Representation in the House

In the last election (May 2011) the Conservative Party won 39.6% of the casted votes and won 53.9% of the House Seats. How this can be called Government by Representation is beyond me. I am sure that the powers-that-be will have all kinds of generalization in how this is acceptable, IT IS NOT REPRESENTATION.

This 39.6% is deceiving as it is only 39.6% of the 61% that voted. It is not 39.6% of the Citizens of Canada that supported the Conservatives. If you project the 39.6% that the Conservatives received to the population of Canada is would be closer to 25% of the population. It is this 25% of the population that is GOVERNING all the Citizens of Canada, it is the MINORITY THAT GOVERNS.

The first thing that we need to change is this discrepancy between the % of votes received and the % of seats in the House. With 39.6% of the votes cast, should receive 39.6% of the House Seats, this is REPRESENTATION. I know the first objection will be that there would never be a MAJORITY GOVERNMENT. This is fine, this is REPRESENTATION. The Citizens of Canada are never that heavily one-sided on anything, only Parties are. This would also greatly defuse the different PARTIES in their obsession of winning, you cannot win a majority anyway.

With the ability of WINNING A MAJORITY greatly reduced, the Parties will return to their different philosophies and with the realization that they will have to work in a cooperative manner as opposed to a confrontational manner. This will greatly redefine 'Question Period' and other disrespectful behavior that has been past-practice in Government.

This simple step greatly reduces the POWER STRUCTURE and returns much of this POWER OF GOVERNMENT back to the CITIZENS where it belongs. 

In such a environment the individual representatives will have a balanced field to truly represent the Citizens that elected them. The Party's Dogma will have to be replaced with a more acceptable position with the House as a whole. Without a Party in a position of Majority, the House members as a whole would appoint representatives to different government portfolios.   As an example the Minister of Energy would be appointed by the House and will be responsible to the House as a whole, not just the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister would also be appointed by the House as a whole. We as Citizens have never elected our Prime Minister, the Parties do. Each Party elects the leader of their Party, and the Leader of the Party with the most seats in the House is the Prime Minister. This too leads to Power corruption, if the Prime Minister is elected by the Representatives would greatly increase the Power of the individual representatives. The Representatives are directly responsible to the electorate in their district.

When we can return the Power to the elected representatives we are also returning the Power to the electorate where the Power belongs.

Disenfranchised Citizens

In the last Federal Election (May 2011) 61% of the registered voters actually voted, that leaves 39% of registered voters did not. Prior to 1997 federal election the average voter turn-out was in the 70% or higher. In 1997 election the turn-out had dropped to 67% and it has fallen every election since to 61% in 2011. This pattern shows a stead decline in voter turn-out and the Citizens becoming disenfranchised from their own GOVERNMENT.These percentages do not incorporate the eligible voters that may not have registered, there are more disenfranchised citizens then just the 39% registered voters that did not vote.

We need to explore ways to make our Government more responsive to the Citizens that it Governs.

Today one would have more access to the Government if one was a member of the Political Party that has the majority of the House Seats, then a non-affiliated Citizen. We are Governed by Political Parties and not by the elected representatives and it is in the best interests of the Political Party that is the priority, not the Country or the Citizens. When an elected representative speaks on behalf of the Citizens that elected the person and it is against the policy of the Party, the representative is often kicked-out of the Party and sits as a independent.  It is the Political Party that controls the elected representatives, not the Citizens that they are elected to represent.

It is this type of control that the Political Parties have over our elected representatives that frustrates and demoralizes the Citizens in their Government. Even with the Citizens that do vote, it is often a vote against a Party then a vote in support of a Party. The Political Parties themselves have sacrificed much of their philosophy with the sole objective of winning a majority of seats in the House.   

It can be argued that our Government is not a representation of the People, that it is a dictatorship of differing philosophies. Even these differing philosophies have become blurred in the all out effort to WIN A MAJORITY. The Parties will say and do anything that will help them win!

It has become a POWER GAME and one of WINNING AT ALL COSTS! The issue of actually GOVERNING the country in the interests of the CITIZENS has been lost in this obsession of WINNING.

