pointed out very succinctly, there are some serious issues with the current system, including:
Inherent Conflicts in Selecting Cabinet Minister’s from the ranks of MPs
Does an MP work for their constituents, their party or their leader? Is it reasonable to expect a person to juggle good service to their constituents as an MP with good service as a Cabinet Minister? If you are the Minister responsible for something that gets delivered in your riding (cash, a project, or a contract), did you only do so because it was your riding? What about when it doesn’t get delivered to your riding? Should your constituents punish you?
Strict Party Discipline
MPs wanting to make their mark are held to strict party discipline to ever have a hope of getting into Cabinet. If they break rank too often, there is the lingering possibility the leader may not sign their nomination papers the next election.
It might be nice if more free votes were allowed, but niceness doesn’t address the systemic problems.
Concentration of Power in the PMO
With strict party discipline comes concentration of power in the PMO. The PMO is the strongest institution in any democratic state in the world (within its own borders). This is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous. Any Prime Minister should recognize that (a) they haven’t got all the answers, (b) the next Prime Minister might not be as great (honest, upstanding, ideologically correct) as they are, and (c) it is undemocratic. As such, this concentration of power is not ideal to the current PM (whomever they are). I’m sure if Chretien could see into the Conservative future, he would have thought twice about the increasing power of the PMO under his watch.
Powerless Committees
As last week revealed, committees are a joke. For crying out loud, committees should be more than who called who fat on Twitter.
Our Ridiculous Senate
Blame for the lack of progress made to date on Senate Reform rests squarely on the Liberal establishment in the Senate. It is my sincere hope that progress will be made once the Liberal majority there is finally eradicated. There is a plan to deal with it, and if all the participants put in place do their job, this should go well. If they do not follow through, they will only prove themselves more shameful than the Liberals.
The Bad Guys in the Mainstream Media
While the media is no doubt to blame for exacerbating the problem, they are not the cause. If an MP breaks ranks with their party, the media is usually the first to yell out insubordination! Yes, we choose representatives of parties, but we also choose individuals – individuals with different opinions and different ideas. It would be downright creepy if everyone in a party agreed on everything, failing the Robot Party of Canada, of course.
It is absolutely fair game for the media to call out an MP if their party promised X in an election campaign, and they voted against it. But if it wasn’t promised in an election campaign, that MP should be free to vote as they please, and it’s up to the electors in that MP’s riding, as to whether or not they approve. The issue itself may be newsworthy, but an MP’s position on it isn’t really comparable to World War III.
Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa
Next week I’m off to Ottawa for campaign training.
As acting campaign manager for a candidate (and a good friend of mine) who lost the last election by 68 votes, I’m going to be looking for an edge to help put him over the top.
Are you going too? Let me know.
Happy 4th Birthday Conservatism.ca!
On February 14th, 2005 I posted my first ever blog entry on Conservatism.ca, created hastily in preparation for the Montreal convention. Remember that? Belinda and her crazy ice cubes, anyone?
I redirected the conservatism.ca domain name to a page on Blogger and just let loose.
Blogging had been around for a bit in 2005, but was still something of a mystery to most – including the mainstream media. While the MSM wasn’t decimated by this new reality (as so many haphazardly predicted), technology and the blogosphere certainly have changed their game.
I remember blogging on the train from Montreal to Toronto (offline, of course) after the convention, and thinking about how crazy the whole concept was. But it was incredibly fun, and still is.
Needless to say, there’s been a few changes since those days. I’m still having fun though. And I very much appreciate that 250 or so people visit each day to read, peruse, hex or otherwise chastise my insane rants.
Thank you, and let’s hope the next 4 years are at least half as exciting as the last!
Senate Refooooooooorm
I am very frustrated by the events of recent days. I have been fighting for a Triple-E Senate for 15 years, and finally our party gets elected (twice) with a (lower house) mandate to reform the Senate. But stall tactics, opposition and general aggrevation of the process has led us to where we are now: NOWHERE.
The NDP, Bloc and some provinces want the Senate abolished. I’m really starting to think that’s what we’re going to have to do.
There are really three options: the status quo (this requires any old Liberal majority), abolish the Senate (the Conservatives team with the NDP and the provinces to do so sooner rather than later), or a Triple-E Senate (possibly, though not certainly, requiring convincing/replacing a bunch of provincial governments, waiting about 2 years to get a Conservative majority in the Senate by doing the very thing we despise: appointing them, and also achieving a majority of Conservatives in the House of Commons).
