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Is Canada Democratic?

onecat

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There are signs on the rolling highway to Australia's tidy capital city that offer some unintentional advice to Canada's beleaguered and much-maligned Senate.

The signs, which are directed to sleepy truckers, read: "Stop. Revive. Survive."

And if the country ever does stop to breathe life into the lifeless red chamber in Ottawa, the model offered up by the Australian Senate is a good place to start. To begin with, it's elected.

Canada's Fathers of Confederation, led by Sir John A. Macdonald with his sweet tooth for patronage, decided in 1867 that the prime minister would appoint senators, in effect turning the chamber into a living wax museum of party hacks and bagmen.

In sharp contrast, Australia opted for an elected chamber when it became a federation in 1901. This has evolved to allow senators to play an active role in checking the government and balancing the country's powerful executive, prime minister and the government-controlled House of Representatives.

As would be expected, Australian senators recommend their upper chamber as a good model for Canada and can't imagine how anyone could accept an appointment in the first place.

Take Senator John Faulkner, a former cabinet minister in the Labour party government of Paul Keating. When asked if an appointed Senate had any strengths, he bluntly replied: "None that I can see. It's an abrogation of a democratic system.

"I would want all my parliamentary representatives to be democratically elected. I would want to see the will of the people represented -- as it is in Australia."

Senator Margaret Reid, who belongs to the Australian Liberal party and was just recently bumped out of the Speaker's chair, was initially more diplomatic. But when told about a truant Canadian senator who lived in Mexico for many years without incident, Ms. Reid said the lack of "accountability" in Canada's upper house is to blame.

The Australian Senate truly became an independent body in 1949 when proportional representation was introduced to elect senators. Each of the six states has 12 senators -- half of whom must stand for election every three years -- along with two each from the two territories. Voters can either vote for the party or rank their six favourite candidates "below the line." Any party receiving about 15 per cent of first preferences wins a Senate seat.

Over time, Australians have become strategic voters for Senate seats, siding with minor parties to balance off the larger parties running the show in the House of Representatives. The minor parties usually strike a deal with the official Opposition in the House of Representatives -- either Labour or Liberal -- to create a coalition to confront the government's agenda.

In fact, the Australian Senate's greatest critics have always been prime ministers and cabinet members because their plans are often thwarted by the other house. A few years ago, Mr. Keating, then the prime minister, called the upper chamber "unrepresentative swill."

Although struggling lately with internal strife, the Australian Democrats have emerged in the Senate (the party holds no seats in the other house) as a third party for the country. In the '90s, they fed into the voters' distrust of the Labour and Liberal parties by running on the slogan "Keep the *******s honest."

At present, Labour's 28 senators, along with 16 seats held by the minor parties -- the Democrats, the Green Party, the National Party of Australia, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, and Independents -- counter Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's 31 seats in the chamber. (One seat is vacant due to a recent resignation.)

It is a setup some Canadian senators regularly reject. They say it would create gridlock in our Parliament as it has in Australia.

"Rubbish! Where is the gridlock? I would suggest that the introduction of the GST in Australia went a lot better and less painful because of our Senate," says Independent Senator Meg Lees.

"We actually used Canada as a model of what not to do."

In fact, the Australian parliament has only experienced such a snarl six times in more than 100 years. If a bill is rejected three times by the Senate, the government may order up an election for both houses, commonly known as "double dissolution." Because of the risk for both sides, the politicians have turned to compromise through negotiations.

In Australia, which views itself as the most democratic country in the world, senators are respected members of the legislative process. A few years ago, a government move to decrease its powers went nowhere with the population.

Meanwhile, in Canada, recent polling shows that Canadians are split with either making the Senate an elected body or simply abolishing it, as they have done in every provincial legislature.

Virtually no one is in favour of the status quo.

Senate reform in Canada has been much talked about, but attempts to change the system have failed: The last was the Charlottetown accord, rejected in 1992.

