http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/613535

Don’t forget the comments.

James Travers
National Affairs Columnist
OTTAWA–For a foreign correspondent reporting some of the world’s grimmest stories, Canada in the ’80s was more than a faraway home. Seen from the flattering distance of Africa, this country was a model democracy. Reflected in its distant mirror was everything wrong with what was then called the Third World. From Cape to Cairo, power was in the hands of Big Men. Police and army held control. Institutions were empty shells. Corruption was as accepted as the steeped-in-pessimism proposition that it’s a duty to clan as well as to family to grab whatever has value before the state inevitably returns to dust.

By contrast and comparison, Canada was a cold but shimmering Camelot. Ballots, not bullets, changed governments. Men and women in uniform were discreet servants of the state. Institutions were structurally sound. Corruption, a part of politics everywhere, was firmly enough in check that scandals were aberrations demanding public scrutiny and sometimes even justice.

Canada today is not Africa then or now. Our wealth and health, and our communal respect for legal, civil and human rights position this favoured country on a higher plane. Still, 10 years of close observation and some 1,500 Star columns lead to an unsettling conclusion: Africa, despite popular perception, despite the Somalias and Zimbabwes, is moving in one direction, Canada in another. Read the headlines, examine the evidence, plot the trend line dots and find that as Africans – from turnaround Ghana to impoverished Malawi – struggle to strengthen their democracies, Canadians are letting theirs slip.

There, dictatorships are now more the exception than the rule and accountability is accepted as a precondition for stability. Here, power and control are increasingly concentrated and accountability honoured more in promise than practice. Canadian politicians flout the will of voters and parties. Once-solid institutions are being pulled apart by rising complexity and falling legitimacy. Scandals come and go without full public exposure or cleansing political punishment. If not yet lost, Camelot is under siege.

Laughter or disbelief would have been my ’80s response to any gloomy prediction that within the next 20 odd years Canada’s iconic police force would twist the outcome of a federal election. I would have rejected out of hand the suggestion that Parliament would become a largely ceremonial body incapable of performing its defining functions of safeguarding public spending and holding ministers to account. I would have treated as ridiculous any forecast that the senior bureaucracy would become politicized, that many of the powers of a monarch would flow from Parliament to the prime minister or that the authority of the Governor General, the de facto head of state, would be openly challenged.

Yet every one has happened and each has chipped away another brick of the democratic foundations underpinning Parliament. Incrementally and by stealth, Canada has become a situational democracy. What matters now is what works. Precedents, procedures and even laws have given way to the political doctrine of expediency.

No single party or prime minister is solely to blame. Since Pierre Trudeau first dismissed backbenchers as nobodies and began drawing power out of Parliament and into his office, all have contributed to the creep toward a more authoritarian, less accountable Canadian polity.

Some of the changes are understandable. Government evolves with its environment, and that environment has become more complex even as the controls have become wobblier, less connected. The terrible twins of globalization and subsidiarity – the sound theory that services are most efficiently delivered by the administrative level closest to the user – now sorely test the ability of national legislatures to respond to challenges at home and abroad. Think of it this way: Trade, the economy and the environment have all gone global while the things that matter most to most of us – health, education and the quality of city life – are the guarded responsibility of provinces and municipalities.

Politics and politicians being what they are, the reflex response is to grasp for all remaining power. Once secured, it can be used to exercise political will more easily by overruling rules and rewriting or simply ignoring laws. Power alone is effective in cross-cutting through the silo walls that isolate departments and frustrate co-ordinated policies. Important to all administrations, unfettered manoeuvring room is that much more important to minority governments desperate to maximize limited options and minimize opposition influence.

Good for prime ministers, that’s not nearly good enough for the rest of us. It fuels an inexorable power drift to the opaque political centre, creating what Donald Savoie, Canada’s eminent chronicler of Westminster parliaments, calls “court government.” It’s his clear and credible view that between elections, prime ministers now operate in the omnipotent manner of kings. Surrounded by subservient cabinet barons, fawning unelected courtiers and answerable to no one, they manage the affairs of state more or less as they please.

Prime ministers are freeing themselves from the chains that once bound them to voters, Parliament, cabinet and party. From bottom to top, from citizen to head of state, every link in those chains is stressed, fractured or broken.

One man’s short political career helps explain how those connections fail. David Emerson, a respected former forestry executive and top B.C. bureaucrat, is recalled as one of Paul Martin’s most competent ministers. Almost forgotten now is his corrosive effect on public trust.

In 2006, Emerson ran for re-election in Vancouver-Kingsway, winning easily as a Liberal. Weeks after promising to be Stephen Harper’s “worst nightmare,” Emerson was named to the Conservative cabinet in the trade portfolio he had long wanted and was well-suited for. His rationale was simple: There’s no point in being in the capital if there’s no real possibility of influencing the nation’s course.

Emerson is an honest man and his motives genuine. But in severing the link between ballots and voter choice, he made nonsense of the electoral process.

Emerson was not alone in dripping acid on that rare winter election. But where he applied an eyedropper, then RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli emptied a bucket. With Liberals nursing an opinion-poll lead and Martin on track for a second minority, Zaccardelli dropped an unprecedented, still unexplained bombshell. In a private letter to the NDP, one the RCMP went to extraordinary lengths to ensure became public, the force confirmed its criminal investigation into rumoured leaks of the Liberal decision not to tax income trusts.

Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan candidly identifies that letter as the election’s tipping point. Liberal scandals and ethics soared again to the top of voter minds, sending Martin tumbling and Liberals packing.

