Dear Democracy Watch
If you’re gonna dream, dream big…. because if you ain’t got your dreams you got nothing at all.
The Federal Court of Canada is to hear arguments against the election call last fall by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
[ ..... ]
Democracy Watch is seeking a ruling that Parliament’s dissolution and the election call were illegal in hopes that would prohibit future political manoeuvring and manipulation.
No Canadian political party in existence today will tolerate a ruling that prevents them from “political manoeuvring and manipulation” to (in the case of the government) remain in power, or (in the case of an Opposition party) try to gain power.
Political parties are all about whatever it takes to either keep, or gain, power – and if the court does hand down the ruling that Democracy Watch is looking for you can bet your next pay cheque that one of the first orders of business on the order paper when the House resumes sitting next September 14th will be to amend the legislation to get around that ruling in the future.
– it will have all party support, and the party leaders will ensure that it receives both unanimous support and speedy passage through both Houses.
[ h/t Jacks Newswatch ]
That don’t make what Harper did right. It may be a futile gesture, but someone has to at least try.
You don’t think that Dion, or Iggy, or Layton, or Duceppe, wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing?
You don’t think that Iggy, and Layton, and Duceppe, won’t (if the court finds for Democracy Watch) back legislation changing the rules that would surely be introduced — and whip their respective MP’s bloody so that it received unanimous and speedy passage?
Come on, the current PM is a power hungry hypocrite, the PM before him was a power hungry hypocrite, and the next PM will also be a power hungry hypocrite – it is the nature of the beast.
As I pointed out on Dr.D’s blog, the bill (re fixed election dates, it seems that ALL bills labelled C-16 must be about electoral reform or something) SPECIFICALLY protects the GG’s right to dissolve parliament at his/her discretion.
PMSH asked. She dissolved.
Not real clear why this case is being heard. At all.
*And let me be clear, this comment is not intended to dispute the “power hungry hypocrite” argument above.*
“Not real clear why this case is being heard. At all.”
That sums it up prrrfectly Candace. I mean what will the court do: void the election?.
I actually don’t think Layton, Duceppe or Dion would have done the same thing. Why? Because there’s no art to it. In every other minority government situation that I know of, a government seeking a new election still worked to manufacture its own defeat, preferably toppling itself on a budget that it could campaign on. Harper didn’t do that. He violated at least the spirit of his own law in a bid for power that was startling in its own obviousness. It made him look like a bit of a thug, in my opinion.
Now, I know that Dion had no spine, and that had Harper waited for his government to lose the confidence of the House, he could have had to sit through more than a dozen votes where Dion railed against the government, and then voted against it alone. But there was a way that Harper could have gotten around that. Take an issue that’s billed as an issue of confidence. Watch the Opposition line up against you. Wait for Dion to stand up and rail against the government, and be the ONLY Liberal MP to actually show up and symbolically (as opposed to actually) vote the government down.
And then watch the look on Dion’s face as Harper sits in the middle of a sea of about empty desks as about 33 Conservative MPs have decided to abstain as well. The hilarity that ensues should be something to watch. Does Dion let the government fall? Or do Liberal MPs suddenly charge back into the chamber to vote in favour of the government?
If Harper had done that, my respect for him would have gone up considerably. But he didn’t have time. It looked like the Liberals were going to sweep the September 8 by-elections, giving them some semblance of momentum, and Harper couldn’t have had that (though, if he lost the confidence of the House by exposing the silliness of Dion’s abstention acts, that could have stopped Liberal momentum cold).
I don’t disagree with you Candace, but that is not what Harper and the Cons said about this bill when they passed it. They specifically said it would prevent future Prime Ministers from doing EXACTLY what Harper then did.
So it seems then that this entire law was a useless exercise in propaganda that changed nothing from a legal standpoint.
If Duff Conacher can use the lawsuit to expose that, then its worth it even if he loses.
Mike: “I don’t disagree with you Candace, but that is not what Harper and the Cons said about this bill when they passed it. They specifically said it would prevent future Prime Ministers from doing EXACTLY what Harper then did.”
No. The intent was to prevent future Prime Ministers from doing what CHRETIEN did – have a majority, wait until the Opposition is at a weak point or the polls are in your party’s favour, then pull the plug only 2 or 3 years into a potentially 5 year mandate.
Throughout the debate around the bill, Harper & his cabal continuously, repeatedly, made it clear that this bill would NOT prevent a minority from falling, in any way. And if anyone thinks that the Parliament he dissolved was functional, I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you. The current one is only marginally better as Ignatieff has finally deigned to work with the gov’t. Note that the phone works both ways, so for him to complain that he hadn’t met or spoken privately with Harper since January makes him look just as bad, if not worse, than Harper. With all 3 Oppo parties publicly refusing to work with the gov’t, the minority gov’t, how the hell is anyone supposed to get anything done?
While I think Ignatieff came off looking like a loser, or at least a very crappy poker player, I hope that they can come up with some realistic, workable reforms to EI. Then a precedent will have been set, for this minority anyway, and more “committees” can be built – not the partisan House committees that have become an extension of QP, with everyone grandstanding to make political points, but two-party committees that can come up with good ideas to solve problems.
Another potential committee – social housing, with a focus on First Nations – NDP/CPC
moderation? was it something I said?
Candace,
The spirit of the law also applied to minority governments. That was the rhetoric when the law passed, and why the initial law gave the 2006 minority government three years to live, as opposed to the usual two. I mean the problem of a sitting prime minister opportunistically calling an election when the opposition is weak is equally unfair, regardless of whether the government is a minority or a majority.
