Tag Archives: Civic Literacy

Roundup: A stake through the grassroots

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Congratulations Liberals, you have once again made things awful for the proper functioning on Canadian democracy, as you so often do. In fact, most of our democratic ills in this country can be traced directly back to Liberal “innovations,” like delegated leadership conventions, which removed caucus accountability of the party leader, to the “supporter class” of leadership selection – removing any and all accountability the leader had – and now you’ve decided to eliminate party memberships to further erode what accountability was left in the party system so that all of the remaining power can be centralised in the leader’s office and Big Data can be used to justify any and all policy decisions rather than allowing them to come from the grassroots. Well done! Oh, but no need to worry – Justin Trudeau totally promised that this wasn’t about centralizing power and taking it away from the grassroots (just the regional power brokers, natch), so no need to worry! Absent from that assurance was anything about accountability, which isn’t surprising given the way the history of these attempts to “democratize” things happen in this country. I’m not saying that the party didn’t need to update its various constitutions into a single body. That’s fine. But memberships are actually an important thing for the role of a political party in our democratic system. And while I get that the “supporter” category during the leadership was instrumental in populating the database that they’re so very proud of for their new digital future, it doesn’t erase the role that grassroots members play. While the Liberals are trying to “deconstruct” what a political party is and turn it into a “movement,” it can’t escape that political parties are not just “private clubs,” as the rhetoric around the new constitution has been trying to paint them as (and indeed, rhetoric used going back to the introduction of the “supporter” category during the leadership). And beyond just offering organizational structure within Parliament (which is in itself a Very Big Deal), parties have an interlocutory role to play between the parliamentary caucus and the public at large. It’s why people are supposed to be joining parties – to provide bottom-up ideas and policies, to nominate candidates, and in return, the riding associations act as interfaces to bring local concerns to caucus if there is no local representative. But we’re not taught about the importance of joining riding associations in school, and when the grassroots has weak structures and little power, then it only empowers the apparatchiks in Ottawa at the centre of the party. I fail to see how Trudeau’s new “movement” is going to empower the grassroots when riding associations will be hollowed out in favour of “streamlining” policy proposals via Big Data. The social and community aspects of riding associations are gone because there is no longer anything there for them to do, other than organise nominations every few years. And not only does it weaken the grassroots, it further diminishes the power of MPs (as Peter Lowen writes here) because that power gets centralized in the leader’s office – just as the power of MPs started being eroded when we took away their ability to select and remove leaders. But because we’re not being taught civic literacy, we’re not learning these lessons, and power continues to be centralized. Trudeau has consolidated a great deal of power now, owing to his popularity, and he is accountable to nobody, and the party structures that would place any kind of check on that power are now gone. I don’t see this as a great day for the Liberal party, but one that harkens worse things to come for our country’s political system as a whole.

https://twitter.com/aaronwherry/status/736672242864656385

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Roundup: Term limit nonsense

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As we gear up for the Conservatives’ policy convention this weekend, one of the policy resolutions on the table is term limits for the party leader, which they propose to cap at eight years should the leader become Prime Minister. While this is an example of the grassroots showing some displeasure at Stephen Harper and his stranglehold over the party for well over a decade, it’s a terrible bit of Americana that people keep trying to import into our system as though it were a panacea to problems that exist here. They’re entirely wrong, however, but they keep trying. Over in the National Post, John Pepall argues that term limits are fundamentally undemocratic because they prevent people from having the choice of electing a popular leader for as long as they like, but while he has a point, I would stress that term limits in a Canadian context are a complete lack of understanding of our system of Responsible Government, which rests on the principle of confidence. After all, term limits are largely unnecessary because our system can dump a prime minister at any point by means of a vote of no confidence – something that can’t happen in the American system, as they don’t have a system based on confidence, but rather on defined terms, with the relief valve of recall elections in some cases. Otherwise, they are forced to wait out a term until the next election, while in a Westminster system, it can happen with a snap vote in the Commons. Of course, we do have the problem in this country particularly around being able to dump a leader who is not the PM because we have moved away from the caucus selecting the leader, to systems of either delegated conventions, one-member-one-vote, or the latest Liberal abomination, the “supporter category.” Caucus selection kept leaders accountable to them, and it kept them in check, whereas they accumulated more presidential powers as the base that elected them grew larger and they felt more empowered by their “democratic mandate.” While leaders can still lose membership reviews by party members (witness Thomas Mulcair), a caucus can still pressure a leader to resign these days by simply making their dissatisfaction public. In most cases, like with Alison Redford, all it takes is a couple of MPs/MLAs with enough of a spine to go public, and the leader sees the writing on the wall. In cases where the leader digs in their heels – as with Greg Selinger in Manitoba – it can become the death knell for that particular government, as we witnessed in that province’s election just weeks ago. But all of these upsets were accomplished without term limits, and respecting the principles of Responsible Government. Trying to graft on Americana will just turn our system into some kind of monstrous chimera that won’t actually be able to function – hell, the changes we’ve made to leadership selection processes so far have already damaged and warped our system and need to be undone. But if Conservative Party members want to actually respect our system of government, they’ll vote down this cockamamie policy proposal with extreme prejudice, and hopefully we won’t have to speak of this again.