No political malfeasance was found – one bureaucrat was charged with gaining personal benefit. More remarkably, neither Zaccardelli nor the RCMP has been forced to fully deconstruct such an egregious intervention in the electoral process. To their lasting shame, all three federal parties, each to protect its interests and minimize embarrassment, chose to leave hanging the rotten odour of banana republic politics. Zaccardelli, defrocked for conflicting testimony in the Maher Arar affair, is in France, safe and quiet in an Interpol sinecure.

If Zaccardelli’s intervention was wrong, Emerson’s analysis was right: Being a bright, competent and energized backbencher in an increasingly ritualistic, theatrical and impotent House of Commons is an exercise in futility.

Parliament’s problem is that it is patently dysfunctional. Its list of recent failures is long and instructive. It didn’t notice the millions of Quebec sponsorship dollars shifting from the treasury to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s office or the runaway costs of the Liberal long-gun registry. Starved of resources and already ineffectual, its committees became a standing joke when Conservatives secretly wrote a 200-page manual to discourage curiosity about, say, alleged attempts to buy dying Chuck Cadman’s Commons vote, or the ruling party’s suspect in-and-out campaign money-laundering scheme.

It’s so essential for the ruling party to keep Parliament in the dark that its independent officers are now forced to struggle for the funds and freedom to do their jobs. Need proof? Liberals and Tories nurtured a cottage industry that taught how to hide public information vital to open democracy by, among other tricks, insisting on untraceable verbal reports and scribbling sensitive information on removable Post-it notes. Conservatives in opposition promised to create a budget officer to follow how Ottawa spends hundreds of billions. In power they are yanking the leash on Kevin Page, the newest watchdog.

Given those frustrations – and others ranging from voting as the party demands, not as their conscience dictates, to the growing irrelevance of the Commons as a forum for shaping public policy – it’s hardly surprising that most MPs, like David Emerson, want to be where the action is – in cabinet. Except that it’s not.

Strong cabinets are dusty relics. Long gone are the days when powerful regional ministers could flex their muscles with prime ministers who were merely first among equals. Under Chrétien, cabinets became little more than focus groups. Stephen Harper is going farther, making most ministers anonymous and keeping others silent when tough questions are asked.

Far more powerful than ministers are the political professionals who form a protective inner circle beholden only to the prime minister, not voters. Those appointed apparatchiks are now so entrenched that even senior ministers – Martin’s deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan was one – have trouble penetrating the barrier around “The Boss.”

So who influences the prime minister, who moulds the putty of public policy? Well it’s certainly not deputy ministers, those non-partisan civil servants who once took personal pride in speaking truth to power and kept resignations ready for the moment ministers crossed the line separating public interest from partisan advantage. For mandarins, Job One is no longer providing policy options, it’s protecting ministers and the prime minister from political blowback. How much that’s changed is measured by last year’s report on the leak of a sensitive Canadian diplomatic memo suggesting Barack Obama was saying one thing publicly and another privately about renegotiating free trade.

In finding no culprit, an investigation led by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Ottawa’s top public servant, pointed fingers at bureaucrats for circulating the memo too widely. But as the Star exposed at the time, civil servants didn’t leak. It was political operatives in the Prime Minister’s Office and in Canada’s Washington embassy who recklessly jeopardized this country’s interests to assist U.S. Republicans. Once again, the guilty went free.

If not Parliament, ministers or mandarins, who can hold the Prime Minister accountable? Apparently not political parties. On their way to their party’s Winnipeg convention last year Conservatives, those grassroots activists who planted the seeds of the Reform movement and nurtured them until they grew into a government, were told they had become only one among many “stakeholders.” Then, in a cameo convention appearance, the Prime Minister broke the news that hard times rendered the party’s defining conservative framework at least temporarily null and void.

Liberals, facing a crisis of their own, responded with even more extreme pragmatism. Having reached the conclusion Stéphane Dion had to be replaced before Parliament reconvened for a critical January session, Liberals bent, folded and mutilated party rules to narrow the leadership contenders to one and anoint Michael Ignatieff interim chief. Whatever the urgency or justification, chattering-class Liberals effectively stripped the rank and file of the right and responsibility to choose a leader.

With parties pushed to the sidelines, only the Governor General remains as a political check on the prime minister. But even that control is suspect after last year’s pre-Christmas coalition crisis. Here’s how far outspoken minister John Baird said Conservatives were willing to go to hang on to power. “I think what we want to do is basically take a time out and go over the heads of the members of Parliament, go over the heads, frankly, of the Governor General, go right to the Canadian people.”

Going over the head of the de facto head of state is a radical notion. But so, too, is the accelerating erosion of Parliament, cabinet, independent oversight and political parties. Extreme is now ho-hum in a country where the prime minister can override his own law to force an election, where accountability is little more than a campaign bumper sticker, where the police play politics and where there is no connection between scandal and punishment for those in privileged places.

Without meaningful engagement, participatory democracy is an oxymoron. Why vote if the winning candidate then switches sides? Why be a member of a powerless Parliament? Why be a minister in a cabinet without influence or a mandarin in a politically polluted bureaucracy? Why join a party to be spectator?

Responses can be found in the record low turnout of the last election. Or the dwindling number who consider federal politics relevant to real life or bother to join parties.

Fortunately, there are fixes. As Barack Obama proved in the U.S presidential campaign – and Premier Dalton McGuinty learned in Ontario when teenagers used Facebook to drive proposed drivers’ licence restrictions into a dead end – the combination of motivated citizens and enabling technology is extraordinary.