James – you can’t POSSIBLY think that Parliament was working prior to the Sept election. The conference call that Jack! invited a Conservative MP to makes it pretty clear that he was thinking coalition, probably before the writ was dropped but definitely by the time we voted.
For a minority parliament to work effectively, the Opposition parties have to be willing to work with whichever party was elected as government. They weren’t at the time (3 or 4 major committees were pretty much paralyzed by either Opposition or the gov’t members) and have only really started to think about it now (Ignatieff, but not Layton or Duceppe).
“The spirit of the law also applied to minority governments” – says who? Not the experts.
From an article published in the Ottawa Citizen in April/08:
http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=15c68d91-edff-467f-9045-6f8c44c631d3
“…Mr. Franks said Mr. Harper did not even need the justification of committee anarchy or dysfunction to go the Governor General. The fixed-date law was an amendment to the Parliament of Canada Act, which says Parliament may be dissolved any time, he said. “Every province in Canada that has fixed election dates also has that exception.”…”
Honestly, this whole “he broke his own law” meme is getting pretty old. Just because people THINK it meant that no PM could call an election, doesn’t make it true.
It also means that the government side has to be willing to work with the Opposition parties as opposed to dictating an agenda…. don’t you think?
Can you honestly say that the government of the day was any more engaged and cooperative than the Opposition was?
“you can’t POSSIBLY think that Parliament was working prior to the Sept election.”
Whether or not it was working or not is immaterial. That’s no excuse to break a law, whether by its letter or its spirit. The fact remains that Harper’s Conservatives still had the confidence of parliament. They could have engineered their own defeat as other minority governments have done, but he needed something quicker. And he showed that, in this case, his own promises mean little when it comes to his quest for power.
““you can’t POSSIBLY think that Parliament was working prior to the Sept election.”
I’m going to bet that the folks who say things like this have never lived for an extended period of time outside Canada in one of the less developed democracies – South or Central America, Asia, Africa. Once you do, you realize that Canada’s partliament before September was working rather wll indeed.
I would apply the same observation to those who maintain that “Canada’s Health Care system is a shambles” or “Canada’s economy is in ruins”. For God’s sake, people, open your eyes. If you don’t think you live in one of the best countries in the world, go somewhere else for a year.
“For a minority parliament to work effectively, the Opposition parties have to be willing to work with whichever party was elected as government.”
Not really. It can just as easily be argued that when a minority parliament appears, no one party has a direct mandate to govern, since every single party elected to the legislature has had their platform repudiated by the voters in a majority of ridings. In such a situation, the mandate of parliament could conceivably devolve down to the individual MPs, elected to represent their own constituents, to work out deals on how to govern the country, on a case by case basis, based on which issues have the support of the majority of MPs in the House. Of course, the fact that most of the individual MPs each belong to a party reduces the number of negotiators to something more manageable.
Recent precedent suggests that the party that wins the most seats (as opposed to the most votes — see the 1979 Clark win) gets first crack at governing, but that’s malleable. Earlier, the sitting prime minister was given the first crack, and remained prime minister until his government actually fell to a vote of confidence before the opposition leader was given a chance to govern.
I do not believe that the Conservatives can claim any extra-special right to govern, just because they happen to have the most seats in parliament. The majority of MPs were elected in ridings which favoured other parties, after all, and it would seem undemocratic to expect them just to ignore _their_ voters wishes and fall in line with the government without some form of consultation or give-and-take.
Does the opposition have an obligation to _try_ to work with the government? Morally? maybe. Constitutionally? No. Every party’s MPs should try to work with the MPs of every other party in parliament. But if no accord can be found between the government and enough opposition MPs to secure the confidence of the House? If an accord can be found within a grouping of MPs of sufficient number to gain the confidence of the House? Then the government should expect to fall. And we should expect to be governed by a coalition of formerly opposition MPs. After all, they’re doing the job their voters put them in there to do.
“The intent was to prevent future Prime Ministers from doing what CHRETIEN did – have a majority, wait until the Opposition is at a weak point or the polls are in your party’s favour, then pull the plug only 2 or 3 years into a potentially 5 year mandate.”
But that line about not impairing the GG’s power’s that talked about at Dawgs and earlier here –
As I pointed out on Dr.D’s blog, the bill (re fixed election dates, it seems that ALL bills labelled C-16 must be about electoral reform or something) SPECIFICALLY protects the GG’s right to dissolve parliament at his/her discretion.
PMSH asked. She dissolved.
– still applies to a Majority.
In 2000 JC asked. She dissolved.
That is rather my point. We went through a bunch of hand waving and talk about limiting a Prime Minister’s ability to call an election whenever they felt like it and yet, by the section you yourself quote, nothing in the act actually does anything to limit that power.
As James rightly said, they merely had to engineer their own defeat if they wanted an election.
BTW, that call Jack! was on was AFTER the election, during the talk about coalition. It can’t really be used to demonstrate that the government had lost the confidence of the house – only a non-confidence vote can do that.
I expect that Harper and Flaherty discovered via internal means that they were already in deficit before the election and could see the downturn on the horizon and decided to try for a fresh mandate before it hit bad. Hence all the silly talk about never running deficits and the fundamentals were strong and it was a good time to buy stokcs, all while we had about a $10 Billon deficit.
And that line in the law let him do exactly what JC did – have an election when it suited him.
Hence my opinion that this toothless law, which changed nothing legally, was nothing but propaganda smoke and mirrors from the get go.