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Roundup: Just a normal backbench function

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There are days when I wonder if the cynicism among reporters isn’t the bigger problem facing Ottawa as we get yet another incredulous piece talking about how backbench Liberal MPs are openly voting against their own party, and how incredible is that? One MP went so far as to say that the Prime Minister himself told his caucus that the media was going to have to get used to the fact that MPs would disagree with him from time to time. And lo and behold, it continues to be treated as both a novelty and an aberration that backbenchers will stand up to government. We had commentary on one of the lesser weekend panel shows yesterday that was some pundit or other incredulous that there were MPs disagreeing with the leader, apparently because there weren’t enough goodies like cabinet posts or committee chairs to go around, and I can’t even.

Meanwhile, we have interviews with the government whip about how he’s going to manage all of these free votes on things (which was fairly constructive, to be honest, as he talked about having copies of the bill at hand and lists of people he could direct MPs to talk about with their concerns). It’s helpful, but needs more reminding that hey, it’s actually a backbencher’s job to hold their own government to account as much as it is the opposition’s. Now, if we could just get them to start asking some real questions in QP instead of throwing these suck-up softballs, that would be really great. Oh, and while I’m on the topic of journalists and pundits acting all surprised that MPs are doing their jobs, can we also stop this faux-confusion about how things are working in the Senate with “independents” and “independent Liberals”? Because honestly, if you haven’t gotten the memo that Senate Liberals are not part of the national Liberal caucus, and that they simply chose to continue to call themselves Liberals because the Rules of the Senate say that a caucus needs to have an association with a registered federal political party, then you really need to get with the programme. Stop saying that things are confusing when they’re not. You’re not helping the public – you’re just making things worse.

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Roundup: The casework distraction

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Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel has sounded the alarm that the Liberals sound like they are about to cut off the special access for MPs’ offices to inquire about immigration files in favour of the directing their inquiries to the Ministerial Inquiry Division. Rempel’s concern is that this makes it harder for MPs to deal with immigration files on behalf of constituents – casework, as it is known. The department has thus far said there is no change, but in the event that there is, I’m actually not sure that this is such a bad idea. Why? Because, quite simply, this isn’t work that MPs should be doing. They shouldn’t be service providers on behalf of the public service, and I’ve heard from some staffers that the department won’t even start looking at files until the MP’s office forwards it to them, which is both appalling and a red flag that the system isn’t working the way it should be. An MP’s job is to hold the government to account, and to do so by controlling the public purse. Their staff should be focused on this work, and helping them with legislation as it happens. The expansion of the civil service, however, has prompted the development of MPs into ombudspersons for civil service interactions, which starts getting uncomfortable because it takes away from their actual roles. The fact that you have MPs who wind up dedicating staff to dealing entirely with immigration casework is quite simply wrong, and indicative of a system not working. Making immigration casework reliant upon MPs offices – no matter how non-partisan the work is – is a half-step away from a corrupt system where who you know is the determining factor for whether your files get looked at or not. It’s a civil service job to process files – not an MP’s job. If the Liberals are trying to clamp down on this abuse of process and focus on getting the department to do their jobs, while MPs to do theirs, I don’t actually see the problem with that. It’s how things should work, and if they’re trying to right that particular ship, then all the power to them. MPs should be focusing on their actual work, which let’s face it – most of them don’t, because they don’t actually know what their job is (see: crisis of civic literacy in this country). If the government of the day takes away from their distractions (work that they actually shouldn’t be doing), then maybe we can hope that it’ll help steer their attention back toward the work they should be. But maybe I’m being a wildly optimistic dreamer again.

https://twitter.com/markdjarvis/status/717130956398682113

https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/717139036670992388

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Roundup: On “mature” democracies

