Tag Archives: Canada Post

Roundup: Corrosive myths about mandates

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It’s official – Theresa May is now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom thanks to being selected by her party caucus, and thanks to her rival dropping out (after a spectacular media implosion) and she was left with no rival to take to the party membership. (See her first speech here). But that has already started the general nonsense about her being “unelected” or not having a “mandate,” all of which is complete and utter nonsense, as though anyone making those claims doesn’t understand how the Westminster system works – and yes, I’m looking at you, CBC, who used the term in your reporting on her being appointed by the Queen yesterday to the job.

One of the most incomprehensible piece on the subject so far was published in the Guardian, written by Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who seems to be utterly mystified with the way that governments are formed in our shared system of government, or the fact that we don’t elect prime ministers. (He also advocated a bunch of proportional representation nonsense, which didn’t help his arguments any either). Now, while it’s likely that the whole piece was simply his attempt at trolling for the government to call a general election (somehow bypassing the Fixed Term Parliaments Act as though it were no big deal), hoping to reverse their devastating losses from the previous election while running on a pro-Remain ticket, it’s nevertheless shocking just how civically illiterate the leader of a major political party is in print.

There was a great rebuttal to Farron’s nonsense by Robert Hazell, which offers some clarity on the way that Westminster parliaments work, but he makes the very salient point that all of this talk about needing a democratic mandate “has a corrosive effect on public understanding of our parliamentary system, and on legitimacy and trust in government.” And he’s absolutely right, which is why I am especially outraged that media outlets like the CBC are repeating this bilge rather than reporting on our shared system of government as it exists and how it’s supposed to work. Civic literacy should not be a high bar to clear when it comes to reporting on politics, and yet here we are.

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Roundup: Rebutting the reformers’ complaints

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If it were possible for someone to write a column that was basically one long subtweet, then I’m pretty sure that it’s what Andrew Coyne did with his column on electoral reform, with me as his unspoken target – particularly as he parroted several of my arguments (that no one else seems to be making) without actually getting their substance correct. So here we go.

When proportional representation advocates complain that the allocation of seats among the parties in the legislature does not resemble their relative shares of the votes cast — with the especially unhappy effect of allowing a minority of the voters to rule over the majority — first past the post’s defenders reply: why should it? Members were elected in 338 separate riding elections, not in a single nationwide vote.

Yes, and that’s pointed out for a number of reasons – that the vote share figure that reformers cite as evidence is not actually real (hence its use as evidence is meaningless), and the fact that each MP is elected to a single seat in a separate election has a particular meaning that gives them individual agency rather than making them a thrall of a particular party. This is an important consideration in the electoral system because it gives a clear line for how MPs are empowered, which is what we keep insisting we want. It also demonstrates that if the complaint is that MPs aren’t empowered, it’s because it’s their own choice or ignorance – not the electoral system that is at fault.

When reformers point out the imbalance this creates between voters — in a given election it typically takes many more votes to elect a member from one party than another — first-past-the-posters look positively mystified: everyone gets one ballot. And when the former observe that under first past the post the votes cast for anyone but the leading candidate in a riding are “wasted,” in the sense that they do not contribute to electing anyone, the latter lose all patience. How could any of the votes have been wasted, they ask, if all were counted? The candidate who was elected may not have been everyone’s choice, but he still represents everyone.

Here Coyne adopts the same specious math that the Broadbent Institute was pushing over Twitter yesterday, which ignores how ridings actually work, and that elections are 338 separate events, and mashes the figures together and divides by 338, pretending that it’s a number with meaning when it’s not – just like the popular vote. It’s pretty much like bringing a unicorn to a logic exam. As well, he doesn’t make a compelling argument about why votes are “wasted” because it ignores the broader political ecosystem. It has little to do with the fact that the MP who won the seat represents everyone, but that the vote itself is but one small piece of political engagement. Casting a vote is not the end-all-be-all of political engagement. Rather, the system is built for people to be joining parties and engaging at a grassroots level to develop policy and for riding associations to act as interlocutors between the local community and the caucus, even when they don’t have a local MP in that party. As well, the percentage by which the MP won the seat is a figure that matters. If it’s by a slim margin, then those votes against are certainly not “wasted” – they have a meaning in the message that it sends to the MP about where his or her support lies. That matters.

To reformers’ complaints about how the system works, in other words, the answer commonly offered is: that’s how the system works. It is as if that were not just the system we have now, but the only system there is. And of course if you assume that then yes, reformers’ objections become literally incomprehensible. They might as well object to the weather. If only one member can be elected per riding, then obviously it’s silly to talk about wasted votes, or to complain that voters who supported another candidate are not represented. That’s life. Suck it up. The resulting parliament was not proportional? That’s not how our system works.

