Solon’s laws for Athens, the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation, all key milestones in the history of democracy which pale into insignificance when compared to Conservative MP Michael Chong’s Great Reform Act of 2013.
Or so says the hype emanating from that alternate reality dimension known as the “Ottawa Bubble”.
[…]
But even if the pro-Reform Act enthusiasts are correct, even if this bill would empower MPs and reduce the leader’s clout, I’d still ask that most important of all questions: “So what?”
Because it shifts power into the hands of the Media Party – that’s what. Instead of just weakening party unity through their efforts, the Reform Act provides media the tools to exploit it.
Update:
Today's #ReformAct preview: MT @dgardner "If Anders isn't tossed from caucus, I hope newspapers run a profile of him…" #MediapartyAct
— Katewerk (@katewerk) December 7, 2013
It might come as a surprise to some, but I am persuaded by Mr Nicholls’ arguments. Chong’s bill is simply the latest example of our democracy being usurped by minority mob-rule.
Why bother voting when the will of the people can be usurped by a few Ottawa mandarins?
I like Michael Chong but boy he does some stupid things sometimes.
When you do things that the MSM loves, then you put yourself into the same general realm as John McCain.
We all know how he (McCain) is loved by the MSM and distrusted by a large part of US conservatism, all at the same time.
I’m also convinced by Mr. Nicholls. It seems to be one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” kinda things…
It would be nice to have such a law govern the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
The young bucks in the back rows, the ones that do not get on TV, could challenge the old Pharts and The ones suffering from terminal HDS, to give up their seats in that peanut gallery.
The media love to have something that may have more muscle to cause problems.
When I vote I support a party and a platform not a loose cannon with is own ideas or changing positions. How does an MP decide that his constituents want him to oppose the leader or change the leader of the party that they voted for.
The Senate scandal is already sputtering and the political mediarazzi now gaze fawningly at – a private member’s bill.
In related news the media has not read the bill but know what it means, so that’s OK.
A university history professor once remarked that to a journalist, research meant picking up the phone.
In which Kate completely loses her mind.
Seriously, this ‘media party’ brain rot is the exact conservative complement of ‘rape culture’. It is designed to justify insanity. No, not everything is a feature of some vast conspiracy to take you down. There is no ‘media party’ anymore than there is ‘rape culture’. Replace the word ‘media’ with ‘Jews’ in Kate’s post and it becomes easy to see how insane it is.
Chong’s bill is imperfect but it would still vastly empower Parliament and return us to the traditional form of government we had, which would be a huge improvement over the SQ. At the very least it will engender a discussion regarding the PMO dictatorship.
“When they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members, they are just nobodies.” Pierre Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister
Remember the media outrage..?..
I agree. This is a bad bill, and is aimed only at PM Harper. The Ottawa press gallery supporting this is proof enough. This would be nothing but mod rule as in the early 1917-20 soviets.
Bet the press would sing a different tune if it was a Liberal or NDP prime minister.
OTOH, it would only take 5 Liberal MPs to notice the permanent flashing ‘vacancy’ sign on JT’s forehead, and they could send the ponce of Papineau to be the fourth in a game of bridge with the other 3 recent failed Liberal leaders.
Dare I ask this again?
We have elections.
We vote people and parties into power.
We vote people and parties out of power.
Is there something wrong here that needs more tinkering and “reforming”?
What have I missed?
LAS: “Chong’s bill is imperfect but it would still vastly empower Parliament and return us to the traditional form of government we had, which would be a huge improvement over the SQ. At the very least it will engender a discussion regarding the PMO dictatorship.”
Uncoded: “I don’t like Harper.”
The part of our system that needs tinkering is to make MPs meaningful, which they are not at the moment.
Uncoded JJM: I don’t have an argument but I have a mancrush on Harper.
Gerry Nicholls: “Asking me to get excited about the Reform Act is like asking a deer to get excited because a pack of wolves has come up with an easier way to replace its dominant male..”
Well said.
When I voted for the Conservative Party, it was because of the party platform, the leader, Harper, and because my MP is a good, sensible conservative. It’s not up to a small percentage of party MPs to negate my vote.
It’s better than having a man-crush on Justin Trudeau whom you and the popular press adore to bits.
The traditional government we had, by the way, included a senate where favourites could enjoy a near-permanent seat of power.
Chong’s bill is doomed to fail. IMO Chong is a disgruntled backbencher, not fond of the current leadership of his party and all he has to do is be a shit disturber and garner lots of attention from the media maggots.
Seems that the talking points are ruling discourse in some parts of the conservative base, which has been the problem all along — conservatism is by its nature contrarian and individualistic, certainly there’s a place for party discipline and commitment to a cause, but at some point this can just become the same mental strait-jacket that we always rebelled against when in opposition to the groupthink of a Liberal-NDP majority.