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Oh, Maryam Monsef. I try so hard to be optimistic that your democratic reform mandate won’t be one big gong show, and yet I keep finding myself disappointed. The latest example – Monsef insisting that First-Past-The-Post is okay for fledgling democracies, but “mature” democracies can “do better.” And then my head exploded. If there is anything that makes me insane is this notion that somehow proponents of FPTP are just too stupid to grasp all of the wonderful things about various other voting systems (most especially the unicorns-and-rainbows that fans of proportional representation will extol), when some of us are quite learned, thank you very much, and have no interest in alternative voting schemes because they’re predicated on a lot of emotional bunk rather than solid civics. The cries that somehow FPTP is “unfair” or ensures that “votes don’t count” are the siren songs of sore losers who are actually the ones who don’t understand the way our system works, and when you try and point out the inherent flaws in their logic, they get huffy and try to change the goal posts. (I have had innumerable conversations like this. They always wind up the same. Always). And no, proportional representation won’t increase voter turnout. That’s been proven. Declining voter turnout in western democracies is part of a broader problem that is tough to grasp, but I would hazard that a lack of civic literacy is the bigger problem there – just like Monsef’s argument that somehow FPTP isn’t a “mature” system. I’m going to turn that around – I think FPTP is a mature system, and it’s one that, if we were a mature democracy, we would actually understand its intricacies as well as is pleasant simplicity, but no – we are a civically illiterate culture who doesn’t learn about how the system works, so we complain instead that it’s somehow “broken,” when what’s broken is our understanding and political discourse around it. If Monsef wants legitimate democratic reform, then tinkering with the system with abhorrent notions like online voting, lowered voting ages or alternative voting systems aren’t going to actually solve anything. What will solve our democratic deficit is a real push for civic literacy that will re-engage Canadians with the system. But that’s a hard, long-term problem, and everyone wants a quick fix. Those quick fixes will only serve to make things worse, as they always have (and past quick fixes are part of what’s broken about our system as it exists), and Monsef needs to start grasping this reality. One would think that a “mature” democracy would have that level of self-awareness, but I fear we’re not there yet.

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Roundup: I Lost My Talk

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I Lost My Talk performanceIt’s been a while since I’ve done any arts reporting, but this is an exception. Last night I had the good fortune to attend the world premiere of I Lost My Talk, the new original composition commissioned by the family of former Prime Minister Joe Clark as a gift for his 75th birthday. The composition is based on the poem of the same name by Rita Joe, considered the “poet laureate of the Mi’kmaq” people, and it deals with a people losing their language and subsequently culture thanks to the legacy of residential schools. The evening was marked by a talk on Art and Reconciliation, led by Dr. Marie Wilson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, followed by the performance of the work itself. Presented along with other works about the endurance of the spirit – Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op.35, and John Williams’ theme from Schindler’s List, I Lost My Talk was the final performance of the evening. It was presented along with a video projection of a dance performance, also created to accompany the work. While one may not be sure how to turn a very tight poem of a few lines into an eighteen minute musical piece that is done without lyrics – lines of the poem recited intermittently through the piece – it was done perfectly. The composition itself was like an epic score to the poem, that was cinematic in scope and feel, the film and the choreography therein were wonderfully realized, and visually arresting. In total, it’s a powerful new work of Canadian composition that takes on the themes of reconciliation, bringing elements of the Indigenous conversation to more European art forms, and creates something powerful of them together. It was stated in the talk beforehand that reconciliation is not an Indigenous problem – it’s a Canadian one, where all of our society needs to participate. This work is part of that conversation, and reconciliation. One can think of no greater gift to a former Prime Minister like Joe Clark than the one that his family commissioned for him with I Lost My Talk. That the National Arts Centre is carrying on and extending the work with more First Nations artists creates a broader dialogue for the work, and the ongoing project or reconciliation.