No, that’s not why one has to point out that it’s how the system works – one needs to point that out because you need to understand how the system works before you go about changing it, which usually means breaking things and making them worse. It has been proven that every time we tinker with our system, we make it worse, which leads us to want to tinker with it more, breaking it even further. Why? Because people don’t understand how the system works, so they assume that it’s broken, particularly if they get emotional that it doesn’t do what they think it should. This is the whole premise of my book – that we need to stop and understand how and why things work the way they do before we go about messing with the system some more because history has shown repeatedly that tinkering makes it worse. Ignorance is literally killing our democracy, and no matter how well intentioned its reformers tend to be, they almost always make it worse.

At any rate, it’s worth debating. Some might argue that single-member ridings give constituents a clearer sense of who to take their problems to, and who to hold to account. Others might reply that, with several members competing to represent them, constituents might get better service: if one didn’t answer your letter, another might.

From here, Coyne goes off about how maybe multi-member ridings would be better, possibly sprinkled in with single-member ones where they would be too large (hello, all of rural and remote Canada), which immediately brings up questions about how that could possibly be considered a more fair system. And while he touches ever so briefly on accountability, he gets the premise wrong – an MP’s job is not to “service” one’s constituents. It’s about holding the government to account. This, however, is lost on the reformers, whose fetishisation with fantastical notions about “representation” overshadow all other aspects of how the system works in its broader ecosystem. Yes, representation is a part of it, but it is not the totality, and yet that is what all of their reforms are geared toward with no regard for the bigger whole.

So no, it’s not about whether other systems are possible – it’s about not making things worse because you don’t understand how things work now. That’s a very different thing entirely.

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Roundup: Perverting the Westminster system

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Amidst the various detritus floating out there of post-Brexit thinkpieces, one could blink and miss a pair of posts the Andrew Potter made yesterday, but let me state that it would be a mistake to do so. The first post was a response to another trolling post from someone else who stated that a Brexit vote would never have happened in the American system because of all of its various checks and balances. Potter, however, doesn’t rise to the bait in quite the way you would think, and instead looks at the ways in which Responsible Government in the UK has gone wrong of late, which led to this situation. Things like the referendum itself not being a usual parliamentary instrument, or the fixed-parliaments legislation, and the ways in which party leadership contests have done away with the usual accountability mechanisms on the leaders that are being elected rather than selected. In other words, it’s the perversions of the Westminster system that have caused the problems at hand, not the system itself that is to blame as the original trolling post would otherwise indicate. And for those of you who’ve been following my writing for a while, this is a recurring theme with me too (which you’ll see expounded upon in my book when it’s released next year) – that it’s the constant attempts to tinker with the system that wind up being the problem because we’ve been forgetting how the system is actually supposed to operate. If we left the system alone and used it the way it’s intended, we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems creeping in, forcing people to demand yet more tinkering reforms.

The second post from Potter is a continuation from an aside in the first piece, but it’s worth a read nevertheless because it’s a quick look at ways in which the changes that America needs to its system go beyond simple electoral reform, but rather a change to a Westminster-style parliamentary system rather than its current morass that more resembles a pre-Responsible Government reflection of the “balanced constitution” model that the UK was experimenting with at the time. One imagines that it would mean turning their president into a more figurehead role than also having him or her be the head of government as well as head of state as the office is now (this is the part that Potter glosses over), but the rest of the points stand – that a confidence-based system instead of term limits would allow its heads of government to burn out in a third term rather than create independent power bases that are then used for dynastic purposes (witness both the Bush and Clinton dynasties), that problems with things like Supreme Court appointments would rectify themselves, and that it would force reforms to their party system that would largely prevent the kind of outsider demagogue problem that we saw in the current election cycle with Trump and Sanders. It’s certainly thought provoking, and a timely defence of our parliamentary institutions as they are supposed to function.

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Roundup: Happy Dominion Day!

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Happy Dominion Day! In lieu of the usual rant, today I leave you with a few items for your perusal: a look at ten animals that helped shaped Canada, a look back at the creation of the flag, 40 famous Canadians giving their memories of childhood summers, and Maclean’s has 111 stories from Canadians. Now go enjoy the day, to the sounds of my July 1st theme song.

