That’s nice and all, but as you’ve noted yourself before, Canadians are not Americans, nor vice versa. We also have an order of magnitude more population than you do, so we are bound to have more religious nutters.
The fact that we still debate this issue (while basically maintaining the status quo in the end, which allows abortions) is just one of the little differences, and doesn’t do anything either way to underscore why or how either of our systems are broken or even dysfunctional. It’s a feature, not a bug, even if I personally wish my fellow Americans would shut up about it already.
As to the OP:
No, a parliamentarian system wouldn’t somehow magically fix our political ills. Basically, they would still be there…just like other nations have political issues even if they have a parliamentary system. I don’t know which is ‘best’, but our system is our system, and it’s worked for us for over 200 years…pretty much longer than any other current democracy. It also still works…stuff still gets done, by and large, services are still provided, the military maintained, research on the mating habits of flatworms still gets done and we are still able to send probes to Pluto to do some actual interesting shit (oh, at least one rover on Mars is still chugging along)…all of these things demonstrate a working system, not one completely broken or dysfunctional. Our economy is actually one of the best in the world today (well, so far), our military is still strong and capable (despite being wasted in various foreign adventures), and coke and apple pie is still available (though myself I prefer cake) and it’s actually possible that the Cubs will win the world series (I only know this because of the Back to the Future II prediction, but I’m sure someone thinks this is important) and we have our FREEDOM!!
To start with, Canada and the United States (ie the individual states) in the 18th century both shared the common law inheritance from the English common law: abortion was legal, up until the point of “quickening” (the woman could feel the fetus moving). From that point in the pregnancy onwards, performing or submitting to an abortion was a crime (whether a felony, or a misdemeanour, appears to have been variable).
During the 18th and 19th centuries, England, the US states, and the British colonies like Canada all stiffened their abortion laws, doing away with the “quickening” distinction: abortions generally became illegal at any stage. Wikipedia sez that by 1900, abortion was criminalised in every state (Abortion in the United States / Pre 1960s). Similarly, abortion was completely illegal in Canada from 1869 onwards (note that criminal law in Canada is federal, not provincial, so it’s governed by a single criminal law).
The same movement towards liberalisation was happening in Canada. In 1968, the Minister of Justice, one Pierre Trudeau, introduced an omnibus criminal law amendment act, which completely overhauled large areas of the Criminal Code, including abortion. Abortion still potentially remained a criminal offence, but was permitted if a committee of three doctors in the hospital where the abortion was to be performed certified that in their “opinion the continuation of the pregnancy of such female person would or would be likely to endanger her life or health.” That amendment came into force in 1969: Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69. (This was the same bill which decriminalised contraceptives and gay sex between consenting adults, summarised by Trudeau: “The State has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”)
Thus, prior to Roe v Wade (1973) and Morgentaler v The Queen (1988), abortion laws were being liberalised by legislative decisions in both countries.
Roe v Wade in 1973. Judicial liberalisation, but it left considerable wiggle room for legislative restrictions by the states. I don’t need to say more than that on these boards.
Morgentaler v The Queen in 1988, a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, striking down the 1969 law under s 7 of the Charter, which guarantees security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice (similar in operation to due process in the US). However, it is important to note what that decision did and did not do. It did not establish any constitutional right to an abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy, unlike Roe. Rather, it found that the actual operation of the therapeutic abortion committees had placed such serious restrictions on access to abortion that the delays and lack of access were themselves a threat to the health of women seeking an abortion, and therefore infringed their security of the person, contrary to s 7. In short, the Morgentaler case was much more like the companion case to Roe, Doe v. Bolton. The clear implication of the reasoning in Morgentaler was that a properly framed abortion law could pass constitutional scrutiny.
The Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney tried twice to pass a new abortion law, consistent with the principles set out in Morgentaler. The first bill failed to pass the Commons because it was too much of a compromise, and the pro-lifer MPs and pro-choice MPs both voted against it.
The Mulroney government then introduced a second bill, which would have reinstated the requirement that abortions could only be performed if the life or health of the woman was in issue, but this time would just need the approval of one doctor (other than the one performing the abortion), not three as under the old law.