I don’t find our version of groupthink any better than theirs.
Sorry, but I don’t wish to toss dissident conservatives under the bus in favour of twenty-something PMO interns and their talking points. Let’s have an open discussion of where this party is headed, and who is actually calling the shots. There are too many policy initiatives that seem to ignore conservative values, most notably in the area of internet oversight. Here again, stale and transparently weak talking points are handed out, then the usual suspects repeat them as if we were living in Jonestown, rather than free people in a free country. Let’s not go any further down this road, let’s have it out and rein in the party’s hidden directors whether that’s only the PMO or as I suspect some unelected group behind the scenes in Ottawa.
The biggest problem for a conservative party in power are conservatives. In as much as we dislike the progressives doing something we see as wrong, we hate it when our party does it.
MPs have absolute power in Parliament. The prime minister and government governs at their pleasure. They want to change the government without risking an election. Sucks to be a backbencher.
Sounds similar to the only case of contempt of Parliament ever in the Commonwealth. The Liberals didn’t overthrow the Harper government because they lacked the balls to fight an election. Instead they voted a meaningless sanction against the government.
If only there existed evidence of media co-ordination behind the scenes….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
“… Chong’s bill is doomed to fail. IMO Chong is a disgruntled backbencher, not fond of the current leadership of his party and all he has to do is be a shit disturber and garner lots of attention from the media maggots.
Posted by: Liz J …”
Agreed.
Remember that at one time Chong was a junior minister , and due to inexperience or worse ended up getting booted back to the benches. Sad because he is a bright guy , who if he had chosen to work up the ranks might one day have had a shot at leadership , but like Obama , has never had to finish anything , and in this case is being used as a media pawn in their ongoing case of Harper derangement syndrome.
Harper garners respect from many quarters around the world.
He’s helped to keep the Canadian economy stable. I don’t see evidence to support the media spin that the PM is a micro manager nor the LAS version, a dictator. He’s not picayune nor a money grubber, like Mayor Bloomberg in the USA. He’s steady and willing to be the lone voice, if necessary, to stand up for Canada. Should the Liberals get their fervent wish, which seems unlikely to me, Justin Trudeau is not suited nor qualified to be Prime Minister. (He’s not bright enough, for one thing…)
Mulcair would be a fascinating specimen as Prime Minister; he’s intelligent, abrasive, sneaky, bull-headed, pompous, highly aggressive, masterful with language, and he would give away the Canadian farm to the U.N., in my view. He loves the word ‘sustainable’ to death (warning bells!) He is a citizen of France as well as of Canada. I would never trust the guy.
You make good points, but ‘have it out’ in what way?
Wow. Good find, Kate!
Further to Scar, I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but, IIRC a situation arose during Mulroney’s tenure where the Alberta PC caucus, holding the balance of power in numbers, forced Mulroney to back off on something he was proposing. I can’t remember exactly what it was. Happened sometime after the ’88 election. The current plurality of the CPC is 14 seats (not including 4 vacancies). 15 to 18 Tories could re-form the Democratic Representative Caucus should PMSH’s leadership really go south to require it. I don’t think that has come close to happening which probably gives a large hint as to how many CPC MP’s really think that Mr. Harper is so bad.
It’s like precedent and probability were invented yesterday…
So if Chongs bill fails will he true to form quit, as a backbencher or will he continue to represent his constituents by voting present.
I’m beginning to think Chong is channelling his inner Garth.
Ya figure..?..
Interesting that when that A-Hole Pierre Trudeau was remaking Canada in his own image and concentrating all the powers from the PCO to the PMO the media didn’t care one bit, as a matter of fact the media loved it. Many agree the greatest move toward centralizing government decision making came under prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
“Mitchell Sharp, special adviser to Mr. Chrétien and a cabinet minister under Mr. Trudeau, said Mr. Trudeau introduced a small, but critical, change that led to a significant shift of power to the PMO and the Privy Council, which advises the prime minister and his cabinet.
Mr. Trudeau ordered ministers who wanted to raise an issue in cabinet to first present him with a dossier outlining their proposals, a move that gave him an edge in managing cabinet.
In The Essential Trudeau, published in 1998, Mr. Trudeau defended the evolution of the role of the PMO during his tenure.
“I was sometimes accused of fostering a presidential style of governing, in large part because of the size and strength of the Prime Minister’s Office. But it grew out of the fact that, in a modern and complex society, I needed to keep myself as informed as my ministers about what they were doing, what decisions the cabinet should take collectively and what the political implications were.”
Mr. Robertson says centralization of power in the PMO increased sharply during Mr. Trudeau’s final term, when he decided he wanted to get things done, including the repatriation of the Constitution.