If mad-as-hell voters can take back a riding, as they did in Vancouver by rejecting Emerson’s adopted party, then surely MPs can recapture control of Parliament. It’s possible, too, that ministers, bureaucrats and police officers can be forcefully reminded that their public duty is to the people, not to politicians. Even prime ministers can be told they are not monarchs.

Appealing as it sounds, advocacy requires effort. It’s so much easier to go with the flow, to let situational democracy evolve with each reflex, stopgap, jerry-rigged response to every new policy demand and political threat. But that leads away from accountability and toward the Big Man culture that Africa is finally throwing off and has no place in Canada.

If war is too serious to leave to generals, then surely democracy is too important to delegate to politicians.

http://www.thestar.com/article/656290

Don’t forget the comments.

Look, coalitions are legal in Canada. We’ve had them before we’ll get them again. What was not right in this case was Jack and Gilles plotting as the election ended, to entrap the hapless Dion into signing on to the coalition. That was not accepting the outcome of the election. What Jack and Gilles basically did, was deny the vote of “ordinary” Canadians as it did not conform with the wishes of their special interest groups.”

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SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO

Many were convinced there could be no valid change of government without elections, spurring some to protest on Parliament Hill Dec. 6, 2008.

Les Whittington
Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA–Stephen Harper welcomed the temporary truce reached last week with the Liberal party, pointedly reminding Canadians the compromise would preserve the Conservative minority government for at least a few more months.

“Nobody wants to see us plunged into an election … and nobody wants to see the opposition coalition we had at the end of last year,” the Prime Minister told reporters.

As he did in December when opposition parties threatened to topple the Tory minority, the Prime Minister suggested such a move would be akin to a coup d’état.

“I don’t think the constant election threat or, quite frankly, the inability of some of the parties in the House of Commons to accept the result of the last election – to accept that the Conservative party actually won the last election – I don’t think that reflects well upon them.”

It’s a refrain that has worked well for Harper. When his government teetered on the brink of defeat last winter, Canadians responded very favourably to his proposition that only the voters can determine which party rules – not the MPs they send to Parliament to represent them.

But it might not be such a good thing for Canada. Harper’s interpretation of the principles of Canadian democracy has set off alarms among many who worry about the potential for abuse of power under this country’s unwritten rules for governing.

“It’s a real concern,” said Peter Russell, a constitutional expert who has acted as an adviser to past governors general. “We take for granted our stability, but we could suddenly find ourselves being one of the shakiest democracies going.”

The fear is that the traditional workings of British-style parliamentary democracy are being undermined, laying the groundwork for a potential constitutional crisis in which an unresolved political clash could paralyze Canada’s government.

“We all talk about our economic fundamentals being sound,” Russell said. “Right now, our parliamentary fundamentals are not sound, compared with all the major Western parliamentary democracies.”

At the heart of the problem is the fact that many Canadians seem to get their government lessons from television in the U.S.

An Ipsos Reid poll in the midst of last winter’s crisis found 51 per cent of Canadians think the prime minister is directly elected, like the U.S. president. And the corollary to this belief is that the prime minister, like the president in Washington, should not be removed except as a result of an election.

Both perceptions are a monkey wrench in Canada’s democratic machine, where voters do not elect a prime minister directly but instead elect MPs to the House of Commons. And in Ottawa, unlike the U.S., the right to form a government hinges entirely on being able to obtain the support of a majority of those MPs.

Laura Stephenson, a political scientist at the University of Western Ontario, said Canadians think their system of government is a lot simpler than it actually is.

That makes it easier for voters to accept the concept that one party is trying to “unjustly take control of government,” she said.

But, under Canada’s parliamentary system, it was wholly legitimate for the Liberals and New Democrats, with the support of Bloc Québécois MPs, to get together last December to try to defeat the Conservatives over what they saw as the government’s woefully inadequate response to the economic crisis.

Harper, saddled with the prospect of perennial minority governments, seems determined to promote a very different view about the legitimate use of power by his opponents in the House of Commons.

Saying “this is a pivotal moment in our history,” Harper gravely told the country in a televised address on Dec. 3 that opposition parties were attempting to take power “without your say, without your consent and without your vote.”

Public support for Harper’s stance was widespread. A national poll found that, had an election been held then, the Conservatives might have captured a majority.

The voters’ anti-coalition response reflected various factors, including their sound rejection of Stéphane Dion, the previous Liberal leader.

Still, the ferocity of the backlash was a wake-up call for experts who study Canada’s democracy.

Lorraine Weinrib of the University of Toronto’s law faculty said the Prime Minister’s handling of the constitutional issue was shocking.

“He was exploiting the fact that the general public isn’t aware of the intricacies of our democratic parliamentary system,” she said.

The crisis wound down when Governor General Michaëlle Jean used her power to temporarily suspend Parliament.

But what worries experts like Russell is the potential for a partisan flare-up around the fate of a minority government that would undercut the authority of the governor general and lead to a breakdown of political order. The governor general could end up in an “impossible position” where any decision on the resolution of a crisis would be met with overwhelming opposition from political parties and the public, Russell said.

http://www.thestar.com/article/655625

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CHRISTOPHER PIKE FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has seen his budget slashed to $1.8 million from $2.8 million in 2009.

Richard J. Brennan

OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA – Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page says the Conservative government is doing its best to put him out of business.

“This is a litmus test for democracy,” Page, a veteran public servant, told the Toronto Star.

Sitting in his downtown Ottawa office, Page is reminded of a quotation from legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward: “Democracies die in darkness.”

“When you are in power it is less easy to want this kind of oversight,” Page said.

