It could have. My point was simply that since the constitution here allows for five-year terms, but elections are usually called every four, the previous prime minister could simply stay in a little while longer while a complete and careful count of all the votes was done. If there was a problem with the machinery – as with the pregnant and dimpled chads – or some other serious problem, those who supervise elections could call another one.
That encapsulates my problem with set election dates: not the idea of having elections once every four years, but the monstorous inflexibility of such a system. A similar system that allowed for recalls, byelections, non-confidence votes, and unusual, exceptional circumstances would not be so bad.
My dislike is something similar. If an incumbent is really, really bad – so awful even the government can’t support them – then there’s nothing you can do about it for four years.
Oh, and for wolfstu, a minor nitpick. Since I spent age 4 to age 18 in The Township of Esquimalt, I know there’s no “u” in the word, although it seems to be a popular misspelling. Another one I’ve seen is “Esquinalt” – that one appears in a popular, early 20th-Century Canadian novel, and has never been corrected by editors.
Sorry matt. I should know better, but as I was typing it, I was thinking, “Hmm, seeing as I usually hear it as ‘Ess-Kwye-moe’, maybe pseudo-french spelling will work.”
This is the 3rd or 4th time I’ve seen this. I thought the non-confidence vote would trigger an election thereby getting rid of the problem you mention. What am I missing?
Under normal circumstances a no confidence vote does call a new election. (As least, that’s they way I’ve already understood it.)
The problem with this, (as opposed to fixed elections) is that the GG still has to disolve the Commons and call for new elections.
OR, the GG can ask the leader of the Opposition to form a new government.
Mind you, the last time this happened was when King was PM. He lost a no confidence vote, and as I recall, asked the GG to call a new election to which the GG said no. He then called on the Opposition to form a new government. Which, (I think) called for a new election with in 2 days…
This is one of the points I don’t like about our process. Fixed terms would certainly solve that problem wouldn’t it?
Of course, it is a really out there situation… But it seems to me that it could have happened when Old Joe lost his vote…
How is that different from what we have now, except that the “+5” isn’t solidly fixed, but determined by a tradition that even a popular PM messes with at his peril.
Fixed election days are a baaaad idea, because it basically turns the government away from its role of governing, and redirects it towards campaigning for re-election.
Doubt me? Well look to the south, where George W. Bush is now in Day 2 of campaiging for re-election, in fricking APRIL! Forget dealing with the aftermath of Iraq, no, it’s time to start the campaign visits. Yeesh.
I theorize that all this campaign overload is the main reason voter turnouts are so low in the US. At least in Canada it’s govern, govern, govern until just a few weeks before the election writ is dropped.
BC’s current crop has also instituted a fixed election date of May 15, 2005. Guess when the campaigning’s going to start?
As for party lines-- that’s a problem with the individual parties. The liberals are notorious for having enforcers who will cut candidates off from funds-- the other parties less so. That’s something you can’t change electorally, unless you bring in funding changes for political parties.
And a little piece of ignorance is fought. Everyone I know says ess-kwye-moe, but henceforth, not me.
I just had a thought about the elected Senate. Right now, the Senators know that if they go and do something really out-of-touch with what the public wants, the public might seriously call for electoral reform (ie, an elected Senate) and they’d all lose their jobs.
Is there any validity to the idea that this acts as a check on the Senate doing something the people can’t stand (but the people not being able to do anything about it)?
I mean, they’d still have their pensions, I guess… but they’d lose their fancy red-carpeted clubhouse.
Oh, another point. What are those “Generally-Accepted Accounting Principles”, exactly? Add things up clearly, and don’t borrow? I’d think the government should be able to borrow, maybe, if it really had to… maybe.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are a set of industery standards for accounting. It’s all about honesty and consistency in how you report financial truth. It’s too long to just give you a rundown of them; this is a major body of standards on every conceivable aspect of finances.
The government does not follow GAAP; accouting trickery is used in government books that go way, way beyond what any private company would be allowed to do. Government books are comparable to the books you would have found at Enron; in many ways, actually, the government is worse.
Didn’t something like this happen when the Senate passed the GST bill back in the late 1980s or early 90s (sorry, I cannot remember which)?
If I recall correctly, the majority of the public was dead set against a GST–I recall one poll setting the figure at 86%, though I can’t say what the figure was for sure. But Brian Mulroney’s Tory government was all for it, and having a majority in the House of Commons, the GST bill passed there easily.
While the average citizen was praying that the Senate would wake up and actually do something for once–that is, kill the bill–Mulroney took steps to make sure that the Senate would pass the GST bill. He had to appoint some new senators, so he appointed ones that could be counted on to support the government’s GST bill. The GST bill passed the Senate, was given Royal Assent, and became law. Consequently, we got the GST.
I’d say that act fulfilled the requirements for being out-of-touch with the people, and yet, it was done anyway. Now, true, at the same time (late 1980s, anyway), there was a strong push for an elected Senate–if I recall correctly, Alberta tried electing a senator, only to have the PM say in essence, “Nope, no electing senators.” But after things settled down, there was very little heard about Senate reform.
I don’t know if we can use this one experience as an example of the Senate not caring what the people think or want, but for what it’s worth, there it is. It is one of the few times I can recall that the Senate and what it might or might not do about a bill was front-page news.
