[This blog was posted at rabble.ca on June 2nd.]
While my recent book, Reviving Canadian Democracy, describes the accelerating decline of our democracy over the past decade, it also points out that this decline began long before Stephen Harper and will continue after him – unless an awakened Canadian public demands changes. But it appears that our Prime Minister would prefer to have exclusive credit for the sorry state of Canadian democracy, given the way he and his party have intensified their assault in recent months. Let us consider two examples that have been in the news of late.
[This blog was posted at rabble.ca on June 2nd.]
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With an election scheduled for October 2015, the life of this Parliament is drawing to a close – and when it does any legislation not yet passed into law will die. It is interesting to compare and contrast the experience and expected fate of two pieces of current legislation – Michael Chong’s Reform Act and Bill C-51 the Anti-terrorism Act.
Canada’s shadow government is made up of the appointed, unaccountable, largely unknown staff who comprise the PMO and exist to do the Prime Minister’s bidding. As I have written elsewhere, there has been an increasing concentration of power in this office over the past decade, in large part because of the unprecedented effort of Stephen Harper to control and manage information. Staff in the PMO increasingly dictate which Conservative MPs can speak, when, and what they can say. They attempt to control comments from public servants that do not support positions taken by the government. Recent media coverage of two PMO misadventures also indicates that they can be quite economical with the truth and are willing to engage in highly questionable activities to protect their interests. While the next federal election will likely be fought on the basis of which party will best manage the economy, the issue which ought to be front and center is which party will commit to the restoration of Canadian democracy. For those who may question the urgency of democratic reform, consider the following six examples:
[This blog was originally posted at rabble.ca] |
AuthorC. Richard Tindal, Ph.D is a retired Professor of Government. He taught for 30 years at St. Lawrence College, Kingston and was an occasional Visiting Professor at Queen's University. He has also written and consulted extensively about government. Archives
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