Stinging from Page’s report last October that put an $18 billion price tag on the Afghanistan war, among other embarrassing revelations, the government slashed his budget for this fiscal year from $2.8 million to $1.8 million.

“Our budget is cut and I am in an almost impossible situation. … I cannot carry out my mandate,” Page said, adding that while funding is crucial, transparency is equally important.

Page’s Parliamentary Budget Office, which is oddly connected to the Parliamentary Library, provides independent analysis on economic trends, scrutinizes government estimates and spending and works with the House of Commons and Senate finance committees and the public accounts committee.

The joint Senate-Commons committee on the Parliamentary Library recently recommended his budget be increased but also strongly recommended he be reined in. It told him he can no longer make public reports commissioned by an MP or committee until he has been given permission.

“On the reports we commission … the contents are our property and I think Mr. Page for a while misinterpreted it as his property and therefore had the right to put it on his website whenever he saw fit,” said Liberal committee member MP Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul’s).

Page said it is this kind of attack on the transparency of his office that will make it difficult “to maintain credibility and the integrity of the office.”

“They say I may be independent of the government but not independent of the library and (have) major issues with our reporting procedures, which (are a) purely open and transparent model. We take in requests from parliamentarians. We give it back to them and release it to the public at the same time,” he said.

Liberal MP Bob Rae said rather than trying to muzzle the budget officer, Page should be encouraged to do even more.

“He is making a tremendous contribution to the development of strong public policy and should be encouraged rather than attacked by the government,” Rae said.

Page’s office made waves last October with the release of the Afghanistan report, and late in November released a controversial economic statement that warned of a recession and a deficit.

“At the end of the day, it is taxpayers who pay my salary, and the $1.8 million that they gave me for the first years, and why (shouldn’t) they see everything I do,” he said. “How can you have accountability without transparency?”

The Library does not normally release the information or research it prepares for MPs or committees.

Page, who was appointed in March 2008, fears the Conservative government thought he would be a lapdog, not a watchdog.

“Going back to last fall, after releasing some of those big reports, some people were saying, `Oh, wait a minute here, we thought we were going to get another research librarian.’”

Following a recent heated exchange in question period, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said when the government created the office it was designed to report on budgetary matters to MPs rather than them having to go through the government to get information.

“That’s the purpose; it isn’t to be an auditor general of some sort because we have an auditor general,” Flaherty later told reporters.

Université de Moncton political scientist Donald Savoie argues that officers of Parliament have taken over the kind of oversight that MPs themselves should be doing.

“We’ve really disempowered Parliament. The role that Parliament, parties, and leaders of the opposition used to play is now being played by officers of Parliament.

“Officers of Parliament are accountable to no one … .”

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith

http://www.thestar.com/article/655016

Note the comments.

JAKE WRIGHT/HILL TIMES FILE PHOTO

MPs and journalists played soccer in June 2009, all chasing the ball at the same time, a metaphor for media coverage in Ottawa. Left to right, Canwest’s David Akin, with back to camera, shares field with Tory MP Jeff Watson, Le Devoir’s Alex Castonguay, Liberal MP Scott Andrews and NDP MP Brian Masse.

Susan Delacourt

OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA – Earlier this month, a soccer game was played on the lawn of Parliament Hill – MPs versus members of the national media.

A spectator, well-versed in soccer strategy, observed: no one on either team was playing his or her position – they were all chasing the ball.

One probably couldn’t find a better metaphor for the daily to-and-fro between politicians and the press. Everyone is always chasing the ball – the story of the day.

Last week, the “ball” was a series of meetings between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. Everything else on the agenda faded into insignificance while the media pack pursued the story, even though the only outcome was a study group and an excuse for more election speculation.

It’s often said that people get the government they deserve, but in the bubble of Ottawa, where daily developments resemble a rough-and-tumble sports match, it may be more correct to say that the media get the government they deserve.

Volumes have been written about how TV changed politics, making it more about appearance and the pursuit of the 10-second sound bite.

But television has also made possible live, cross-country coverage of significant political events and panel shows featuring elected representatives and intelligent analysis.

So it seems a bit much to pin all the blame on TV for the decline in democracy in political discourse.

What’s more significant, in terms of the media’s ability to cover Parliament, is the reality of reduced resources and multiple deadlines.

Over the past 10 years, many news bureaus in Ottawa have shut down, while remaining organizations have cut the size of their offices.

In the meantime, the Internet and all-news cable have ushered in an age of multiple deadlines, every day. The pace of political news is compressed into hours, even minutes.

Shrinking media budgets and declining public interest mean that there’s also less room for political stories. Still, competition is fierce. No one wants to miss a story, so everyone watches what the others are doing. There are few rewards for breaking away from the pack.

It’s a perfect collision of conditions to get everyone chasing one tiny ball, instead of fanning out over the democratic field.

Politicians, in this environment need to be expert at what’s called “rapid response.” If you can’t keep up with a fast-paced story, you get described as a ditherer.

John Crysler is pursuing his doctorate in political studies at Carleton University, looking at the “presidentialization” of the role of prime minister. His study has taken him to Australia and New Zealand, where he found “leader-centric” government has also crept in. Never mind about the role of the PM as first among equals – he’s now the first, the last, the everything.

Crysler believes the 24-hour news cycle, combined with shorter news items, has put huge pressure on political parties.

“Not only must parties respond rapidly to emerging issues, but they must also do so free of mistakes (which the media punish heavily), and with clear and unambiguous messages,” says Crysler.

“The easiest way to ensure that the message is clear and unambiguous is to have a single messenger – the party leader.”