Some urgency is now being felt as the hereditary peers in Britain's House of Lords, the very unelected model the Canadian Senate was based on, have actually agreed to wipe out most of their numbers and seem to be moving toward elections.

A visit to Australia's Senate in Canberra reveals the contrast between this elected body and Canada's appointed one.

- Question Period or Time. In Canada's Senate, one is reminded of a mock parliament staged by university students when the House of Commons is not sitting. Three days a week, before few reporters and no TV cameras, Liberal Senate Leader Sharon Carstairs answers all the opposition queries and sometimes even responds with a casual "I'll have to get back to you on that one."

In the Australian Senate, there are 10 ministers, including those in the high-profile defence and health portfolios, in the chamber whom the opposition grill four days a week before a wide television audience.

While more attention is paid to the House of Representatives' "question time" because of the presence of Prime Minister John Howard, journalists cannot afford to ignore the often-rowdy, partisan upper chamber.

- Canada's 105 senators gave themselves a pay raise last year along with MPs, bumping up their salaries to about $106,000. For the first time, the members of the upper chamber actually acknowledged that they belong to a lesser house by giving themselves a smaller raise than the MPs, who now receive about $130,000.

The 76 elected Australian senators each make the equivalent of about $83,000 Canadian a year.

- The Canadian Senate is still stinging from the revelation of the woeful attendance record of some senators, including former Ontario Liberal leader Andy Thompson, who spent most of his time in Mexico instead of the red chamber.

Senators are appointed until the age of 75, and while fines for lengthy absences have been stiffened, there are still some who make infrequent visits to the lifeless chamber.

Australian senators face the electorate every six years. Any truant would no doubt have to face their wrath.

- Prime Minister Jean Chré'©en often boasts about the number of women he has put into the Senate. Supporters of an appointed chamber argue that if it was an elected body, the number of females would likely diminish to the lower numbers found in the House of Commons. Same goes for visible minorities.

That argument is undone Down Under, where 30 per cent of senators are women, similar to the proportion in Canada. An aborigine senator leads one of the smaller parties in the Senate, and there are two Asian senators as well. Unlike the Canadian Senate, there are only a few seniors. But there are senators in their 20s (in Canada, one has to be at least 30 to be eligible).

- Canadian senators defend their salaries by citing their committee work.

Created as a chamber of "sober second thought," committees review legislation from the other house. But at the end of the day, the government-controlled Senate usually passes the legislation under the time frame set out by the government. While it sometimes threatens to send legislation back with major changes, it usually backs off at the last minute.

In contrast, Australian Senate committees have become the place to hold its government to account. Half of the committees are chaired by opposition members, and all are armed with subpoena power to summon witnesses and government documents. The result is that bureaucrats and ministers appear willingly, knowing that refusal can result in bad publicity, fines or imprisonment.

Senate committees dig into scandals and the investigations only end when all the answers have been found. This year alone, one committee exposed attempts by the Liberal government to manipulate media coverage of illegal immigrants during last fall's national election. Another committee forced the Treasury Department to acknowledge the loss of billions of dollars in a foreign currency swap. Committee work also forced the government to publish a list of every contract for more than $100,000 it issued in the past six months and post it on the government's official Web site twice a year.

For Ted Morton, a Canadian political science professor who spent the past winter as a resident fellow at the Australian Senate in Canberra, the Australian model is a great one for Canada. He says it disproves critics who argue that an elected, effective and equal Senate is an American creation that could never work in a parliamentary system.

Mr. Morton, one of two so-called elected "senators in waiting" in Alberta, said he found that Australia's upper chamber provides "the kind of independent 'check and balance' to prime ministerial dominance that is so lacking in Canada today."

He advocates regional equality rather than provincial equality as the basis for representation, and using some form of proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post elections to elect Senators.

Looking at the results of the 1997 and 2000 elections, Mr. Morton has concluded that with proportional representation, the Liberals would not have controlled the Senate following either vote
 
Frederik G said:
Well, Francoise Ducros is finally gone!

