Voting

It strikes me that there have been damn few policies that the federal government has come up with over the last 40 years that the Canadian people have actually wanted. The governments weren’t elected to enact them. They didn’t conduct a referendum to ask us our opinion. They just shoved them down our throats and gave us rubbish in the process. Let’s name some: the gun registry, the metric system, the constitution, NAFTA, the current softwood lumber agreement, the national energy policy. I could go on but you get the idea.

The gun registry may have been a good idea but it was certainly a flawed implementation. It cost us over $1B and I still don’t know why. The software companies who got that contract must be laughing all the way to the bank. I have to wonder just how much pork barrelling went on with that project. I also have to wonder at how the government chose their contractor. Any self-respecting software consultant would have been able to put this together for a few million at most; this despite the constant rug-pulling legislation in which the government engaged. Heck, I could do it myself for a couple of million.

What about the metric system? I remember riots in the street over that. Did the government care? Of course not. There was and is no apparent reason why we went metric. Thirty years on we still have 70% of our trade with the US. It doesn’t seem like metric has had any beneficial effects, only negative ones. Just ask NASA.

The national energy policy was so despised that it no longer exists. To this day, I refuse to buy gasoline at Petro-Canada even though it’s been privatised. It’s not so much that I think the policies are flawed but that the government acts in such a high-handed, uncaring way towards its citizens. That’s what bothers me.

Do you think the last softwood lumber deal was good for Canada? The US effectively stole $1B from us and we still have only a temporary deal. They claimed that it was the best they could do for Canada. Why? It doesn’t sound like a very good deal for Canadians to me. Are our politicians just so weak-minded that they can’t bargain for a fair deal?

Now we come to our brand new constitution. Did we really need it? The BNA act was working perfectly fine. It seems to me that Trudeau was just trying to ensure a place in history for himself. So today, we have a constitution and a Charter of Rights that are virtually useless. Firstly, the constitution has this ridiculous notwithstanding clause that means that any province can declare itself to be exempt from the same obligations and commitments as the rest of Canada. It was Alberta that insisted on that bonehead move. It makes the constitution meaningless. The same goes for the Charter of Rights. That stupid phrase “as long as it’s in the interest of good government” makes our so-called rights meaningless. The whole point of rights is that they aren’t granted by the government and can’t be taken away. They are fundamental to life. That’s one thing the American constitution got right. You have to admit, despite what one may think of the US government or culture, their constitution is one of the most brilliant legal documents ever written.

NAFTA was a good idea but didn’t go far enough. We should have the same kind of free trade as the European block. Unfortunately, the US still hasn’t matured enough to get over its historical propensity for protectionism. There are 400 million Europeans and about the same number of North Americans. There are a billion Chinese and another billion east Indians. Unless we integrate to a single unified economic block, we’ll eventually be left in the dust. Of course, this does not mean that we necessarily have to adopt the US model. Look where it got them. They’re the world’s largest debtor nation.

We need to have a single (non-US $) currency, free migration of people to work without visas, no duties on goods, a common defence policy, more integrated police co-operation and so on. We are supposed to have the world’s longest undefended border. Maybe the Americans immigration officers haven’t heard about that. It would probably be impossible to be entirely open because of the Americans belief that everyone should be allowed to own assault rifles but I can live with that difficulty.

The point of all this is that our governments weren’t elected to put these policies in place. They didn’t campaign on these issues; they didn’t conduct a referendum to ask us if we wanted them; they didn’t do a good job of representing our interests and they didn’t listen to us when we protested. Today, we have computers in every household. There’s no reason why the government can’t conduct more referenda on such issues. It wouldn’t be expensive – not like using paper ballots as in the past. A more direct democracy is what we need and we now have the means to do it. Our political system and MP’s have failed to demonstrate that they respect our wishes. They must be made to be more responsive to us.

Part of the problem is this outdated party system that we have. MP’s are hobbled by the party whip. They can’t vote how their constituents want them to vote or they’d be excommunicated by the party. We also have a useless Senate. I like the German model where the upper house has a regional representation and the lower house a population representation. They are elected alternately every couple of years so there’s no padding and always some continuity. Maybe we need to have something like that as well.

Maybe, if people felt that the government was listening to them and valued their opinions, we would have more than a 35% voter turnout. In Australia, they compel people to vote by law but I think that not voting is an expression of disgust for the choices we are given as so is a valuable lesson for the government to heed. Why vote when your opinion doesn’t really count? Is voting once every four years or so for an elected dictatorship really much of a democracy? The party in power can do whatever it wants and, as demonstrated by the previously mentioned policies, frequently does. What if they held a vote and no one came? Wouldn’t that scare the socks off the government?