Headlines, North America

POLITICS-CANADA: "Democratic Renewal" Gets Mixed Reviews

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Mar 9 2005 (IPS) - Looking back on the announcement one year ago by Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin that elected members of Parliament in the House of Commons can vote freely on selected government measures and proposed laws, critics are taking a jaundiced look at what has been hailed as an advance in "democratic renewal" by the governing Liberal federal government.

"To allow free votes among parliamentarians in hierarchical structured parties in an executive dominated parliament is to do something that is relatively superficial. Superficial because it comes at the end of the day," says Steven Patten, a University of Alberta political scientist professor.

In making this change to a British style parliamentary system where Canadian MPs have historically been expected to vote strictly on party lines and government MPs especially have been described as "trained seals" for their loyalty to government motions in parliament on all occasions, Martin’s decision is viewed as a step towards repairing the general sense of voter cynicism towards politicians in general in Canada.

In Martin’s plan there are three kinds of parliamentary votes – first, where every MP can vote freely, including cabinet ministers on government measures; second, where ministers are the only ones required to side with the government; and third, where all government MPs must vote with the government as a matter of confidence, particularly on matters involving the federal budget.

Martin has described this publicly as "a change to the culture of Parliament, where all MPs, including government members are now empowered and encouraged to defend their opinions and vote, according to their conscience."

But Patten says that elected members of the House of Commons in the Canadian Parliament do not have sufficient input in the shape of the legislation, various options or the parliamentary agenda set by the prime minister and his advisors.

"The new parliamentary measure doesn’t get at the power structures within parties and the dominance of cabinet over parliament," he said.

On coming to power in December 2003, Martin promised to embark on a different direction from the trend toward centralisation of political power in the office of the prime minister, and where MPs in the governing Liberal party are expected to support all pro-government parliamentary motions and legislation at all stages.

For Carolyn Bennett, an elected Liberal member of parliament and a cabinet minister in the Martin government, democratic renewal is more than just freeing up MPs to vote "yes" or "no".

"None of us (in the ruling Liberal caucus of MPs) want to vote against the government. We would just prefer that they listen to us, as members of Parliament," she said.

The process is also about having ordinary elected politicians in the House of Commons participate in the development of new laws in the parliamentary committee stage, she told IPS.

"Quite often, legislation or policies came to committee as a big cake, you either like it or you don’t like it, but you can’t say ‘it needs more cinnamon’ or ‘why didn’t you put raisins in it?’."

Still, Duff Conacher, the coordinator for the Ottawa based Democracy Watch, has serious concerns about MPs voting "according to their whim" without fully consulting constituents.

Typically, elected MPs in their individual constituencies will hold open meetings, poll public opinion and invite people to direct their comments via email to a web site in order to gauge reaction to a specific issue debated in Parliament.

Conacher says this is a faulty process since MPs are more likely to hear from the vocal opponents of a proposed measure rather than the supporters or people who have not fully made up their minds.

Instead, Conacher urges that Canadian MPs be given increased resources to hold Swedish-style study circles across their individual constituencies where multiple meetings of representative samples of citizens in small groups of 15 to 20 discuss in depth new bills introduced in Parliament.

"In the first meeting, they learn the issue, and they hear the views of stakeholders. The second meeting, they start to discuss the issue. And the third meeting, (the selected citizens) all make a decision of what their view is," says Conacher.

But should MPs be entirely directed by their constituents in how they vote in Parliament? Steven Patten has no difficulty with study circles and other means to expand a citizens’ driven political agenda.

At the same time, the University of Alberta professor says that Conacher is ignoring the central role that political parties play in Canadian parliamentary democracy. At election time, voters pick a political party and its platform and those who are elected are expected to vote in Parliament based on its specific principles, he said.

Patten "has a lot of sympathy" for the left-wing New Democratic Party, which supports same-sex marriage as a human right and is now insisting that its MPs support government legislation that legalises it, even though Prime Minister Martin announced that MPs outside cabinet have the right to vote on the matter as they wish.

"The (NDP) has to stand for something and this is a matter of fundamental rights. That is when the party needs to define itself."

To ensure that in voting freely, MPs are not unduly influenced by corporate interests, the federal lobbyist registration has to be updated, adds Conacher.

The spokesperson for Democracy Watch states that the current law does not force either MPs or cabinet ministers to disclose the identities of lobbyists contacting them.

Furthermore, he continues, the amount of money spent on a campaign by lobbyists does not have to be publicly revealed. In their registration, lobbyists just have to indicate they "are lobbying Parliament" when approaching individual MPs or ministers.

Under a legislated ethics code for elected MPs passed more than a year ago in the House of Commons, all political donations must be publicly disclosed.

But in what Conacher describes "as a major, major loophole", all gifts of money to political candidates for non-political purposes "can be kept secret forever."

Liberal candidates billed as future powerful ministers in the new Martin government in last June’s federal election could theoretically have been given a huge sum from a corporate interest with no strings attached (i.e. it is not technically a bribe if nothing is directly expected in return for the money) during or after the campaign, until they are, if elected, sworn into office as MPs, which occurred last fall.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Bennett, whose motto is "sunlight is the greatest disinfectant", says she would have no difficulty revealing the sources of all political donations to her campaigns.

Regarding the issue of non-political gifts during an election, she told IPS that she was not aware of the issue. "I don’t know that loophole."

 
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