“The increase in independent prime ministerial decision-making was quite considerable in that regime, and I think in one way or another it has gone on since. It carried on in the Mulroney regime and it has reached its peak, I think, in the Chrétien regime.” There is absolutely no doubt that every media maggot in the country love, adore and admire Pierre Trudeau, in fact most, including Andrew Coyne mark Trudeau as the best PM in Canadian history. So, it’s somewhat ironic that the same media maggots that adore P. Trudeau now believe there is too much power concentrated in the PMO, I believe thats called, hypocrisy. In other words, it’s okay when Liberals are in power and behave like dictators, but it does become a concern when non Liberals are in power… If Chong wants to do something useful and save Canadians 100’s of billions of dollars, then why doesn’t he introduce a private members bill that would erase another of Trudeau’s undesired vandalizing acts and get rid of imposed “bilingualism”, I’m sure the media would be right on board with that too… right? Hell, why not undo every vandalizing act and distortion of history imposed by the media’s “hero”, Pierre Trudeau starting with Trudeau’s imposed Charter. The media would love that… right? Sean M.
The lefty apologists don’t like that Anders refuses to forget that Mandella invented necklacing in his terrorist days.
As an original Reformer who helped write the party constitution, and as a voluntarily retired two term MP, it tears my guts out to see so many “conservative” posters cheering the untrammeled power that has been usurped by the PMO. That crap started with Trudeau but, every subsequent PM has taken full advantage of it and even increased the size and strength of his personal army to the point that MPs are now mere seat warmers parroting talking points and reading speeches prepared for them by the short pants gang. Except for a few senior cabinet ministers, they could all go home tomorrow and nobody would know the difference.
Removal of the fairly recent rule that party candidates must be endorsed by the party leader, even if he/she is deemed objectionable by the constituency organization is an abomination as is the “protection” of incumbents from nomination challenges. This sort of top down management was one of the principal grievances of the Reform Party.
Kudos to Mr. Chong. It’s great to see a back bencher with brains and balls. Don’t write his bill off. It has enough cross-party support to be assured of serious debate, and with a few well thought out amendments it could even become law. Twenty years ago, Harper would have supported much of it without question. Let’s see if he will now walk the walk even at the price of losing a little personal power.
Damn, I wish there was an edit function. My second paragraph is garbled to the point that it means the opposite of my intent. It should read:
“The fairly recent rule that a party candidate must be endorsed by the party leader, even if he/she is deemed objectionable by the constituency organization is an abomination that should be removed as should the “protection” of incumbents from nomination challenges. This sort of top down management was one of the principal grievances of the Reform Party.”
One of the worst aspects of the introduction of Mr Chong’s bill is that it drew from the baseboard the insufferable Duff Conacher. The two of them really seem to be reliving their adolescent dreams of Model Parliament.
The only thing that might make MPs truly independent would be a series of primary elections, restricted to registered party members (and not registered on primary election day by EC drones trolling university residences trying to find voters). That works in some US states, but it may well not work in our system.
I’m particularly troubled by the attempt to remove the veto of the leader over local constituency organizations. Having been active in a local EDA, I’m only disappointed that the PM signed the papers of our last candidate. On the other hand, he may have judged that in a no-hope riding it was hardly worth interfering, and that candidate in question wasn’t sufficiently well-read to make a controversial point.
” a party candidate must be endorsed by the party leader ”
I don’t have a problem with that aspect. The leader should be able to reject candidates that he feels are unsuitable. A fine example would be Garth Turner,who was mentioned in an above comment. Though he may have the support of his riding,he could possibly ( and likely would) undermine the party while in Ottawa.
It would be foolish for the leader not to reject his nomination.
BTW, I have a problem with MPs leaving their riding before their ‘contract’ to represent them has expired. I’m a bit old-fashioned,I believe that if you sign up for four years,you do the four years, barring any traumatic events. Another job offer or an ego stroke doesn’t cut it with most that may have supported that particular candidate.
Oh my God. It’s a private member’s bill. IOW snowball’s chance in heck of passing.
Nobody outside of political junkies gives a sh**. about this.
It would do this; it would do that. Actually it will do zero because it was written with the knowledge that it would never see light of legislation, ever.
This is boring as wafergate.
Pierre Trudeau: “I was sometimes accused of fostering a presidential style of governing, in large part because of the size and strength of the Prime Minister’s Office. But it grew out of the fact that, in a modern and complex society, I needed to keep myself as informed as my ministers about what they were doing, what decisions the cabinet should take collectively and what the political implications were.”
The more modern and complex a society, the less effective that government intrusion that overrides individual decision-making will become.
Trudeau’s comment is just an excuse for Big Government, i.e. big coercion at the expense of individual rights.
PET: still The Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Canada.