I can understand the argument for abolishing the Senate. And if you believe the Senate should be abolished, I can also understand why you wouldn’t want it reformed (it would gain legitimacy and abolishment might never be politically possible). But I still believe that “reformed” it could be a valuable institution.
But I am truly saddened by the events of the past few days. I don’t blame Stephen Harper – the same opposition that chastises him for appointing Senators when he said he wouldn’t is the same opposition that thwarted all his attempts to reform the institution and held a threat over his head that they would appoint their own Senators when they completed their coup d’etat – Elizabeth May was practically salivating at the trough – pushing the numbers so high in the Senate that the earliest possible date to reform it again would be April 22, 2016 when Liberal Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette is due to retire (assuming nobody dies, and EVERY SINGLE Senator appointed until then after the 18 Liberals was a Conservative – ya, right).
So, the short answer for the Senate Reform date if Harper hadn’t acted now: NEVER.
I think the Conservative Party should spend about 12 months trying to find some common ground to reform the Senate with the Liberals. The threat will be: help us reform it, or we will work with the NDP (and Bloc) to abolish it. This might just get the Liberal’s attention. Failing this, we follow through and work to abolish it.
As much as I’d like to see it reformed, abolishing it would be far better than the current system.
The upside down world I woke up in.
I was 30 meters away from that gondola in Whistler before we decided we’d take the new peak-2-peak gondola back to the top of Whistler Mountain – joking all the way that we were on a “new” gondola that could collapse at any moment. We saw the ambulances and fire trucks as we arrived at the bottom.
Then we spent 12 precarious hours driving back to Victoria in blizzard-like conditions the next day.
My son got a cold on the notorious BC Ferries “Children’s Play Area” (read: “Children’s Disease Sharing Area”), and now I can’t give him any cold medicine until he’s 6.
Whistler is fun in summer; avoid it in Winter!
But, then again, it’s snowing in Las Vegas. Bloody global warming!
The Tories are at 46% in the polls – still. Yet people like Ignatieff. I guess it’s a case of “we like him, but won’t vote for him.”
We’re going to (reluctantly) run a $30 billion deficit instead of a (scheduled) $3 billion surplus. We’re also (reluctantly) appointing Senators.
The warranty on my 2008 Jeep Patriot is probably useless (“Jeep” is made by Chrysler).
It’s Christmas in 6 days, and I haven’t started shopping yet.
At least Danny Chavez is still busily building his communist dictatorship in Newfoundland and Labrador – apparently the lack of property rights in our constitution does matter from time to time. Well, at least some things never change.
So, What’s up for Tomorrow …
Who knows what tomorrow will bring for the coalition. They say a week is a long time in politics. Apparently so is 12 hours.
Partisanship and the Coalition
If, as he has been accused, Stephen Harper was battling the coalition out of sheer partisanship, it would be the wrong political strategy.
Allowing the Liberals and NDP to go ahead and make a deal with separatists would be to their long-term detriment for whatever perceived short-term hold on power that might provide them. This would be a short-term problem, but in the long-term, this would be HUGE for Conservatives!
So why the negative reaction? Is he trying to “cling” to power for power’s sake?
First of all, without the support of at least one other party, he doesn’t really have power anyway, so the question is something of a farce.
No, the reason why Stephen Harper is fighting this coalition is because he cares about his country. Allowing this coalition to go forward will be a MASSIVE boost to separatist groups across the country – not just in Quebec. In the West, who elected 80% Conservative MPs, there will be a feeling of betrayal. In Quebec, people will be justified in voting for separatists (since, it seems, it is a path to power after all). It would prove that electing separatists works not only in opposition, but also in Government. There remains no more reason not to vote separatist – even for non-separatists, it just makes perfect sense to vote Bloc.
Furthermore, we are in the middle of an economic storm. Replacing the largest party in Government with a hodge-podge government made up of socialists, liberals and separatists is a simple recipe for instability. Today Mr. Harper extended the olive branch to the Liberals (who, frankly, have the most to lose if they move forward with this deal), and was told to forget it.
So all the poison of the economic update was taken out, the Liberals were invited to contribute to the Conservative economic plan, but still they are interested in bringing down the government for short-term power, long-term anger from Canadians, destabilizing national unity, and providing unstable government in the middle of the poorest economy since the Great Depression.
Never underestimate the power of arrogance.
All Your Fiscal Stimulus Belong to Me!