This also helps to ensure the face of government is increasingly one person – the prime minister.

And when the focus is on one person, you start to see more “personality” reporting. Instead of policy coverage, the media report on character, even wardrobe (in the case of Harper’s blue sweater in the last election campaign, for instance).

This can suit politicians – if the media focus on personality, there’s no demand to set forth policy positions that might alienate voters.

In any effort to fix what’s wrong with federal politics, the media have a part to play. And it’s not in the spectators’ stands – the press pack is out there on the field with the politicians, chasing that ball.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/654520

and check  out the comments.

We need voting reform that includes some form of proportional represenation. Iranians live in a sham-ocracy; so do we. Boycott the next federal and provincial elections. My vote doesn’t count. Power is concentrated in the prime minister and premier’s offices.”

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CHRISTOPHER PIKE FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Maya Rothschild, 19, leaves her mark by volunteering in the soup kitchen at the Ottawa Mission. Some young people mark ballots come election time. Others just mark time.

Joanna Smith
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA – Maya Rothschild adjusts her dark hair and tightens the strings of her apron over her white T-shirt and faded blue jeans.

She steps around the sink and lifts up the metal covers to show off the daily offerings: soup, rice and chowder. She greets the smiles of strangers with a smile of her own.

This is the soup kitchen at the Ottawa Mission. This is real. This makes her feel good. This makes her feel like she is making a difference. Right now.

Voting is different.

“It’s just kind of really distant and removed,” says the 19-year-old student in her last year of high school. “Voting is really abstract. You just cast your ballot and it just shuffles off somewhere in the mail, but if you come here every day you are doing something and you are watching it affect people.”

Rothschild knows about voting.

The American citizen, who moved to Ottawa with her mother and sister seven years ago from Chicago, actually cast an absentee ballot in the U.S. election last November.

Rothschild also knows she is different. She knows many people her age and a little older care very little about politics – not even enough to walk into a polling station.

“Young Canadians display a pattern of civic and political engagement that differentiates them from other Canadians,” Brenda O’Neill, an associate professor in political science at the University of Calgary, wrote in a research paper called Indifferent or Just Different? The Political and Civic Engagement of Young People in Canada, funded by Elections Canada in 2007.

“They are less likely to vote, are less likely to be members of political parties and interest groups, are less interested in politics and know less about politics than other Canadians,” O’Neill wrote.

Those concerned with things like the health of our democracy are trying to find out why – and then trying hard to fix it.

“It’s not actually a question of young people being apathetic,” says Ilona Dougherty, executive director and co-founder of Montreal-based Apathy is Boring. “It’s more a question of the disconnect between young people and traditional institutions where decision-making tends to take place. …

“We do all sorts of things to make the world a better place, like emailing our friends about issues that we care about, but what we don’t necessarily do is go out to the polls,” says Dougherty. “We don’t fit into the boxes that previous generations have created.”

There are several theories for why this generation is staying away.

One theory has to do with younger people just not really knowing what to do or who to vote for.

“They don’t feel like the electoral process is accessible, ” Dougherty says. “They don’t feel like they are informed enough about how to vote and also they don’t feel like their vote is going to change anything.”

Traditional sources of information about democracy and civic engagement – schools and families – do not seem to be doing enough to get younger people excited about political participation at a time when a sense of duty is no longer enough.

Taylor Gunn is trying to pick up some of the slack.

He co-founded a Toronto-based organization called Student Vote, which has been running parallel elections in Canadian schools since 2003. It teaches students about the candidates and the issues before having them cast mock ballots, after which they can see their results on television and in newspapers.

“I think political participation is irreplaceable. Just because you volunteer doesn’t mean that you can shy away from the ballot box,” says Gunn. “We need to keep on finding ways for students (to participate in) democracy while they are in school … so when they come out they know how to vote because they have actually done it.”

Rothschild believes if there were some way to get younger people interested in voting then politics might be a very different game.

“Young people pay a lot more attention to what people do than what they say, generally, so whereas you might have a bunch of people listening to what someone is saying about what they are going to do, you might have youth looking at what they are doing right now,” she says.

pointed out in his book Leviathan that the emergence of political parties in British parliamentary life was the worst thing to happen to democracy there. Parties need money, money leads to favours, favours lead to watered down legislation and outside influence over policy. Paries lead to party discipline which does not necessarily reflect the views of MPs. Ban political parties I say. I agree with the comment that change does not happen by not participating. You want change, try voting and vote for alternatives. Personally I was impressed by Elizabeth May in the debates. I didn’t agree with all their policies, but she and was the only one who answered questions in a clear, concise fashion. Unlike all the other participants, she actually addressed the issues.”

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“I got interested in politics because of the sham coalition that developed. It didn’t seem right to me that people could get together and basically say, we didn’t win honourably so now we’ll cheat to win. Sorry, but that is what it came across as. I did start looking into the parties and decided to become a member instead of just voting the local who sounded good. I am more involved now and feel good about politics for the first time in decades. Getting involved does make a difference.”

http://www.thestar.com/article/654249

CHRISTOPHER PIKE FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Federal information commissioner Robert Marleau, in his Ottawa office: “We do not do a good job in Canada about teaching and learning about our basic institutions.”

Bruce Campion-Smith

OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

OTTAWA – At the time it was hailed as groundbreaking. Fill out a one-page form, pay a $5 fee and Canadians had the right to ask for any federal government record. The introduction of the Access to Information Act in 1983 put Canada on the cutting edge.

“We were amongst the leaders in the world,” says Robert Marleau, the federal information commissioner.

But the leader has become the laggard after 26 years of “static decline,” Marleau says.