Joe Clark – Art & Reconciliation Panel

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Roundup: Setting a new tone

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The first day “on the job,” as it were, and Justin Trudeau was out to set a different tone from his predecessor from the get-go. While he and his cabinet won’t be sworn in until November 4th, the job of transition started today, but that didn’t stop Trudeau for being at the Metro station in his riding first thing to thank the voters there, and to pose for photos – something that Harper is pretty much loathe to do if it’s not in a controlled space. (One imagines that Trudeau’s RCMP detail is going to start freaking out really shortly). From Montreal, he flew back to Ottawa for a rally with supporters and local winning candidates (who pretty much swept the region here, with Pierre Poilievre’s riding being the sole exception), and then up to Parliament Hill to make some calls with international leaders including President Obama, where talk ranged from the ISIS mission to pipeline projects, with the message to the world being that “Canada is back.” Well, with a number of high-level international conferences coming up, Trudeau has high expectations being placed on him by those other world leaders. There is also a great sense of optimism with the premiers as well, so that looks like it could be a changing tone there as well. From there, Trudeau held a press conference in the National Press Theatre – something Stephen Harper hasn’t done since 2009, when he was trying to strike a deal with Michael Ignatieff not to topple his government over the summer (resulting in that Blue Ribbon panel on EI reform, which ended up collapsing thanks to the antics of Poilievre). He also walked there from the Hill as opposed to taking a motorcade. (Harper will take his motorcade across the street from 24 Sussex to Rideau Hall). Trudeau took questions for about 25 minutes – including follow-ups, and then promised that he would be back for more. It’s a completely different way of running things that most of the younger journalists on the Hill (myself included) aren’t used to. Not only that, but he promised that these would be regular appearances. It’s resetting the tone with the media, and it’s a hopeful signal that the tone really will start to change around here, and maybe we’ll start getting back to the way things used to be, before the dark times.

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Roundup: Vote – and then stay involved

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This is it – after that interminable election campaign (79 days! Eleven weeks!) it’s finally time to vote. And yes, you totally need to vote because that’s your duty and obligation for living in a democratic society like ours. When you do vote, remember that ours is a system whereby you are electing a person to fill a seat in Parliament, so that is always your primary consideration – party and leader should always be a secondary concern, and while important, the MPs you’re electing is your representative, and not the representative of the party to your riding. And then once the election is over, you get to hold that person to account. Not only that, but if the person or party you support didn’t win in your riding, fret not – your vote wasn’t “wasted,” as some would have you believe, because vote margins matter in the mandate that your local MP received. And so does your ongoing participation. Our system of democracy is not simply voting once every three or four years, but rather, it depends on constant grassroots participation, and that means you need to go out, join a riding association, help your chosen party determine future policy, help decide on who your riding’s next candidate is going to be (even if you have a sitting MP – let them know that they can’t take you for granted), and if things go the way they look determined to today, two of those parties just might be in leadership contests soon, and that means even more of a role for party members (as much as I disagree with membership selection of party leaders). In other words, voting today is just the beginning. But it starts with your casting a ballot, so go out and do that.

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Roundup: A refresher on the GG

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With a minority government likely in the offing – possibly Conservative, possibly Liberal – we’re seeing a spate of new articles about post-electoral scenarios and the role of the Governor General. While some of them get it more or less right, (my own offering a couple of weeks ago here), into the middle of this, Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch sticks his nose in and starts making trouble of his usual sort – deliberately misconstruing the system to his own ends. And then, unfortunately, As It Happens picked it up and ran with it without someone credible to counter it. Fortunately, Philippe Lagassé was already ahead of that game earlier yesterday morning, followed by a smackdown of Conacher later in the evening. I’ll leave you to it.

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Roundup: No, Chong’s bill won’t give us Australian leadership spills

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News of the leadership spill in Australia, ousting Tony Abbott as prime minister and ending the greatest political bromance of the Commonwealth countries (Harper and Abbott were quite the mutual admiration society), we were suddenly inundated with Twitter musings about whether that could happen in Canada, thanks to Michael Chong’s Reform Act which passed this summer. While Kady O’Malley offers the “in theory” answer, the in practice answer is that no, it couldn’t happen here, because Canada has a terrible system of leadership selection that purports to “democratise” the system with grassroots involvement, but instead created an unaccountable and presidentialised system of an overly powerful leader that has little fear of their caucus turning on them, because caucus didn’t select them. When it comes to removal, selection matters. A lot. Chong’s bill, perversely, makes an Australian situation less likely by raising the bar for leadership challenges to happen in the first place, and would instead give us situations like what happened in Manitoba where a sitting leader was challenged, and when it went to a leadership process where he still participated and won based on the grassroots support when his caucus was no longer behind him, well, it’s ugly and it’s down right unparliamentary given that a leader needs to have the confidence of his or her caucus, and when they don’t but stay in based on grassroots votes, the system breaks down. Paul Wells cautions that reforming a system usually replaces real or perceive problems with different problems, while Andrew Coyne points out that being able to dump a bad leader quickly is the lesser evil of being stuck with them.

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