Politics in 2018

[Furniture]

I like the idea of a representation by population (FPTP) in the HoC for all 338* ridings, however, legislators are not able to be very independent
and actually represent their constituents in our system.

Changing how we elect our MPs won't make them any more or less tightly controlled by their party masters. It's the nature of the party beast that we will see our MPs forced to follow party policy or be forced out of the party.

My concern with changing from FPTP is that the more complications we add to the system the more people are likely to be confused by it and not trust the results. People that don't trust their electoral system don't trust their governments, and  that results in foolishness like #notmypresident.

 

[larry Strong]

Changing how we elect our MPs won't make them any more or less tightly controlled by their party masters. It's the nature of the party beast that we will see our MPs forced to follow party policy or be forced out of the party.

My concern with changing from FPTP is that the more complications we add to the system the more people are likely to be confused by it and not trust the results. People that don't trust their electoral system don't trust their governments, and  that results in foolishness like #notmypresident.

Or we end up like Germany........months after the election and still no government........


Cheers
Larry

 

[Kirkhill]

Or we end up like Germany........months after the election and still no government........


Cheers
Larry

Or Belgium (589 days with no elected government: What happened in Belgium) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/01/589-days-with-no-elected-government-what-happened-in-belgium/?utm_term=.f215a935f247

Or Italy (Why is it so hard to form a government in Italy?) https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-8

Or Ireland (Ireland still without government after third failure to pick taoiseach) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/ireland-government-taoiseach-kenny-martin

Governments are ephemeral but the bureaucrats go on forever.

Another problem the EU has with the UK - They have a bureaucrat (Barnier) negotiating with politicians (Davis & May).  Bureaucrats expect clarity.  Politicians thrive on obscurity.

 

[dapaterson]

It's interesting that all the discussions seem to focus on the House of Commons; with a bicameral legislature, is there room to leverage the existence of a second house to provide a different form of representation?

(Yes, that's the sound of me rolling "Senate Reform" into "Electoral Reform").

 

[ModlrMike]

I think it's because the provinces feel the Senate is their purview. We saw how well the invitation for provinces to hold senate elections went.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

And the Supreme Court ruled that any change to the senate requires a constitutional amendment. At that point, everything goes backing the table for negotiation...

 

[Altair]

It's interesting that all the discussions seem to focus on the House of Commons; with a bicameral legislature, is there room to leverage the existence of a second house to provide a different form of representation?

(Yes, that's the sound of me rolling "Senate Reform" into "Electoral Reform").

anyone willing to reopen the constitution to do this? Anyone?

 

[MilEME09]

anyone willing to reopen the constitution to do this? Anyone?

Doing that would take strong political leadership, courage, and a bit of luck, haven't seen that in politics in my life time. Especially after watching the ethics committee meeting today, blows my mind to think that the liberals think that question period is good enough for the PM to answer other parliamentarians over his 4 breaches of the conflict of interest act. Question period is a joke, no one gives answer, no wonder faith in our system is low.

 

[Journeyman]

....blows my mind to think that the liberals think that question period is good enough for the PM to answer other parliamentarians ....

Well, according to CBC, PMJT is going on a "listening tour" to hear Canadians' views.... but he only wants to talk about economics (which, to be fair, Canada is doing OK notwithstanding the Timmies/wage crisis).  In other words he wants to hear Canadians say nice things, to try and get his narrative back on track.

 

[Altair]

Doing that would take strong political leadership, courage, and a bit of luck, haven't seen that in politics in my life time. Especially after watching the ethics committee meeting today, blows my mind to think that the liberals think that question period is good enough for the PM to answer other parliamentarians over his 4 breaches of the conflict of interest act. Question period is a joke, no one gives answer, no wonder faith in our system is low.

That was my main gripe against the Harper conservatives as well, where nobody would answer questions in question period, and things have not improved in that regard.