“Since then it’s been the same song and dance, no effort by any government to have this legislation or these processes keep pace with time, change and technology,” he said in an interview.

Today, the access to information system is collapsing from a combination of neglect and bureaucrats foiling citizens’ right to know through foot-dragging and fees.

The tale of what’s happened to the Access to Information Act is just as easily the story of Canadian democracy in recent decades as benign neglect, calculated power grabs and public apathy erode principles and institutions.

Power is being concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office.

MPs, for years mere props in the production, are now more useful to their leaders as partisan attack dogs. They preach accountability but hide their expenses.

Cabinet ministers are also becoming increasingly sidelined and more government business than ever is being done in the dark, far from the prying eyes of Canadian voters.

Canadians who are fighting to stay engaged in the process increasingly feel their elected officials no longer represent their interests. More importantly, more and more Canadians are tuning out.

That lack of outrage merely allows elected officials to avoid the transparency that the system was supposed to demand.

“Our national political and administrative institutions are not in good shape,” political scientist Donald Savoie says.

“We got there by being complacent, by not focusing on the real important things. We’re focusing on the message of the day … not on the real fundamental functioning of our institutions.

“I’m not optimistic. I think we’ve thrown fundamental policy debates out the window.”

For a nation that has had three general elections in less than five years – and teetered on the brink of yet another last week – the idea that democracy is on the decline may seem odd.

But even elections drive home the concern. Voter turnout in federal elections, especially among the young, is dropping, from 75 per cent in 1979 to 58 per cent in last October’s election.

“Young people are disturbed by the diminishing role of the member of Parliament. Party discipline … has eliminated the freedom of the member of Parliament to express his or her views or to represent the constituency as it ought to be represented,” former Prime Minister John Turner told a session during the Liberals’ spring convention.

Fixing the problem will require a prime minister who seeks less power, not more, and more assertive MPs willing to stand up for their constituents, rather than their parties. And citizens must reclaim their voices in the political process.

IT DIDN’T HAPPEN overnight. Instead, this trend has been in the works over decades with both Progressive Conservatives and Liberals in government, though many observers agree that the worrisome trends have accelerated since Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in 2006.

University of Toronto political science professor Lorraine Weinrib charges that Harper has an “extended track record” of showing disdain for the principles and practices at the heart of Canada’s constitutional system.

“While Harper touts the democratic principle as his ideal, his actions align with another principle – an all-powerful executive authority that makes his own rules,” she writes in an essay for a book titled Parliament Democracy in Crisis.

She notes how the Conservatives cancelled the court challenges program, which provided funding for court challenges by rights advocates. Harper himself has challenged the non-partisan officers of Parliament, such as the head of Elections Canada and the ethics commissioner.

Savoie, a long-time observer of parliamentary traditions in both Canada and Britain, bemoans the shift of power away from MPs and cabinet members to non-elected advisers around the PM.

“We now know that cabinet has been disempowered,” said Savoie, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the Université de Moncton.

“Power and influence in Ottawa is centred around court government, around the Prime Minister, around lobbyists, around spin doctors and our democracy has been bastardized, if you like, by lobbyists who only have one interest – their self-interest,” he says.

Liberal MP Bob Rae has the perspective of someone who served in Parliament from 1978 to 1982, left for provincial politics and now has returned to Ottawa. He says debates at committees and in the Commons these days are “ritualistic,” as if MPs are merely going through the paces.

“This is the least populist, the most centralized, the most disciplined approach to government that I’ve seen in a long time,” Rae said.

In his mind, reversing that trend will require MPs to flex their collective muscle and return power back to Parliament, though he’s not confident that will happen.

“I’m not sure we’ve got the willingness right now on the part of enough people who are in Parliament to really address it,” Rae said.

“It’s almost as if you need a prime minister who is prepared to say ‘I actually want less power.’ A prime minister who said, ‘We need to restore how Parliament is supposed to work,’ ” Rae said.

Add to that mix a batch of rookie MPs – 205 have been there less than five years – with little institutional memory of Ottawa, little respect for their political rivals, and reluctant to flex their political muscle against their party leaders.

“That is a problem. They come in and think that all this yelling and hollering is the way it should work,” Progressive Conservative Senator Lowell Murray said.

WHILE OTTAWA is seen as ground zero, the roots of the problem are found across the country among everyday citizens.

In short, look in the mirror.

Marleau complains Canadians know too little about the institutions that govern them.

He points to last fall’s parliamentary showdown as proof when the notion of the Liberal-NDP coalition was dismissed as “unconstitutional.”

The coalition may have been politically unpalatable. But it was perfectly legal under Canada’s parliamentary system.

And yet complaints about the coalition as a “coup” found a ready audience among Canadians, something Marleau finds worrisome.

“We do not do a good job in Canada about teaching and learning about our basic institutions.”

http://www.thestar.com/article/654005

CHRISTOPHER PIKE FOR THE TORONTO STAR

Marlene Jennings, the MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, was one of only four parliamentarians who agreed to release her expense records.

Allan Woods

OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA – Eleven dollars and 45 cents for computer mouse pads, telephone equipment worth $13, a $15 rug and a $10,203 bill to move an MP’s Parliament Hill office 37 steps, from one side of a stairwell to the other.

That is about all that’s known of the almost $128 million in expenses claimed by federal politicians in the last fiscal year.

The rest of it – the mundane, the understandable and the exorbitant – may never be revealed thanks to a culture of secrecy on Parliament Hill that appears to have bled across partisan lines.

