No democracy for you!
Feb. 8th, 2014 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pheloniusfriarElection reform bill an affront to democracy, Marc Mayrand [Canada's current Chief Electoral Officer] says
Canada continues its slide away from legitimate democracy under the keen guidance of our current neo-conservative government. They have introduced legislation to strip Elections Canada (the department that organizes and conducts elections in this country) of the ability to communicate in any way with the public except to tell them when and where to vote. This legislation is obviously politically motivated due to the numerous instances of election fraud (see, for instance, the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal) that the Conservative party was both implicated in and proven to have perpetrated in the last two or three elections. Campaigns to mitigate against falling voter turnout will no longer be allowed (i.e. advertising campaigns to get Canadians to vote), and Elections Canada will no longer be allowed to publish the research and analysis that they do since they are "communications to the public" (as the current Chief Electoral Officer states, "these reports will no longer be available. In fact, not only not available. I don't think it will be done at all"). And all ability to enforce the law will be stripped from Elections Canada and given to a new office created by the Conservatives (with an extremely narrow mandate). We could hope for a debate in the House of Commons and changes to the bill, but... "On Thursday, the government invoked time allocation, putting a limit on the amount of time members of Parliament can spend debating the new bill".
We are seeing the continuation of the wholesale destruction of the key institutions required to maintain a civil society in Canada within the span of one government's reign. Even if they were turfed out tomorrow, it would take generations to fix what has been done (I would argue that Canada is still attempting to recover from the destruction wreaked by the Diefenbaker government). There's more broken here than what the Harper government is doing... there are structural failures in the way that Canada was put together that obviously allow for despotic ideologues to assume near absolute power over the country (ah, I can see the Taliban drool with envy at what Harper is accomplishing without a single suicide bomb or bullet). For a little more background on Harper, check out "The One Book You Must Read to Understand Stephen Harper ". But that's another story... (if so inclined, I have a short essay on the subject: "Are Canadian Prime Ministers Too Powerful?).
Canada continues its slide away from legitimate democracy under the keen guidance of our current neo-conservative government. They have introduced legislation to strip Elections Canada (the department that organizes and conducts elections in this country) of the ability to communicate in any way with the public except to tell them when and where to vote. This legislation is obviously politically motivated due to the numerous instances of election fraud (see, for instance, the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal) that the Conservative party was both implicated in and proven to have perpetrated in the last two or three elections. Campaigns to mitigate against falling voter turnout will no longer be allowed (i.e. advertising campaigns to get Canadians to vote), and Elections Canada will no longer be allowed to publish the research and analysis that they do since they are "communications to the public" (as the current Chief Electoral Officer states, "these reports will no longer be available. In fact, not only not available. I don't think it will be done at all"). And all ability to enforce the law will be stripped from Elections Canada and given to a new office created by the Conservatives (with an extremely narrow mandate). We could hope for a debate in the House of Commons and changes to the bill, but... "On Thursday, the government invoked time allocation, putting a limit on the amount of time members of Parliament can spend debating the new bill".
We are seeing the continuation of the wholesale destruction of the key institutions required to maintain a civil society in Canada within the span of one government's reign. Even if they were turfed out tomorrow, it would take generations to fix what has been done (I would argue that Canada is still attempting to recover from the destruction wreaked by the Diefenbaker government). There's more broken here than what the Harper government is doing... there are structural failures in the way that Canada was put together that obviously allow for despotic ideologues to assume near absolute power over the country (ah, I can see the Taliban drool with envy at what Harper is accomplishing without a single suicide bomb or bullet). For a little more background on Harper, check out "The One Book You Must Read to Understand Stephen Harper ". But that's another story... (if so inclined, I have a short essay on the subject: "Are Canadian Prime Ministers Too Powerful?).
