Oldgateboatdriver
Army.ca Veteran
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Yes, Rifleman. That is one of the ways political parties (by which I mean the permanent direction of the parties who are full time politicos who run the show) have usurped the powers of Parliament, and of their own party members for that matter.
It's not in the constitution, which does not mention political parties anywhere, that you find the power to endorse candidates for an election.
That power, which originally rested with the actual riding associations holding a local nomination, was first moved to the central party - but upon nomination by local riding associations. Then, in 2000, under the guise of the creation in the Electoral Act of "official" parties (before this vocab. was introduced to the Act, anyone could claim to be a political party and act as such) recognition, the central party took the various riding associations power away from them by using the power they enshrined in Art 406 (2) of the Act to declare to the Chief Electoral Officer, within ten days of issuance of the writs, the identity of the person (usually the Leader) who can endorse the prospective candidates of the "official" party.
When that happened, we took the last step in moving from political parties being loose associations of like minded (from a political philosophy point of view) candidates sharing some financing machine for their local electoral needs to a centralized small cadre of politicos running a centralized machine with the sole objective not of watching and controlling the government, but of becoming the government at the expense of Parliament - now to be composed of automatons doing the government's biding instead of keeping it in check. That, BTW, is also why the job of M.P., if you don't get selected to be a minister, is getting so little regards from Canadian at this point in time. There was a lot more respect for ordinary M.P.'s up to the 70's when they were doing their proper job. That is the reason why it is also held in higher esteem in the US, where they don't expect to become part of the Government (the Executive).
It could still be reversed in Canada, but it would need the concerted effort of the M.P.'s who are not member of the actual government - even if from the "governing" party.
My personal view: to paraphrase a near closing dictum from the movie The Hunt for Red October, "A little Rebellion from time to time is not necessarily a bad thing".
It's not in the constitution, which does not mention political parties anywhere, that you find the power to endorse candidates for an election.
That power, which originally rested with the actual riding associations holding a local nomination, was first moved to the central party - but upon nomination by local riding associations. Then, in 2000, under the guise of the creation in the Electoral Act of "official" parties (before this vocab. was introduced to the Act, anyone could claim to be a political party and act as such) recognition, the central party took the various riding associations power away from them by using the power they enshrined in Art 406 (2) of the Act to declare to the Chief Electoral Officer, within ten days of issuance of the writs, the identity of the person (usually the Leader) who can endorse the prospective candidates of the "official" party.
When that happened, we took the last step in moving from political parties being loose associations of like minded (from a political philosophy point of view) candidates sharing some financing machine for their local electoral needs to a centralized small cadre of politicos running a centralized machine with the sole objective not of watching and controlling the government, but of becoming the government at the expense of Parliament - now to be composed of automatons doing the government's biding instead of keeping it in check. That, BTW, is also why the job of M.P., if you don't get selected to be a minister, is getting so little regards from Canadian at this point in time. There was a lot more respect for ordinary M.P.'s up to the 70's when they were doing their proper job. That is the reason why it is also held in higher esteem in the US, where they don't expect to become part of the Government (the Executive).
It could still be reversed in Canada, but it would need the concerted effort of the M.P.'s who are not member of the actual government - even if from the "governing" party.
My personal view: to paraphrase a near closing dictum from the movie The Hunt for Red October, "A little Rebellion from time to time is not necessarily a bad thing".