Twenty cabinet ministers and backbenchers resigned or will retire in Britain after a newspaper was handed a computer disc containing expense claims on everything from a moat-cleaning service to the rental of a dirty movie. A heavily censored version of all British MPs’ expenses for the past three years was released on a parliamentary website this week and Scotland Yard launched a criminal investigation into some claims yesterday.

The House of Representatives in Washington now plans to post members’ expenses online each quarter, and similar pre-emptive plans are developing in New Zealand.

But nothing of that sort is likely to bring more transparency to Ottawa. In Canada, you can see how much of your money your MP has spent – an annual tally comes out each fall – but you have no right to learn how they spent it.

Of the 37 MPs contacted in the past several weeks, just four agreed to disclose the detailed information on specific expenses requested by the Toronto Star. A vast number simply ignored the appeal.

Then scripted responses began streaming in from politicians of all parties in the House of Commons.

“I would remind you that for expenses to be approved, receipts need to be submitted to the House of Commons,” said Zachary Healy, a Conservative party spokesman. “Receipts have been provided for all expenses, and they have been disclosed according to the rules currently in place,” said Karl Bélanger, the senior press secretary to NDP Leader Jack Layton.

“If an expense does not meet the guidelines … it is refused,” said an aide to Liberal MP Glen Pearson.

Even the Bloc Québécois, which said weeks ago that it had no fear of opening its expense claims for a look-see by the auditor general, dismissed requests for assistance and transparency.

“Alors bonne chance,” said Karyne Duplessis Piché, media relations officer for the Bloc caucus.

A secretive and powerful committee of eight MPs – four each from the government and the opposition – keeps watch over their colleagues’ bills.

The Board of Internal Economy meets every few weeks behind closed doors to decide how a portion of taxpayers’ money is spent running the House of Commons and compensating elected officials.

On March 9, they agreed to cover the legal expenses for six lawsuits brought against MPs for defamation, libel and employment disputes. They approved an out-of-court settlement to clear up another case involving an unnamed politician. The only public record of the payout is two lines in an obscure summary of the meeting.

The board won’t say who’s being sued, what prompted the lawsuit or how much the legal defences are costing taxpayers.

“At some point here there has to be some capacity to treat members in some confidence,” said board spokesman Mauril Bélanger, the Liberal MP for Ottawa-Vanier. “These are such matters.”

It’s much the same for expenses, though there is a list of rules to separate the legitimate claims from the frivolous. There are also audits and all-party oversight of the money.

Bélanger even appeared to take offence at suggestions the expense system was something less than fully transparent.

“Are you suggesting there are scandals in the House of Commons?” the veteran MP asked. “I’m suggesting there aren’t any … I would argue, sir, that the level of scrutiny that is currently applied ensures that things that may have happened elsewhere are not happening here.”

Don Boudria, a Liberal MP from 1984 to 2006 who also sat on the board, said federal politicians need discretion to manage staff salaries, office rentals and other purchases that make representing a constituency “like a miniature business.”

But the checks and balances on MPs’ expenses make Canada “a model that could be emulated in other countries,” he added.

For now, Canadians have to trust that this is true. If someone objected to a decision made by the board, or even the secrecy surrounding how those decisions are made, there’s not much they can do about it. The board has the final say on all of these matters – the judge, jury and court of appeal.

“They always say that the board meets in secret. Well, the boards of directors of most corporations meet privately also,” said John Reynolds, a former Conservative MP who sat on the board for six years before he left politics ahead of the 2006 federal election.

“You can’t run corporations that have public board meetings and the public attending your board meeting because you’re talking about staff, you’re talking about people.”

Here’s how the MPs’ spending breaks down:

All expenses for the country’s 308 MPs totalled $127,850,218 for the year ended March 31, 2008. That represents a jump of almost 42 per cent since the 2000-01 fiscal year, when 301 MPs spent $90,174,779.

The claims cover a politician’s riding office, where there is an allotted amount that MPs can bill for expenses, staff, travel, advertising and building rental.

A second grouping of expenses covers goods and services provided by the Commons for an MP’s Parliament Hill office, including telephone, printing, office supplies and a $5,000 fund for furniture and equipment improvement.

The different budget allotments are strictly administered, meaning MPs cannot use money set aside for travel between Ottawa and their constituency to buy fancy suits, Boudria said.

“You can’t do that even if you didn’t travel all year … You’d send it in and it would be sent back.”

The Star sought a detailed list of the $707,135 in expenses for services provided by the House of Commons labelled in annual disclosure statements as “Other.”

That category provides MPs the widest latitude in spending and provides the greatest variance on spending.

In the 2007-08 fiscal year, the amounts billed ranged from $2 for Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, to $2,418 for Brampton Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, to $17,910 for Helena Guergis, the Tory from Simcoe-Grey, to $314,542 for Winnipeg Conservative Steven Fletcher, who is quadriplegic.

A few days after a reporter first placed telephone calls to a number of politicians, Liberal MPs alerted their whip, the person who makes sure all party members are operating in unison. The whip, Cape Breton MP Rodger Cuzner, promptly called the Star seeking more details about the request.

Cuzner said the rules surrounding expenses are one of the first things newly elected members are taught upon arrival in Ottawa.

To prove there are checks in place, he admitted that several of his own past expense claims have been denied or deemed improper.

Bélanger also said he had an advertising expense rejected because he had not included his constituency contact information in the publication. And as recently as March 26, the board rejected the claims of an MP who tried to expense child-care bills, according to a summary of the meeting.

Cuzner insisted that Liberals have nothing to hide, but added: “My reservation would be for individual MPs making their claims public when not everyone’s is public.”