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QP: Sharper responses to repetitive questions

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The vast majority of MPs fresh from a convention, you would have thought that the leaders would be there to join them, but no, Elizabeth May was the only party leader present in the Commons for QP on a sweltering day in the Nation’s Capital. Denis Lebel led off, demanding a referendum on electoral reform to ensure that there was proper support. Mark Holland responded, inviting members of the opposition for their input on what kind of a system they would like to see. Lebel repeated the question in English, and Holland brought up the Fair Elections Act. Lebel asked again, and Holland broadened his response to say that it wasn’t just about electoral reform, but about things like mandatory voting or electronic voting. Andrew Scheer was up next, and demanded that the government withdraw the motion to create the electoral reform committee. Holland reiterated the points that people believe that the status quo isn’t good enough. Scheer closed it off with a series of lame hashtag jokes, but Holland praised the dynamic conversation that was about to happen. Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet led off for the NDP, and wanted C-14 referred to the Supreme Court. Jody Wilson-Raybould insisted that they needed to pass the bill before the Supreme Court deadline. The question was repeated in French, and Wilson-Raybould stated that the bill is the best public policy framework going forward. Murray Rankin took over, and pleaded for the government to work with them to get the bill right. Wilson-Raybould’s answer didn’t change, and on a repeated supplemental, Jane Philpott insisted that they need the legislation in place to protect physicians and pharmacists.

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Roundup: Jumping the satellite offices gun

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The NDP are signalling that they have received a hopeful sign in their attempt to take their battle over their satellite offices to the Federal Court, because an affidavit from a university professor that argues in favour of their position was accepted as evidence by the court. If I may be so bold, championing this as a hopeful sign is jumping the gun. Sure, they haven’t had their case summarily dismissed just yet, but that’s hardly a good sign. It could be that the judge wants to hear more arguments before writing his or her reasons as to why this case should never be brought before the courts because of parliamentary privilege, and while there is some academic opinion out there that this doesn’t qualify, I have a hard time seeing why not. It is a fundamental tenet of our democratic system that parliament be self-governing, which means that it does not submit itself to an external body for oversight, and that the courts do not interfere with Parliament and its operations, just as Parliament does not interfere with the courts as they do their job. The mechanism by which the House of Commons governs its affairs is the Board of Internal Economy. They may choose at some future point to come up with a new internal mechanism, but for the time being, that’s it. Normally it operates by consensus, but in this case, the NDP feel that they are being treated unfairly because the other parties at the table insisted that they broke the rules, and to justify their refusal to play by those rules, the NDP have cried “partisan” and “kangaroo court” rather than admit that they were in the wrong when they used parliamentary resources to open up those satellite offices (the very nature of which are dubious to begin with, because they are an extension of the centralization of power and communications within the leader’s office, which is problematic for the rights of individual MPs). By turning to the courts, the NDP are repudiating the supremacy of parliament in determining its own affairs, and that’s a problem. But then again, they are consistent in this repudiation, from demanding that the Board of Internal Economy be dismantled and replaced by a new bureaucracy to oversee MPs activities and expenses, and that senators be placed under some other external authority (in advance of abolition, of course). The problem with trying to replace parliamentary self-governance with a technocratic bureaucracy is that it undermines the fundamental nature of our democratic system. If we can’t expect the people we elect to be able to manage their own affairs, then why are we bothering to elect them in the first place? We might as well just hand power back to the Queen, tell her that the past 170-odd years of Responsible Government didn’t really work out, but thank you very much, and be done with it. Asking the courts to interfere with Parliament’s self-governing ability is a similar admission, rather than taking responsibility for their actions. It’s petulant and does long-term damage to our very democratic system. I quite look forward to a sound denunciation of their position by the Federal Court.

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QP: Scripts vs Saccharine 

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The galleries full of Sikh delegates in advance of the Komagata Maru apology, the benches were similarly full on the floor of the Commons. Rona Ambrose, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, led off by railing about the government’s proposed motion to control the parliamentary calendar. Trudeau noted that they were trying to give MPs time to speak and that this was about putting forward the agenda that Canadians voted on. Ambrose dropped a reference to Trudeau’s admiration for the “basic dictatorship” of China before asking again in French, and Trudeau gave the same response. Ambrose moved onto the topic of an electoral reform referendum, and Trudeau used the “Unfair Elections Act” as his excuse for his preferred consultative process. Denis Lebel took over in French, asked Ambrose’s second question again and got the same answer, and his second question was the referendum question in French, prompting Trudeau to drop the “60 percent of Canadians voted to change the electoral system” talking point. Thomas Mulcair was up next, his mini-lectern making a return, and he first thundered about the government shutting down democracy, then asked about the Alberta Court of Appeal ruling around doctor-assisted dying before demanding that C-14 be referred to the Supreme Court. Mulcair asked again in French, got the same answer, and then changed to the issue of home mail delivery. Trudeau gave his standard response about the promise to consult, and for his final question, Mulcair demanded that the government stop taking veterans to court. Trudeau insisted that they were working with veterans to get results for them.

