The Canadian Political Blend

The Canadian Federal elections can confuse people. The theory is that people vote for their local representative and as such the representative will bring to the legislative (the lawmaking institution) their local voice in any issue proposed. The practice is that the representative is a member of his party first and foremost and a member of this legislative body second. To further complicate matters, Canada has a two house system like the U.S. where a law is proposed and discussed in one house before going to the second house for more scrutiny. The complication is that the entire second house is unelected and a new member is chosen when there is a vacancy by the ruling political party.

The general voter has no say who is going to be leader of any political party, the voter has no say who they wish to have as minister of this or minister of that. In other words, the voter has no say whatsoever in the executive branch. And because the representative that they are voting for is part of a political party, they have no say as to the legislature either. The voted member of parliament must obey his affiliated party. Some decide to vote for non-affiliated members but under the current rules of the building where the laws are made, the non-affiliated members have little to no say as to when they can propose any law. The ones who decide who and when any member is to speak are the party whips who get together and negotiate time amongst themselves, with obvious priorities given to themselves first. The higher the party members are within the assembly, the more voice to dictate who will speak when to propose any law. If you are non-affiliated, you must negotiate with one or more of the parties to negotiate some time on your behalf.

So if you decide to represent your community and be voting on propositions and perhaps propose something as well, you are better off being part of a political party. But as soon as you join any political party, you must abide by the party rules.... so if the party decides to vote yes, you are under pressure to vote yes as well, with negative consequences should you go against them... depending on the priority of the vote. If you want more prestige so that you are invited to be part of law-making committees, then you satisfy the requirement of your political party. If you continue to work under the political party's guidance, then you may receive a posting in the executive, maybe even be minister itself. So you must constantly juggle between the demands of the population you are representing and the law-making assembly that you are now a part of.

The voters do not quite understand this because the theory of how the system works and the actual practice of it are not in sync. So as a result, some will vote for their favorite representative to speak on their behalf, some will vote for the party that they believe in and some will vote for the leader of the party. The end result is that the system becomes misunderstood when things go differently than expected because the voter expects the theoretical to work as they were taught in school.

What would be needed would be to have a vote for the representatives for the law-making institution. Once this was decided, the population would then vote for who they would want as Prime minister, who they would want as minister of this, minister of that. If the Prime minister wishes to introduce a new ministry, then people could again vote for who they want as the minister. This would make both branches accountable.

To explain better: you choose within your community the best representative for your community; who must be, first and foremost, loyal to his home community. When the entire nation has had its say, we find that political party #A has 200 representatives, party #B has 100 representatives and party #C has 50. So we then vote who in party #A will be the Prime minister, who in party #A will be minister of this, etc.... then we vote out of party #B, who will be the leader of the opposition, who will be the critic of ministry x, and on and on. This places the executive and the legislative under direct scrutiny of the population and guarantees that the representative will be more loyal to his home community than to his home party.

Naturally, if we continue having a second house (the senate), to discuss our laws, then they should also be voted members instead of chosen/appointed. I would not want the Senate to owe allegiance to the ones who appointed them there. I do believe that the Conservatives also want the Senate to be elected (will have to check in on their platform.... they may be the only ones?).

On another blog I may talk about how I would prefer to see 3 houses instead of 2 or 1, but that is too technical for now. Suffice it to say, my criticism is more based upon what we get out of an election and how we could modify it better. How we vote is another topic and should we modify any of the branches of government is yet another topic.