He promised to “give it some thought” and try to find a way to help, but he never called back.

Only four MPs, all Liberals – Peter Milliken from Kingston, who is the Commons Speaker and the chair of the Board of Internal Economy, Jim Karygiannis, who represents the Toronto riding of Scarborough-Agincourt, former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and Marlene Jennings from Montreal – agreed to release a breakdown of their expenses.

Milliken claimed the mouse pads and rental of an office water cooler at a cost of $176. Karygiannis billed for a $13 telephone cord. Dion claimed a $15 carpet during his brief stint as party leader.

Jennings was billed $3,404.30 by the House of Commons to physically move her Ottawa office 37 steps down the hall into an office vacated by former Toronto Liberal MP Bill Graham in early 2008. It cost $5,662.33 to paint the office and upholster two sofas, $836.44 for office repairs and $299.99 in information technology charges.

All the work was performed by government staff and the used furniture in her office was provided by the House of Commons, which automatically gives each item a monetary value, Jennings said.

The possible reasons MPs weren’t more forthcoming are quite simple, according to a number of current and former officials.

First, there’s no rule demanding that they do so. The bylaws state that only an MP or the board can authorize such a disclosure.

It’s also nobody’s business, said Reynolds, who retired from elected office in 2006 and now works in Vancouver as a strategic consultant with the Lang Michener law firm.

Making individual expense claims public, something already required of cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats, only feeds a scandal-obsessed media, he said.

“I don’t think it’s important that somebody knows what somebody eats for their supper. It then becomes a story. So-and-so eats a steak and somebody else lives on a hamburger. … There are people who like that stuff and that’s why the National Enquirer sells so well.”

But as with most bodies that conduct themselves far from public scrutiny, Bélanger said the board could decide at any time to shine more light on the hidden millions. Problems coming to light or scandals such as the one that continues to unfold in Britain could speed up that process. But then again, maybe not.

“Things have evolved over the past. I can’t see why they wouldn’t necessarily evolve over the future as well,” Bélanger said.

“In what shape and at what rate? I can’t predict that, but I can see things changing.”

Vote “independent” next time at all levels. Partisan politics doesn’t work. Never will.

Submitted by superpeach at 3:38 PM Saturday, June 20 2009″

See the rest of the comments at:

http://www.thestar.com/article/654014

SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO

Many were convinced there could be no valid change of government without elections, spurring some to protest on Parliament Hill Dec. 6, 2008.

James Travers

OTTAWA

From acrylics to zippers, inventive Canadians are surprisingly good at giving the world new stuff it wants. Now this country is perfecting something no one needs. It’s sham-ocracy, the illusion of government accountable to the people.

Even among mad scientists and crazy ideas, sham-ocracy is exceptional. It alone is designed not to function as advertised, to thwart its users. Gears don’t mesh, levers disconnect and the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Still, as a folly it’s a magnificent piece of work. Its Gothic facades, theatrical forums and mahogany history are as fantastic as any theme park. It whirs and clanks, billows smoke and oozes importance. It’s an icon and, all in all, a pretty good show.

No single person, political party or prime minister can hog the credit. Sham-ocracy is as much a group project as a shared burden. Begun in a 1980s Liberal effort to impose coherence and control on helter-skelter departments, agencies and spending, it’s spreading like cholera in the time of Conservatives.

Slower than light or sound, its speed is still remarkable. On April 4 the Toronto Star published an essay, available at thestar.com/Travers, pulling apart the cracked and broken links in the chain binding Parliament, politicians and civil servants to citizens. Today the paper begins a close examination of the sorry state of federal governance. Between then and now, the pace of change has been startling, if sadly predictable.

• Parliament lost more of its defining control over the public purse when the Prime Minister slipped $3 billion in public spending behind closed cabinet doors.
• Oversight was blinkered again this week when the new federal budget office was denied the independence needed to probe and explain how Ottawa spends.
• Voters’ control over their elected representatives was again eroded when Liberals, like Conservatives, saved obedient incumbent MPs from the discipline and inconvenience of nomination contests.
• Power is sliding farther away from the Commons and cabinet to concentrate in the Prime Minister’s Office as a presidential-style spokesman increasingly becomes the administration’s public voice.

Alone, none slices deep. As part of a progression they are killing democracy with cuts so small and sharp they are hardly noticed.

What’s left is absurd. Prime ministers with most of the power of medieval monarchs are no longer subservient to Parliament, their caucuses or party. A new professional class of appointed officials and lobbyists is more influential than ministers. Mandarins who once spoke truth to power are silent. Following taxpayer dollars from promise to pocket is an exercise in futility that exhausts the fittest traveller.

Many great inventions are accidental discoveries. Sham-ocracy isn’t one of them. Thirty years of Machiavellian schemes, good intentions and bad consequences have knowingly, if incrementally, altered this capital’s consuming purpose. Sometime between Pierre Trudeau and Stephen Harper, politicians topping the pecking order began coming here not so much to represent Canadians as to manage them. For too many of the less powerful, public service morphed into staying long enough to plumb perquisites and maximize pensions.

There are as many reasons for democracy becoming sham-ocracy as there are fixes. Over the coming weeks and months the Star will deconstruct them. But at the inquiry’s epicentre is a singular concern. In perpetuating a fraud, politicians risk making Parliament another Eaton’s, an institution more evocative of the past than relevant to the present or future.

James Travers’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Sham-ocracy

From June 20/09  to June 26/09 the Toronto Star is running a series on Canada’s democracy. This blog is to organize these articles in one place. They should be read during the upcoming election (whenever that is).