Dear Mr. Flaherty – Please send me $20 billion dollars. I have a lot of really good business ideas I would like to pursue with this money, and none of them involve building cars that nobody wants to buy.
Seriously, though, it seems we are about to embark on a “fiscal stimulus” here in Canada. This after scrimping and saving for decades to balance our budget and pay down our debt. Sigh.
As somebody who became a Conservative because of deficits that drove the country to the brink of bankruptcy, the prospect of having a “Conservative” government run a deficit irks me a wee bit. But lets face it, the economic problems that we’re experiencing are not the fault of the Conservative government, and some action is going to be necessary.
If these budget deficits are “temporary” and not a return to “structural, budgeted deficits”, I suppose I can bite my tongue. (I suggest we repay these in fiscal 2011-2012 by selling the CBC, the CMHC, Canada Post, Purolator and AECL. Hey, I can dream!)
But I ask – Instead of sending cash to backward automobile manufacturers with their crappy gas-guzzling cars, power-crazed union bosses, inept management, and unsustainable wages, why not send the money to me!?
All the talk about auto bailouts has other corporate welfare candidates salivating at the possibility of being “bailed out” now, too, since their underlying business sucked before (but suck especially bad now that the economy is in the tank), like the forestry industry, and the ever-teetering “wooden arrows for children” industry.
Let me guess – we are going to attempt to pitch this auto bailout as an “investment” in the “future”? Back the sugar truck up, because this medicine isn’t going down easily.
We might as well dig a hole in the tundra and drive a gold-filled armoured car into it. I suspect the “investment” effect would be the same in the short-term (although in the long term, somebody would dig the armoured car out of the hole, making the gold-filled tundra hole a far better “investment” for the “future”).
I have a small business (and not in forestry or auto manufacturing). Where the hell is my cash?
For that matter, my family is certainly willing and able to spend some money “for the sake of the economy”, if asked politely.
And maybe that’s what Canada should do … send a $600 cheque to every man, woman, child (*and other) in Canada ($20,000,000,000 / 33,390,000 = $598.98).
I can buy an awful lot of beer and popcorn with that kind of cash! Or I could use it towards a down-payment on a quality automobile – like a Nissan Altima or a Honda Accord.
Convention Countdown: 45 Hours
The week is finally here!
Derek Fildebrandt from Demablog has done up an outstanding convention voting guide. Thanks, Derek.
Look for our blue on white “68 Club” pins, and ask what they’re all about!
I would encourage all B.C. Delegates to vote for Lois Johnson for National Council – she is a hard-worker and dedicated leader who has hands-on experience and a thorough understanding of what it is going to take to win more ridings in B.C. She recently managed our campaign in Vancouver-South where we almost took out Ujjal Dosanjh (so, even if you can’t vote for her, make sure to shake her hand for doing such an awesome job)!
Despite not being an “official” convention blogger (whatever that means), I will be blogging throughout on stuff that I find interesting.
Have fun kids! See you there!
Are there any real “conservatives” in Newfoundland and Labrador?
All this Danny-bashing, while tremendously appropriate and overdue, strikes me as a wee bit fatalistic.
Anyhoo, I suspect ordinary Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have seen (or are about to see) the fruitlessness of following their Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Will.
So, what’s next?
Danny leads a party called The Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador. There is that “Conservative” word in there, but I wonder if there are any “conservatives” in this party? If so, why did they elect a liberal (or, it seems, a “Liberal”) as their leader?
If there are any conservatives, perhaps they should take steps to remove the liability. If there are not, then perhaps it is high time that somebody start a conservative party in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In British Columbia, we have a fringe “Conservative Party of British Columbia” and a center-right “Liberal Party of British Columbia”, the defacto “coalition of the non-NDPers”.
For Albertans that find the “Progressive Conservative Party” just a wee bit too “Progressive”, there is the “Wildrose Alliance”, seemingly an affordable luxury in true-blue Alberta.
And the provincial “conservative” brand in Saskatchewan remains scathed because of a long-ago – but all too fresh – scandal, so the center-right started the successful “Saskatchewan Party”.
Perhaps conservative Newfoundlanders and Labradorians should consider their options. Take (back?) the PC party? Start a new conservative party? The “Newfoundland and Labrador Party” – is NLP too close to NDP, or the old Natural Law Party?
In any case, seriously, something should be done.
The current leader is to “conservative” what “Hugo Chavez” is to “Bush-Loving GOP Republican”.
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