I hesitate to give it more time, but the “300 little provinces” idea is not only the single most ridiculous Canadian political idea I’ve ever heard, bar none, but it also has a dangerous precedent. When Franco took power in Spain, rather than put up with potential opposition from strong regional governments, he abolished those governments and replaced them with smaller provinces. For example, the Generalitat of Catalonia, which would have been a major thorn in his side, was abolished and split into four little provinces (which bore no relation to the historical division of the generalitat). This permitted the Catalan population to be more effectively suppressed. Catalonia was not reunited until the restoration of democracy and the beginning of the autonomous community system.
Just to get a handle on how ridiculous the idea was to begin with, in big cities federal ridings are individual neighbourhoods. Montreal contains about 20 ridings. I don’t think it’s a terribly bright idea to have the second order political division of this country be smaller than a city.
Anyway, enough of this. Not only is it ridiculous, but given the amending formula to the constitution, it’s also impossible.
Election cycles: Okay, if we’re dead set against fixed election cycles, how about a compromise: The government can call an election, but it can happen no earlier than 9 months from the date it is called. That way, the government can’t manipulate short-term changes, and opposition parties have time to organize and campaign.
Clearly (to me, anyway), Canada’s democracy is broken. We have no effective opposition, a government that is corrupt and unresponsive to public opinion, and no prospects for change in the situation in the reasonable future.
Sam - I assume you’re excluding cases of non-confidence and the like. I don’t think I would enjoy having no functioning legislature for the better part of a year.
Not to hijack the thread but this is quite wrong on many levels. The generalitat was not “split into four little provinces” at all. Very briefly (and very simplified) and with approximate dates just to make round numbers and simplify things: 1500, the several kingdoms which comprise what is now Spain (basically Castile, Aragon, Navarre,) are united under a common crown but retain their separate laws, parliaments etc. they are for all purposes, separate kingdoms. Castile discovered and conquered America (not “Spain”), Aragon (of which Catalonia was part) conquered Naples and Sicilly, etc. 1700: with the termination of the Hapsburgs and the beginning of the Bourbons, after the war, Spain is united in a single kingdom following the French centralized model and uniform laws are established. The previous division of kingdoms disappears and for the next century different and changing administrative territorial divisons are used. Finally, some time in the early 19th century, Spain is divided into some 50 provinces and this division is the one still being used today so it predates Franco by quite a few years.
The disastrous experiment which was the Second Spanish Republic did experiment with devolving some of the political powers which the regions had lost more than 200 years earlier but it was not based on the historical kingdoms as much as the factual situation in the 1930s. So the Catalan Generalitat was formed with the provinces of Barcelona, Tarragona, Lérida and Gerona and given some autonomy but the provinces did not disappear at all. As the war progressed and things went from bad to worse with the republican government, internal dissension grew and every group and institution wanted more independence which lead to greater autonomy of everybody and the final downfall of the republic. Once victor Franco did not split anything, he just abolished the Generalitat and things went back to where they were just a few years earlier.
After Franco died, the new constitution grouped the provinces into autonomous regions but the provinces remain. Catalonia again has an autonomous government with jurisdiction over those four provinces which have existed since long before Franco was even born.
Whether larger or smaller jurisdictions and governments are better or worse is a matter for another discussion but Spain still has a relatively serious probem with this organization, as evidenced by the Basque and Catalan problems.
Spoken like a true westerner who keeps electing a whimsical party
Seriously, I don’t think Canada’s parliament is broken. The Liberals have dominated things for many years because they are a Middle-of-the-Road party. They take ideas from both sides and incorporate them into their own legislative agenda. The reason this works is because most Canadians are pretty middle-of-the-road, and think the Liberals are reacting to public opinion.
You might think differently from reading newspapers, but every daily newspaper in Canada is much more conservative than the average Joe. One of the editors of the Vancouver Sun, f’rinstance, used to work for the Fraser Institute!
The problem with the opposition is easy: they’re dorks. Seriously. You’ve got social conservatives from Alberta trying to be a valid opposition, and the nation does not like social conservatives. Punt out the people who are perceived as religious wankers ready to ban abortion, Sunday shopping, and homosexuals, and the Alliance nee Reform will become a legit party.
I agree with barbarian. Canada’s government obviously is not “Broken,” in that
A) The ruling party is currently the party that got the most votes,
B) That party was not seriously challenged primarily because the opposition ran one of the worst campaigns in the modern history of federal politics - a campaign so mind-bogglingly atrocious it should be sued as a model of how not to run a political party- so it’s not as if they played a good game but it didn’t show up on the scoreboard, and
C) There’s nothing stopping the Liberals from losing the next election, and anyone who thinks they’re guaranteed to win has a very short memory. A party’s fortunes can be reversed in six months.
Canada’s governmental structure, however, certainly could be improved.
Has anyone put any thought into the idea of a half elected - half proportional system? This way, we could avoid the craziness of a party getting just over 40% of the popular vote but 60% of the seats in parliament or 10% of votes and 1% of seats but also avoids the pizza parliaments of Italy and Israel. One down side is that a party could keep a disliked MP on their ‘preferred roster’ and there’d be no way to get rid of them – although I’m sure someone here could come up with a way.