The fact is, question period remains political theater to score partisan points and not about the opposition holding the government to account and the government being forthright and honest about what it is doing.

As for the constitution, nobody is touching that again, it's a lose lose for everyone.

 

[larry Strong]

Or Belgium (589 days with no elected government: What happened in Belgium) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/01/589-days-with-no-elected-government-what-happened-in-belgium/?utm_term=.f215a935f247

Or Italy (Why is it so hard to form a government in Italy?) https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-8

Or Ireland (Ireland still without government after third failure to pick taoiseach) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/ireland-government-taoiseach-kenny-martin

Governments are ephemeral but the bureaucrats go on forever.

Another problem the EU has with the UK - They have a bureaucrat (Barnier) negotiating with politicians (Davis & May).  Bureaucrats expect clarity.  Politicians thrive on obscurity.

Thanks for that, was not aware of a couple of those stats.....IIRC Italy has been to the polls on average every 18 months since 1946.....seeings how the different regions of this country seem to get along so well together, I'm sure we would not see that if we went beyond FPTP

Yeah, bureaucrats can keep they day to day going, however how does any new legislation get past when there is no government.......


Cheers
Larry

 

[Kirkhill]

Some could argue that the introduction of cameras into the House has merely enhanced the theater and reduced the utility - exactly as the opponents of televising the House predicted.

 

[Altair]

Some could argue that the introduction of cameras into the House has merely enhanced the theater and reduced the utility - exactly as the opponents of televising the House predicted.

yeah, i would take them out.

Who sits around and watches question period anyways? That and every politician is looking for the best 10 second clip to make the evening news

 

[dapaterson]

yeah, i would take them out.

Who sits around and watches question period anyways? That and every politician is looking for the best 10 second clip to make the evening news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMOHiQtuSuo

 

[PuckChaser]

The Speaker needs either more power or better rules to enforce proper questions that aren't thinly veiled insults and answers that actually answer the question instead of sounding like a campaign leaflet/blame the last government.

 

[ballz]

Changing how we elect our MPs won't make them any more or less tightly controlled by their party masters. It's the nature of the party beast that we will see our MPs forced to follow party policy or be forced out of the party.

Our electoral system greatly affects whether party discipline is strong or not? Proportional representation has the least amount of individual accountability... the system the US has / the rules in place really makes party discipline quite ineffective.

If you mean whether or not it's a ranked ballot, then sure, in isolation, that won't affect party discipline, but there are a whole bunch of other things between rules / procedures within parliament and the electoral system that can.

The Speaker needs either more power or better rules to enforce proper questions that aren't thinly veiled insults and answers that actually answer the question instead of sounding like a campaign leaflet/blame the last government.

Agreed... I appreciate the UK tradition in which the speaker quits his party for the duration of his appointment... even if it is just a symbolic gesture.

The speaker asked someone to leave for heckling several weeks ago, it was the first time that's happened in 15 years... I'm not sure what other real sanctions the Speaker has at his disposal. It's also a dangerous game to give him too much control because he is, at the end of the day, a partisan politician.

 

[Furniture]

Our electoral system greatly affects whether party discipline is strong or not? Proportional representation has the least amount of individual accountability... the system the US has / the rules in place really makes party discipline quite ineffective.

If you mean whether or not it's a ranked ballot, then sure, in isolation, that won't affect party discipline, but there are a whole bunch of other things between rules / procedures within parliament and the electoral system that can.

I think we are arguing the same point.

My point is that in Canada the political parties control how their people vote in the commons. As it stands now they should always represent the best interests and views of their constituents, but often times have to vote along party lines or be kicked out of the party whether their constituents agree with the party or not. We pretend we elect individuals, but in reality elect parties.

 

[Underway]

I think we are arguing the same point.

My point is that in Canada the political parties control how their people vote in the commons. As it stands now they should always represent the best interests and views of their constituents, but often times have to vote along party lines or be kicked out of the party whether their constituents agree with the party or not. We pretend we elect individuals, but in reality elect parties.

