🚀 go-pugleaf

record@goldrvr.island.net (Jerry West) wrote:


>To get away from such intense party "us vs them" politics let us:

>     1) Separate the executive and legislative branches of government.

>     2) Have a fixed term of office, no snap elections or any of this
>        putzing around trying to time an election call just right.

>     3) Do away with non-confidence votes and weaken party control over
>        legislators.

>     5) Use the referendum as a major vehicle for items on which the
>        legislature can not reach agreement, or is too chicken to tackle.

>Fire away guys

I can understand the motivation behind these
suggestions, but I wonder how practical it is to
advocate their adoption.  The first two would be
fundamental changes to the parliamentary system.
The last one is acheivable, but not with this
government.

One should always be careful about advocating the
adoption of too many changes at once.  It takes
time to see how the system will adapt to each and
there are often unintended consequences.

It seems to me the key concern is that raise by
your second point.  The fact is that of all the
countries which have adopted a system of
government based on the British parliamentary
system, none have developed the strict party
disicpline which the Canadian system has.  This
means we don't elect a representative to the
legislature, we elect the legislature's (or
party's) representative to us.  They feel it is
there duty to tell us how what ever the government
or opposition (depending on the party) is doing is
best for us.

There are probably a number of reasons for this.
Obviously there are parties in the other
parliaments with Whips and all the other forms of
internal disipline.  Yet for some reason the
individual members feel free to speak there minds
and vote their consciences.  The government can
never take caucus support for granted.

I believe a key reason for this is that the party
leader in many of those jurisdictions is elected
by the caucus and not the party.  This subtle, but
very basic, difference brings a real element of on
going accountability to proceedings in the House.
If we were only going to change one thing in our
system, I think it should be this.

As a test, ask yourself if Harcourt and the NDP
would have handled there current crisis the way
they did if the Premier was truly accountable to
his caucus and had to earn its support from day to
day.