And did anyone catch CNN Crossfire yesterday? I missed it and I wanna know if they said anything major about us.
Some guy said that Canada was an undemocratic nation because our senate is appointed and because the party line is strictly enforced. So what? The party line in the US is strictly enforced too - probably some blind American commentator who believes they know everything about Canada when the same stuff happens in the US. As for the senate, if we wanted to have an elected one, we'd have to go to the congressional system and there's a certain allure of having an upper house that is appointed and thus doesn't have to get re-elected (if they did, imagine the crap senators would pull). All we need to do is give the senate some actual power, then there'd be no complaining about a useless upper house.
 
Your Senate is totally undemocratic and way too mucj power is the hands of PMO.

Yes canada needs major democratic forms, our party system is way too strict, and the guys in the back benches are just yes men. Ihate to break your Canada bubble, but the United States is far more democratic than Canada. The first past post system we use is old and way out of date. Just anyone in the west if their vote really counts....

If you want more detail info you can email me at onecat77@excite.com and I‘ll sent you tons of info.

Its a sad state, even Britian is trying to change their system, so that must tell ya something, seeing as they created.
 
All "parties" are corrupt.
You don‘t get a head in that buisness by being honest and wholesome. You get a head by lying and getting away with it, stepping on people and breaking promises.
It‘s like a giant game of survivor actually.

"Ihate to break your Canada bubble, but the United States is far more democratic than Canada." The US has also had more of their leaders assassinated.
Maybe democracy isn‘t all that great ;)
 
Democracy is the least worst system of government. At least according to Winston Churchill.

Unfortunately for us all, lying and cheating gets votes because people are willing to put up with it. Democracy is a participatory form of government. If your politician is lying to you, you have to organise his constituents to put pressure on him to show that that is a BAD thing. You need to have a way to recall politicians who lie, whether it be by political means (and there are parties that advocate that), by "moral suasion" (making clear to your politicians that there are consequences to their misbehaviour), or by violent means (rebellion, usually when all other attempts have been exhausted).

The problem is that people are lazy. They want the government to run itself. They want the law courts to run themselves - how many times have you heard people bitch about having to do jury duty? Given a choice between freedom and dictatorship, people often go with dictatorship because it involves less work. As long as the dictatorship promotes order, and the rules today are more or less the same as the rules tomorrow, they don‘t give a damn. Let someone else handle it.

Gunnar
 
Don‘t fool yourself, there‘s nothing democratic about the US. The president is merely a tool for those who have enough money to push specific agendas -- ie. the ultra rich, the gun lobby, the oil companies, etc, etc, etc.

Moreover, you basically have a choice of A or B -- in other words, a two party government, now that‘s not representative at all. Sure, there‘s often a third party, but c‘mon, that person never has a chance -- see Ross Perot!

Are we just upset because the PM‘s aide had the balls to say what everyone has been thinking but couldn‘t. I think she should get a feakin medal! Bush is a moron! What‘s more, since Bush is merely a product of the Republican Party and the conservative political elite, I think we should extend that moron label to the entire political regime in the US!

All I can say is that while our system may not be perfect, for sure as $hit the US system isn‘t perfect either.
 
It is true that people get what they vote for. But we Canada don‘t even vote the PM, just his party. We have vote for moron A becuase he‘s running party A, when we want moron B but he‘s with the wrong party.

Ifr we actuallty had a chance to vote a PM and a ruling party who could be different, just imagine how much better the system would work. Sure it would still be run insiders and like but it would be more to real change and reform. We have an old and out date system that needs to be reformed and you only have to look countries like New Zealand and Austrialia to see there reforms. In Austrialia they actually have a work upper house that is elected and doing the job it was designed for, unlike our own.
 
Well, I guess it‘s just a difference of personal opinion/choice.

