We ARE the Majority

I wish you the best of luck. It is a source of disappointment to me that there is no move to dissolve Parliment. It tells me that Chretien is representing the Canadian will adequately, bluster notwithstanding.

One cannot get a vote of non-confidence in a system that has a government parth majority and in which the Prime Minister can control his back bench through patronage and threats, including the threat that a back-bencher will not be allowed to run again on his party's ticket unless he votes with the government every time.

Crossing the floor for a rebellious MP is not an option. In that case he winds up at the back of the opposition benches, far from the speaker and never recognized to ask questions or make speeches. The other parties will not accept him because they cannot trust him to adhere to party discipline, which party discipline is a feature of parliamentary systems.

Parliament is set up such that government ministers face the opposition every day across an aisle that is designed to be two sword-lengths wide. Partisanship is inherent in the system. The deal making found in congressional systems is simply not possible. The "bi-partisanship" so beloved by politicians such as Trent Lott is inconsistent with a parliamentary system.

So, to say that we approve because our MPs fail to vote non-confidence is founded in ignorance of our system.

Right now, we are in a hiatus as we await the Prime Minister's promised retirement in February 2004. Then we will find out what kind of a Liberal party we will then have to resist.

The Liberal party has more than a century of experience at sliding back and forth across the political spectrum to garner its support as popular viewpoints change.

Every now and then, they get out of touch and populism, which is always endemic in western Canada, comes back to life and infects the politics of the nation as a whole. In such cases, populism always succeeds in kicking politics back into sync with popular will, usually without the populist movement ever becoming a government but often by replacing the opposition that had failed to discharge its solemn duty to oppose.

Unfortunately, the populist movement usually fails to successfully convert itself into a political party capable of sustaining itself. This is because populists lack the necessary party discipline to keep a party organization chart functioning.

A congressional system has populism built in to it to a larger extent than in a parliamentary one because governing party members in a congressional system can vote against their party without bringing down their government. Party discipline is thereby weakened and local popular pressures are thereby strengthened as voting considerations. This applies a fortiori in the lower House in the US system because of the 2 year election cycle.

Okay. At least I'm not alone in my ignorance.

What do Canadians think?
Many Canadians are quite cynical of Parliament. They do not like the idea of their elected Members of Parliament being mere "party pawns" and long for greater MP independence. An equally large number of Canadians are completely ignorant about how the system works. In school, we are taught about how the concept of No Confidence Votes always keeps the Government in check, and how the Prime Minister must always be careful, or Parliament could turn against him. As I have explained, however, No Confidence Votes do not scare Majority Governments, and strong party discipline gives the Prime Minister enormous power over the conduct of his party in Parliament. Despite all this, some Canadians still believe our system of Government is more democratic than America's, because our executive branch is composed entirely of elected officials who are required to regularly answer questions in Parliament.

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