One of the paradoxes of Canada’s pantomime democracy — the meaninglessness of Parliament, the impotence of its members, the wildly unrepresentative process that puts them there — is the impossibility of fixing it.
The changes that are most needed, after all, require the consent of the people who stand to lose most from them. No parliamentary reform is possible without the consent of the prime minister. No party reform is possible without the consent of the party leaders. The same stifling control from the top that makes reform necessary also makes it unlikely.
And yet in theory MPs could take back the power they have lost at any time. They just choose not to. This is the other paradox of reform: the people who stand to benefit most from it show the least interest in it. This came up repeatedly during debate on Michael Chong’s ill-fated Reform Act, which aimed (before it was watered down) to redress the imbalance of power between leaders and caucus members by legislative means. What is the point, critics scoffed, of asking MPs to do by Act of Parliament what they are plainly unwilling to do within their own caucuses: defy their leaders?
This was not so insoluble a paradox, however, as the critics pretended. If members of caucus are subservient to the leader, it is in part because they are themselves the product of the same system; they are the beneficiaries of it, in their own way, just as much as he is. They depend on the leader’s favour for any chance of advancement in Parliament. They depend on the leader’s performance in the campaign for their election. And, as an extraordinary new study by the Samara Centre for Democracy (“Party Favours: How Federal Election Candidates are Chosen”) makes clear, they depend on the leader for their very nominations.
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“Added to election laws in 1972” Gee, I wonder who was pm in 1972? See a pattern here? Pierre waterhole commented, maybe it was in 72, that an mp a hundred yards from the houses of parliament was a nobody.
This whole situation makes want to puke. Its all a facade. Just like the set for a western film, building fronts with no guts. The rcmp, the military leadership, everything is hollow, like a rotten from the inside maple tree.
I have heard the mother of all recessions is at our doorstep. Everything will be in play, monitary systems, fiat currency the whole ball of wax. New currency, most likely digital, might be based in part on gold. In 1974 the process of selling off our gold reserves began , a waterhole event in canadian history.
America’s senate and house are basically an in your face kleptocracy. Our parliament, a joke. Hear, Hear for the cameras.
If you have ever wondered how we will loose our country, this is it