But, for the record, I think it is far better to vote for a party and a platform/policy agenda than to vote for a person. To be honest, I think it makes for a better run government (well, in theory I suppose it should, but reality is often different). This way, you don‘t have an elected PM (or in the case of the US, the Prez) fighting against the parliament on policy and mandate. No executive vetos, just plain agenda setting.

But really, we are just arguing about the same thing but under different names. It‘s kinda like saying that I like the Dodge Aries and then you call me stupid ‘cause you like the Plymouth K-car better. Take off the window dressing and you get the same old thing underneath.
 
Humint - First of all, I have lived under an independent Governor, albeit on a State level(which you implied never happens) and it worked fine. Second point, does that mean that all the people who voted in the current "political regime" are morons, too? They do get voted in you know... Again, I have lived in both systems and there are plusses and minuses to both. I‘m sure Sgt Smedley or some other Yanks would probably agree
 
We indirectly vote directly for our Prime Minister.
While we vote the party, the PM has an incredible amount of power and has the power to make everyone vote his way in the HoC.

If the party doesn‘t listen to the PM, you of course get the vote of non-confidence, and we get to vote again and get a new PM.
 
argylls_recruiting said:
Moreover, you basically have a choice of A or B -- in other words, a two party government, now that's not representative at all. Sure, there's often a third party, but c'mon, that person never has a chance -- see Ross Perot!

Hmmmm, are you suggesting that at any time since it's creation the NDP has had a chance to win a federal election?

Of our 5 main parties only two of them have ever governed this nation. Show me the difference between that and the USA.
 
    Lying and cheating politicians. Pretty blanket statement. It's a learned behavior because when they tell it like it is or will be ( a la Kim Campbell) they lose. Lesson learned. People are disinclined to hear bad news. (otherwise known as the truth). And what is a politician Most in Canada are your run of the mill businessman, lawyers, farmers etc who for the most part doing work for their constituents. Thats the hidden part. Only the big flashy issues get peoples attention and polarise them As the saying goes, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of them all of the time."

We do have a democracy, because no one can take ou vote away, and we can bitch about them.

As to those momoron politicians. You have an education, access to health care, food on your table, roof over your head, and be able to celebrate Christmas any way you wish. Me thinks people complain too much, and take for granted the country we live in. Not perfect, but not hurting.
 
Ghost778 said:
All "parties" are corrupt.
You don't get a head in that buisness by being honest and wholesome. You get a head by lying and getting away with it, stepping on people and breaking promises.
It's like a giant game of survivor actually.

Thx for telling it like it is!
 
I think Gunnar makes good points in his post and I agree people in western
democracies do allow their governments to take responsibility for their
managment.  However, Winston Churchill's quote regarding democracy is
â Å“the worst possible system of government except for all the othersâ ?
Gotta love the Brit humour.

I've been in China and signs of communism are found in the higher elchons
of government and occasionally outside of the larger cities.  On the street level,
China is cut-throat capitalistic in my opinion.  What you can get, pirate, trade,
barter and buy far outclasses Canada in any direction.  Canada is much more
socialistic.  In the application of the rule of law, Canada through its history
and development can apply it evenly.

One striking difference between Canada and say China or India is the relative
difference between the rich and poor and the application of "rule of law".  In
India and China, the rule of law is often corrupted by bribes or the expectation
of bribes (almost ingrained in th culture) and does not apply evenly to all.
In Canada, the difference between the rich and poor (affluent hi-tech engineer
to the hobo) is much closer.  This observation can be applied to many soceties
and countries where the application of democracy works, and where it doesn't
or can't.  


 
To me, democracy is icing on the cake.  An monarchy with every single power of the state put into one person yet subject to a strong tradition of the "Rule of Law" is better then a democracy that exists without the Rule of Law (this would probably be an oligarchy).

Democracy is only worth the pains if you're going to have an active citizenry, this is why Athenians enforced it with random lots and the "red mark" (to fine late-comers).

There is a reason that the Americans bound the President and Congress to the Constitution (something that our legalize-ridden Constitution Act, 1982 fails to do in many glaring cases)....
 
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