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QP: Endlessly repeating the same question

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While it was Monday, the no major leaders in the Commons — Justin Trudeau was several blocks away talking about Canada increasing its contributions to the a Global Fund to fight HIV and TB, while Rona Ambrose was in Alberta, and Thomas Mulcair was, well, elsewhere. Andrew Scheer led off, mini-lectern on desk, asking if the government would match donations to other charities than just the Red Cross in the Fort McMurray wildfires. Ralph Goodale praised the capacity of the Red Cross, and said they would look at other compensation going forward. Scheer then asked why the PM’s in-laws went to Washington and not the Natural Resources Minister. Dominic LeBlanc reminded him that the president himself invited the PM’s mother and in-laws. Scheer lamented that party “bagmen” also squeezed out ministers, and LeBlanc reminded him that the two in question were invited by the White House, and the taxpayers paid no part of their trip. Gérard Deltell then took over in French, asking the same question again twice, and LeBlanc repeated the response in the other official language. Dion responded on the second time, and he praised the work of the Natural Resources minister in getting an agreement with the Americans. Peter Julian led off for the NDP, howling about KPMG’s involvement. Diane Lebouthillier decried those wealthy individuals who haven’t paid their fair share, and that there were criminal investigations underway, contrary to his assertion. Julian asked again in English, Lebouthillier repeated her answer, adding that she isn’t sure why he can’t understand it. Niki Ashton hectored about the size of the budget implementation bill, for which Bill Morneau disputed that it was an omnibus bill. Ashton then demanded immediate decriminalisation of simple possession of marijuana, and Bill Blair quoted Mulcair in saying certain decriminalisation would be a mistake.

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QP: Demanding details of a deal not done

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Another busy day on the hill, and while Trudeau had been in the Commons first thing to make another statement on the Fort McMurray situation, he was back for more as QP got underway. Rona Ambrose led off, mini-lectern on neighbouring desk, and asked for reassurance that infrastructure funding to rebuild Fort McMurray would be top priority. Trudeau assured her that yes, this was indeed a priority. Ambrose read the exact same question again in French, got the same answer, and then asked about the details for a bailout for Bombardier. Trudeau reminded her that the negotiations were ongoing, and that they expected a strong long-term business case. Denis Lebel then repeated the question in French, got the same answer, and for his final question, Lebel demanded that they government allow the Billy Bishop airport expand to let Porter also buy C-Series jets. Trudeau responded that they were not going to re-open the tripartite agreement around the Toronto waterfront. Thomas Mulcair was up next, and demanded criminal prosecutions for KPMG tax havens, and Trudeau reminded him that they were working to combat tax evasion. Mulcair repeated the question, got the same answer, before Mulcair moved onto the Canada Post review and not immediately restoring home mail delivery. Trudeau said that they committed to studying the issue and understanding how to give Canadians a better level of service. Mulcair asked the same again in English, skirting the rules around the use of the word “lying” in the chamber. Trudeau reiterated that they were putting in the time that the previous government didn’t in order to ensure Canadians got the right level of delivery.

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Roundup: Responsible, not rogue

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A Liberal MP has broken ranks on a government bill! Oh noes! Let us now treat this as some kind of crisis of leadership! Okay, so the CBC piece about the event is only slightly more measured than that, but their Twitter headline certainly wasn’t.

One of the most enduring problems with Canadian political reporting is the constant conundrum of demanding that MPs exercise more independence, but immediately treating any instances of MPs breaking party ranks as some kind of crisis of leadership, where obviously the grip has been lost and soon it will be all over for the leader. (In some cases, the party itself treats it as some kind of betrayal of solidarity *cough*NDP*cough* and punishes its MPs internally with things like removing QP spots for weeks or removing members from committees or travel junkets). Ditto with senators, or at least until Trudeau kicked his senators out of national caucus – “is the leader losing control of his senators?” was not an uncommon headline either (though not one that is generally screamed as loudly, and one might also add that not enough ink was spilled on the split in caucus over Bill C-377 – the “union transparency” bill – the first time around when they voted to gut it, and Marjory LeBreton stepped down as Government Leader a couple of weeks later after seriously mishandling the whole thing inside her caucus). And yes, Trudeau did promise more free votes, but this is one of those common promises that tends to wind up with MPs voting in lock-step anyway because they all really support their party or they all just happen to all think in lock-step. I am also reminded that when Michael Ignatieff tried to encourage his caucus to vote more freely on private members’ bills by not rarely voting for them personally – so that they wouldn’t look to him as to how to vote – he was punished for it by Jack Layton lying about those missed votes as poor attendance during the election (though Ignatieff should have responded with the policy and shut him down, but didn’t, and lost the election quite badly as a result). Suffice to say, when MPs don’t vote in lockstep, we shouldn’t use terms like “goes rogue,” because it gives entirely the wrong connotation about what has taken place. We want more responsible and independent-minded MPs, so let’s not make it harder for them to do so. And let’s leave the word “rogue” to this for the time being:

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