That bill passed the Commons on a free vote. Contrary to Wolfpup’s comments, abortion was still at that time considered a major issue for Parliament to address, and a majority of the MPs voted in favour of the bill. There’s a good CBC article that shows how contentious the issue was in the PC government: Mulroney-era documents reveal struggle with abortion laws
To everyone’s surprise, the bill was defeated in the Senate. The vote was a tie, and under Senate rules, a tie means that the bill fails to pass. No-one saw that coming. The unelected Senate rarely defeats a bill passed by the Commons, but as in the Commons, the Senate vote on the bill was a free vote, not based on party lines.
It was only after two failed attempts to pass an abortion bill that PM Mulroney said “Enough’s enough” and moved on to other important things, like nearly destroying the country over Meech Lake.
Since then, abortion is completely decriminalised in Canada and is a medical procedure like any other, performed by doctors based on the wishes of patients and their own professional judgment.
However, that result is not mandated by the Morgentaler decision of the Supreme Court, which certainly left open the door to the passage of abortion laws which met the procedural tests for women’s health which they had found lacking in the 1968 amendments.
That’s a pretty good summary of events, but all it does is provide historical detail without changing the main point I was making. I had referenced a list of liberalizations that had been made in Canada of which abortion was just one, and I was responding to RickJay stating that “the US legalized abortion before Canada did”. The point being that, in a series of steps that were indeed not without controversy at the time, it really and truly was legalized in Canada (and most of Europe for early-term cases), whereas in the US it remains very restricted in most states, it clearly remains a hot-button political issue, and, moreover, it seems that the number of restrictions is increasing. Not to mention the number of states that have “trigger laws” ready to completely outlaw abortion should Roe v Wade be overturned as they hope.
So it’s a radically different situation in the US.
Of course it was “a major issue” when an important law that many people had strong feelings about was struck down. I do stand corrected on my claim that the bill had “little support” because the second one did indeed pass the House and was only defeated in the Senate. However, I think one reason for this odd turn of events were a couple of botched abortions that were in the news at the time, one of which resulted in the woman’s death, that were rapidly changing public opinion. And so it has remained ever since. When someone like Harper staunchly refuses to resurrect it as a political issue, you know it’s dead.
The more correct statement would have been “the Mulroney government failed to enact new abortion legislation and there has subsequently been little public support for it.”
Quite correct. However, the only reason the Court didn’t rule on a constitutional right to abortion was that it already had sufficient grounds for overturning the law without needing to examine that issue, thus respecting the high court principle of judicial minimalism – the basis being that “the structure of the system regulating access to therapeutic abortions is manifestly unfair. It contains so many potential barriers to its own operation that the [exception] it creates will in many circumstances be practically unavailable to women who would prima facie qualify.”
So your statement “The clear implication of the reasoning in Morgentaler was that a properly framed abortion law could pass constitutional scrutiny” is not necessarily true. Maybe, maybe not. The court chose not to address that at all because it didn’t need to.
Otherwise, just as an interesting side note, the basis of Roe v Wade was remarkably similar to the Morgentaler ruling.
In Roe, the court “declined to adopt the district court’s Ninth Amendment rationale, and instead asserted that the ‘right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy’.” And the relevant clause in the Fourteenth Amendment is “… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”.
Whereas the Morgentaler decision “declared the entirety of Section 251 of the Criminal Code to be of no force or effect because it was held to violate section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 7 states that: ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice’.”
They are being hijacked by (to my mind) lunatic right-wingery that sets out to impose a notion of Frenchness designed to exclude without much concept of “reasonable accommodation”.
In the terms of the OP, though, France is a hybrid of presidential and parliamentary systems. Sometimes the President has to put up with a Prime Minister and government from the opposition party, and they have to find a way to “co-habit”, as they put it, just as US presidents have to put up with a Congress dominated by the other party.
Since the present constitution has lasted for longer than any other but one, and hasn’t long to go before it overtakes the Third Republic (essentially parliamentary, which collapsed in the invasion of 1940, and wasn’t, in the end, much lamented by left or right), it seems to suit French political culture.
Whether you have fixed or flexible terms in a presidential or parliamentary systems you can have that affliction.
For over 3 years from the 17 July 2010 when Labor PM Gillard called the 21 August 2010 poll (which resulted in a hung parliament) until the election on 7 September 2013 won by the Abbott led Liberals, Australia was 5 weeks from an election day and in near continual campaign mode.
Using fixed terms seems to be more indicative of habitual and chronic extended campaigns than the style of government.
Tying the abortion issue back to the topic of this thread, I don’t think the difference between the two countries can be tied on the difference between presidential/congressional compared to parliamentary systems. Rather, it’s more a difference in our federal structures.