IMHO…
Mr. Chongs bill is just another attempt to impose the creeping rot of Proportional Representation on parliament through the back door.
The red side of caucus (progressives) feel their not getting their way based on how many of them there are.
If Chongs bill passes, Trudeaus (infiltrate and change from within) will have been given legal authority and imposing it on the public (via elections) will be next on the menu.
Some might say I have it backwards and Harper is redder than we think, but I disagree.
LASsie said: “The part of our system that needs tinkering is to make MPs meaningful, which they are not at the moment.”
The “tinkering” that needs doing is to cut taxes by 75% across the board and reduce the size and scope of government back to what it was in the 1930’s. For starters.
The Reform Act isn’t going to help that along. There is nothing about this thing that is not a scam. No surprise that LASsie is in favor.
William, you expressed the biggest problem with the bill concisely and perfectly. The ridiculously low fifteen percent figure required for a leadership review under the provisions of the bill practically guarantees that regional, religious/secular, and yes, infiltrative (is that a word?) elements can disrupt governance – possibly on a semi-annual basis, or even more frequently – to the delight of the anti-conservative OPG.
I agree with Nichols that the vast majority of Canadians who cast a vote for their local candidate in a federal election are in effect voting for who they think will be the best PM.
In the current parliament, if just 25 Conservative MPs — maybe they’re pro-abortion, or anti-abortion, or pro-Ontario or pro-west — can get together in some pub in Ottawa and decide they want a leadership review, and in so doing obviate the choice of millions of Canadian voters, I don’t see how that makes our nation more democratic. It would, though, of course, be an absolute windfall for the usual anti-conservative denizens of the Media Party, who could parlay such disagreements into a divide-and-conquer winning strategy for their own favored policies/preferences.
Just another way by which Socialists can gain control of other parties.
Simple really.
In the end it will be coup after coup.
Just look at Toronto & its police chief takeover.
Anders is “entitled” to his opinion.
How many times has he been re-elected?
Get stuffed.
Lee “As an original Reformer who helped write the party constitution, and as a voluntarily retired two term MP, it tears my guts out to see so many “conservative” posters cheering the untrammeled power that has been usurped by the PMO.”
The prime minister’s office has exactly as much power as the MPs have allowed it. Any time they have fully functioning balls they can change it. I just don’t understand why we want the bureaucracy and courts involved in party politics.
Doesn’t anyone remember their history since Diefenbaker where the various stripes of principled conservative spent their time bitch slapping each other while the Liberals ruled the country. If you think you’ve got a better idea run for the leadership of the party or support someone who agrees with you. Just don’t destroy the party in an effort to prove how petty you can be.
Twitter is helpful for gauging a journalist’s character or lack thereof. The off-the-cuff banter can be illuminating.
So, in the eyes of most of the those posting on this thread, I and hundreds of other old Reformers who dedicated years of their lives to our failed effort to “change the system” and devolve power from know-it-all professional politicians to Joe and Jane Lunchbucket at the constituency level were just a bunch of socialists. Got it.
I agree that 15% of caucus is too low a bar to force a vote on leadership. If the bill goes forward, that can readily be amended out.
Shorter Phantom: “I can’t argue against this bill so I’ll talk about something completely unrelated because I’m lazy and dishonest.” You could be smart, but you choose to be stupid.
Lee: the Canadian Right is dead. It committed suicide or more accurately self-lobotomy when it decided principles were ‘petty’ (See poster above) and would rather reduce the world to HUR DUR MEDIA PARTY* BAD MY PARTY GOOD. They’re like Hodor: all they can do is say ‘Hodor’ over and over.
The ‘Media Party’ means whatever you want it to mean at any time.
I am not sure how anyone can think that a caucus should replace a leader selected by party membership. The Bay Street Conservatives wanted to replace John Diefenbaker the day after he was elected. In any event they always have the ability to dump a leader. They just better be right.
Lee – how did you enjoy governing as a Reform MP? Oh that’s right, you we in opposition. How did you enjoy opposition? Oh that’s right, the Bloc were the opposition. How did you enjoy being a Western Rump? Not all that much fun.
scar,
Being a government backbencher is no less frustrating than being an opposition member, and both are useless ornaments within the existing system. Nothing but smoke, mirrors and bullshit. Watch the Westminister proceedings on TV if you want to see how a real parliament operates.
You’re right, being part of a western rump wasn’t great but, self respect is worth something, and I doubt if there’s much of that among the mindless ciphers in a caucus that pays homage to a government that’s become about as conservative as my tomcat.
You obviously regard politics as a sport in which the only important thing is that your “team” wins regardless of how it behaves after winning. Picture the Blackhawks standing around pissing in the Stanley Cup.
BTW, scar, in our second term we, not the Bloc, were the official opposition.