In order to change this process we need to defuse the POWER STRUCTURE. We need to de-centerlize the POWER STRUCTURE so that the POWER  is not so easily controlled. We also need to bring our Government process into the 21st Century.

Centralized Government

We have a Centralized Government where all the Governing powers are CENTRALIZED in key centers - Victoria for the Provincial Government and Ottawa for the Federal Government. Concentrating the power of Government in these centers greatly disenfranchises the CITIZENSHIP from their own Government.

It is this CENTRALIZATION of the Government that encourages the West vs East in our Federal Government, where the West feels that its interests are not represented by the Federal Government. Even in the Provincial Government being centered in Victoria the citizens of the province feel that the larger populated areas are the only concerns of the Government - one needs to live in the Lower Mainland to have their interests considered by the Government.

This CENTRALIZATION of our Government is only beneficial to the Politicians and the Bureaucrats. It is easier to keep control over the Government when it is Centralized in this manner and the Bureaucrats can all be centered in the more popular centers. The average Citizen becomes so removed from the Government that they do not see any REAL connection with the Government, it becomes some sort of a different entity that has little or no connection to them.

In order to bring DEMOCRACY to our Government we need to DE-CENTRALIZE the Government. We need to bring the power of Government to a more LOCALIZED form, where the CITIZENS can actually partake in their own Governing.

Citizen's Assembly

The last two posts talks about Minority Governs and the issue of Electoral Reform. In these discussion was mentioned the creation of the Citizen's Assembly. I want to focus on this idea of a Citizen's Assembly.

The idea of forming a Assembly of regular Citizens with a variety of ages and a mixture of politically aware and political novices to focus on a social issue is awesome. To have the findings of such a Assembly put before the CITIZENSHIP in a referendum is truly DEMOCRACY in ACTION. In order for such Assembly to truly work there can be no POLITICIANS OR BUREAUCRATS included in the Assembly, the members must have a true representative of the young, middle age, and the elders and a true mixture of experience. 

Such a Assembly would do more than to deal with social issues, it incorporates the CITIZENS in the actual GOVERNING of our society. It could function in much the same way as Juries are selected. Such a system would go along way in the general public reclaiming their social governing, it goes to OWNERSHIP of our governing system. Currently the general public only have a vote every 4 years and 40% of the public do not even vote then. The general citizenship does not feel a true part of or have any real affect on our GOVERNMENT. This type of Assembly will go along way in the CITIZENS reclaiming their GOVERNMENT.

Minortiy Governs 2

In the last post I talked about the BC-STV Electoral Reform referendum that took place in 2005. In the last post I mentioned INCORRECTLY that there had never been any further referendum on this in the last 6 years. On further research I have found that this same Electoral Reform was again put before the voters in a 2009 referendum. The result of this referendum was only 39.9% in SUPPORT of the BC-STV.

I was very surprised to discover this 2009 referendum on BC-STV. I have no memory of  the BC-STV being apart of the last election. I do not know why I have no memory of this. I was very much aware of the 2005 referendum and remembering when it just failed to pass and wanting it to return in a future referendum. How I could have missed the 2009 referendum when I was looking forward to it surprises me. If I missed it how many others missed it too? From the results of the 2009 referendum 39.9% vs 57.69% would indicated a few others may have missed the 2009 referendum.

Why did I miss it?

In the 2005 referendum there was a lot of buzz about it and a level of excitement in possibly making some serious changes to our Governing System. I admit that I do not see the BC-STV as the savior or a perfect system or it may not be all that good of a system. However, to make such fundamental change to our system needs to begin somewhere and the BC-STV would have been a perfect beginning. The Citizen Assembly that was setup to make such a change is something that is also important in bring TRUE DEMOCRACY to our system. Where a Assembly of CITIZENS, not politicians or bureaucrats but a wide range of CITIZENS are EMPOWERED to make recommendations to the CITIZENSHIP. It was the PROCESS that is important here, almost more important than the BC-STV itself.

In 2009 the BC-STV was buried, very little or no publicity on it, other political issues were hyped up and it became the old 'shell-game'. The POWERS THAT BE moved the focus away from the BC-STV and quietly put the issue on the ballot without much ado. The fact that in 2005 the BC-STV almost passed scared the hell out of the POWERS THAT BE.