For instance, the statement that the US legalised abortion first: there were individual states which legalised abortion before Canada did, as summarised above. However, since abortion falls into federal jursidiction in Canada, when Parliament legalised abortion in Canada, albeit with restrictions, that applied Canada-wide, unlike the situation in the states where pre-Roe, abortion was not legal in 30 states. So I would say that Canada legalised it before the US did, although with restrictions and access issues. It was legal to get an abortion any where in Canada after 1969, subject to restrictions, which was not the case in the US.
After Roe, the core right of getting an abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy was established across the US, but Roe itself recognised that states could impose restrictions on abortions, which states have done since then. That patchwork of restrictions does not result from the congressional/presidential system, but from US federalism, where abortion falls largely into state jurisdiction.
And then, after the attempt to legislate restrictions on abortions failed in the Canadian Senate, the government did not try again, essentially accepting the status quo from the Morgentaler decision. That lack of any regulation under the criminal law was not because of our parliamentary system, but because of our federalism: once the federal government decided not to pursue rgulation, that made the decision for the whole country, unlike the US system.
The original question by the OP asked for opinions regarding the Republican system (as in the United States) versus the Parliamentary (Westminster) system of democracy.
I do not believe there is a correct and compelling answer for either case.
The core issue in any representative democracy is to involve the whole of the proletariat. A group of parties which reflect the varied constituencies across a nation. Whether that is republican or parliamentarian matters not a whit.
I have wondered for many years why the US only has two political parties? And essentially a First Past The Post voting system?
Consider Italy: since 1945 the average government lasted 9 months, yet the nation thrived. Political stability survives despite reshuffles of power. Politicians are not as important as we think in a peaceful society.
The UK has had the same number of Prime Ministers (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron) and only five since the seventies, a period during which the US had six Presidents.
My impression is that parliamentary systems have the advantage/disadvantage that one party is clearly in power. So it has to essentially “put up or shut up” - it enacts the platform it was elected on and then bears the consequences for its success or failure.
A divided government like America’s allows a lot more latitude for a party to promise a lot without having to deliver on its promises - you just blame other people for holding up results.
I don’t feel that dissenting minorities are a problem with the American system as some other posters seem to be implying. It’s true we have groups like the Tea Party or pro-life advocates that are fighting to enact their views. But I see this as a advantage overall.
Most of the people on this board disagree with the views of the two groups I just mentioned. But we should remember that other views started out in similar dissenting groups. If dissenters today are trying to outlaw abortion, it was dissenters in the past who got it legalized. It was dissenters who started the fights for black rights, women’s rights, and gay rights. If our system silenced dissent, we wouldn’t have any of these things.
Your point I agree with but a slight nitpick. France is not really parliamentary, it combines both systems. Mostly it is presidential and since 1997 they have had three presidents, like the U.S. Only of those presidents had served one term- Nicholas Sarkozy.
Some parliamentary systems are unstable in that they see many heads roll such as Japan and Italy. I’m not discounting your example just saying France is not solely a parliamentary system.
Heath, Callaghan, Thatcher, and Major were all educated at grammar schools, as was Jeremy Corbyn (latterly). Wilson, Blair, Cameron, and Clegg were all privately educated; Corbyn also started off in a private prep school. But the grammar schools were largely closed down which closed off that route for improvement.
Or not. In Spain at least that’s not a requirement: the current president of Catalonia went as number 4 in his party’s list, thus avoiding most of the speech-making, debating, and being asked actual questions. The previous president of Navarre was number one on her party’s list for the regional parliament, but she wasn’t their General Secretary (that’s what many of our parties call the boss).
As already mentioned, France doesn’t use a pure parliamentary system. The boss is (usually, not going into details) the president, and the prime minister is an expendable second-in-command. When the executive popularity is low, the prime minister is used as a fuse and replaced in the hope that the new PM will be more popular.
Anyway, there are vast differences between countries that don’t depend only on the system used. Italy, Israel and the UK have faced completely different issues wrt political decision-making despite all of them using a parliamentiary system.
That isn’t true in many parliamentary systems that are usually ruled by a coalition. It’s true in the UK (normally) because of the “first past the post” electoral system, not simply because the UK is a parliamentary democracy.
And the answer is, not much. But apparently with the assistance of expert political strategists you can get the poor material elected.
An analysis of US presidents I saw somewhere recently ranked Bush Jr among the least intelligent, and the disasters he brought down upon the nation seem to corroborate it.