The only way to do that is to separate the party leadership from the MP's.  If the Party Leader didn't have control over who was a member then it might be harder to enforce voting a certain way.  That would be dangerous in Canada IMHO.  With no solidified national culture and large amounts of regional intrests it would be difficult to create any form of consensus.

In the US system you only have to declare yourself a member of a party to be one.  There is no formalized county spanning organization that creates, tracks or issues memberships.  The result is that American political parties have weak central organizations and thus a consensus based ideology.  You can change parties just by stating this out loud.  Most Canadians (and Americans it seems) forget this.  The US could literally be a single party state if all the Democrats in the Senate and Congress suddenly declared themselves Republicans tomorrow.

There is one more thing I'd like to add here that people seem to be missing regarding our voting system.  Canadians DO NOT elect a government.  We elect a parlament to represent us who then choose the government.  Tradition is for the largest party to form the government but if parlament wanted they could have any combination of parliamentarians form the government.  Hence coalitions and minority governments.  It's important to remember this when discussing changes to voting.

 

[dimsum]

The only way to do that is to separate the party leadership from the MP's.  If the Party Leader didn't have control over who was a member then it might be harder to enforce voting a certain way.  That would be dangerous in Canada IMHO.  With no solidified national culture and large amounts of regional intrests it would be difficult to create any form of consensus.

In the US system you only have to declare yourself a member of a party to be one.  There is no formalized county spanning organization that creates, tracks or issues memberships.  The result is that American political parties have weak central organizations and thus a consensus based ideology.  You can change parties just by stating this out loud.  Most Canadians (and Americans it seems) forget this.  The US could literally be a single party state if all the Democrats in the Senate and Congress suddenly declared themselves Republicans tomorrow.

There is one more thing I'd like to add here that people seem to be missing regarding our voting system.  Canadians DO NOT elect a government.  We elect a parlament to represent us who then choose the government.  Tradition is for the largest party to form the government but if parlament wanted they could have any combination of parliamentarians form the government.  Hence coalitions and minority governments.  It's important to remember this when discussing changes to voting.

:goodpost:

I might end up sharing that on a subreddit or three.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I don't exactly agree with Underway here.

First thing, in the US, the party's are electoral machines primarily, and political philosophy straight-jackets a far second. Their purpose is to get you on the bulletin and then, raise funds for the campaign to get you elected. That's why  the party don't have a platform applicable to all "per se".

In Canada, we let the party's bureaucrats take over the process of naming the candidates, and we let the party leaders take over the parties from the base (as counter intuitively as it may seem) when we adopted the American practice of leadership conventions that took away from the elected MP the power to appoint or remove the party leader.

In a true British parliamentarian system, it is not the leader of the party with the most seat (though it usually ends up being the one) who becomes PM, it is the person - any person - asked to put a government together by the Monarch and who happens to be able to obtain, and retain, the support of the majority of elected MPs. That is why the caucus of a given party used to be the one appointing their party leader, a situation where it is for the leader to obtain the support of his/her caucus and maintain it at all time. In such system, the leader needs to get that support from the real elected representatives: the MPs.

By having the appointment of leaders, and their removal, moved to the members of the party at large, either by conventions or vote at large in the party, it reverses the whole system and now, it is the future MP's who now owe their standing to the leader who is imposed on them, with the leader holding power over their heads instead of the other way around.

Our current system may give the illusion of democracy since the "PM" is "elected" by  larger number of people (the party faithfuls) than just his caucus, but in practice, it does the reverse and basically puts in place a temporary dictatorship of four to five years by someone (the PM) that, in the end, few people had a hand in selecting. At least, even if the number was smaller when the leaders were selected by their caucus, the MP's made their choice as an expression of the will of their (the MP's) electorate - and in the end actually represented a much larger portion of the population.