Why did the BC-STV fail?

There are 3 main reasons that I see why the BC-STV failed in 2005 and in 2009:

1. Our political climate is very much in a polarized state. The mere fact that Gordon Campbell had organized the CITIZEN ASSEMBLY and the focus on Electoral Reform would have turn a percentage of the citizenship against the whole process. It did not matter what the issue is, just that Campbell was responsible for it would be enough to turn some away.
2. Fear of Change. The old saying - 'Better the devil you know than the one you don't' - is always a issue when making such fundamental changes.The 4 years that separated the two referendums (2005 - 2009) caused some to concede to their FEAR.
3. Down playing and burying the BC-STV on the 2009 referendum and the distraction of the voters onto other issues allowed the referendum to slip through with a minimum of exposure.
    

These are the reasons that I see why the Electoral Reform failed and it was a missed opportunity. We often lose sight of the issue when we are too focused on the MESSENGER. Until we start to make some major changes we will have a unreasonable FEAR to such changes. We need to face our FEARS and make the changes, to discover the FEARS were unreasonable. We need to pay better attention, ME INCLUDED.

Minority Governs

In our current system the MINORITY GOVERNS. In a TRUE DEMOCRACY the MAJORITY GOVERNS. This last election is not the only sign of this system of the MINORITY GOVERNS, with the 39% voting for the Conservatives that formed a MAJORITY in the HOUSE with 54% of the seats.

In May of 2005 there was a referendum for Electoral Reform that was the BC-STV and 57% of the voters voted in SUPPORT of the Reform (It needed 60% to actual come into being, which I support as a large Majority should be required to make such a fundamental change) and 97% of the constituencies were in SUPPORT. In the Throne Speech in September 2005 the government promised to bring this referendum on Electoral Reform back to the people. It has been over 6 years and this Electoral Reform has not been heard of again.


The POWERS THAT BE do not want any Electoral Reform they are very happy with this Minority Governs system. I believe that the BC-STV scared the hell out of them and want the whole idea of REFORM dead. 


I do believe that we need a LARGE MAJORITY (60%) in order to make fundamental changes to our system. With a SIMPLE MAJORITY we can alienate too many and it can seriously divide the citizens of the country. Saying this the showing of the Majority in the BC-STV referendum was enough that it needed to be brought back before the citizens for another vote. The fact that it has been buried and no one wants to hear of it demonstrates a very strong DISRESPECT to the MAJORITY OF THE CITIZENS.

Defining Government

We need to REDEFINE what Government IS and above all the LIMITATIONS of Government.

If the economical activities in Europe have any lessons to learn we need to come to the understanding that the Government cannot DO EVERY THING. It is too costly and has a LIMITED ability to do EVERY THING. In order to define the LIMIT of Government we need to also define the ROLE and the RESPONSIBILITY of the INDIVIDUAL. 

As an example of what I mean lets look at the issue of HEALTH. In Canada we have a UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE system. We expect and even demand that ALL of our HEALTH issues should be paid for by the Government. It has gotten to the point where the Government is spending almost half of their total income on HEALTH CARE, and it is not enough.

I worked in the Health Field for 18 years and active in my Health Care Union, with the NDP, Liberal and the old Social Credit party in power. Every single year we were screaming that more money needed to be spent on HEALTH CARE. There was never enough money! It did not matter what Political Party was in power. One thing I learned over these years is that MONEY is not the answer, what we need to do is to refine what the Government is responsible for in HEALTH CARE, and what is the INDIVIDUAL'S responsibility.

We need to UNDERSTAND the Government is not responsible for ALL of our HEALTH ISSUES, our wants and desires. We need to reach a understanding of what the Government should be responsible for and what can be reasonably expected. LIFE THREATENING Health Issues needs to be supported by Government UNIVERSAL CARE. This is a good place to start and how far it is expanded is the subject of discussion.

The issue of HEALTH CARE is just an example of what I mean by REDEFINING the role of Government. This needs to be expanded to every area of Government.