Category: Federal (Page 1 of 2)

With the election of a Liberal government on Monday, it looks like we may finally get electoral reform in Canada. Some pundits don’t think that a majority government will do it, but I believe that there is enough evidence that strategic voting got the Liberals their majority that they may actually follow through, knowing that they will lose those votes by the next election if they don’t do something.

My top priority for voting reform if of course the ranked or preferential ballot. My second priority, something I haven’t discussed before, is the removal of party names from the ballot. It seems like a small change, but I think it is vital.

There is a law in Canada that party advertising is not allowed in a polling place. The idea is that it may affect the outcome of the vote as people may be more inclined to vote for a candidate after seeing an ad for that candidate. Makes sense to me, keep the playing field level.

But then, once you get to the ballot, the name of the political party appears next to each of the candidates. It can be argued that this takes away the “level playing field” between candidates, making what is supposed to be a local decision into one based on national party. And that is really the crux of this. In our system, you vote for the local candidate, not the national leader.

The idea of voting for a local candidate is so that that person, who has a personal knowledge of the riding, can make decisions based on the wishes of the electorates in that riding. A party only gains power in our system when enough of those local representatives give it the confidence of the House. Many of the problems we have had of late have been because the national party dictates to the local member instead of the other way around.

If you remove party names from ballots, what you do is make it more important for the local candidate to become known. A candidate like Brandon-Souris’ Larry Maguire would have done just fine on Monday because he ran a locally focused campaign based on his own personality and with a catchy local slogan, “Rehire Maguire.”

If you look north, to Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa, there may be an example of a riding that may have had different results had party name not been on the ballot. In that riding, you had Inky Mark, former Conservative MP, running as an independent along with the other regular party representatives. As it stands, Mr. Mark only got 8.1% of the vote on Monday night, versus over 40% for his Conservative opponent. I have no way of proving it, but I suspect that had there been no party affiliation listed on the ballot, Mr. Mark’s numbers would have been higher, and Mr. Sopuck’s (Conservative) would have been lower. Both men are known to stand for small “c” conservative values, and both have won the old riding of Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette with over 18,000 votes.

Perhaps I am wrong, but if I am then removing the party name will have no affect on the outcome of an election, no harm, no foul. If I am right, then party name on a ballot is affecting the outcome, essentially acting as advertising inside a polling place.

Some would argue that removing party affiliation from a ballot would impede the ability of some people to vote. If, after 36 to 78 days of a campaign, if you are not informed enough by that point to be able to identify your local candidate’s name that will best represent you, then perhaps you are not informed enough to vote. The only reason to have a party name on a ballot is to help “direct” you to which candidate that you should vote for. It amounts to an advertisement for the party, something Elections Canada should not be helping parties do.

Advertising inside a polling place is illegal for a reason.

This happened at a polling station in Edmonton during advanced polling last weekend.

Cowboy voter at advance poll was protesting niqab at citizenship ceremony
(CBC.ca)

As a protest of wearing a niqab to vote or to swear a citizenship oath, this guy’s stunt was an abject failure. He got it wrong. He was allowed to vote, as he should have been, the same as someone wearing a religious face covering. He didn’t actually prove anything.

However, in the story it also mentions what brought this on.

He was in court last month, supporting his partner who had to testify, when he was asked by the court clerk to remove his hat. When he responded that it was his cultural practice to wear his hat, he was told that he would be physically removed from the courtroom if he failed to comply.

Before an election, a woman wearing a hijab in Quebec was told by a judge that she could not appear without removing the head garment. The judge was thoroughly lambasted by many people as being culturally intolerant or even racist. Some political leaders said that the judge was wrong to not let the woman testify.

Here’s the thing. After thinking about it… for quite a while,  I also came to the conclusion that the judge was being intolerant and should have heard the case. How the hell does a woman wearing a niqab affect the judge’s ability to effectively do her job? The excuse that one should show respect for the Court by removing head coverings is not a good enough reason to cause this woman what could be profound personal anguish if forced to remove her religious garment.

Here’s the thing though, justice needs to not only be applied equally, it needs to be seen to be applied equally. That means no special rules based on religion, especially in a courtroom.

To me, this means that he should have never been asked to remove his hat in the courtroom. Was he just doing it to be an ass? Most likely. Unfortunately, being an ass doesn’t automatically mean that he was wrong.

He should not have been asked to remove his hat, and if politicians such as Justin Trudeau, Tom Mulcair, and Marc Garneau are true to their word, they will defend his right to wear what he wants.

After all, just a few months ago all three vowed to defend the right to wear what you want, even if it was unpopular.

Sometimes the data doesn’t appear as it seems. Take the latest data on the CBC Poll Tracker from Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight.com:

Looks pretty straight forward. If the election was held today, the New Democrats would get more of the popular votes, but the Conservatives would most likely win more seats. Conventional wisdom is that Stephen Harper would form a minority government. Traditionally, that is what would happen. The Governor General will ask the party with the most seats if it can form a government. This is where it gets dicey.

In this situation, Harper has to try to form a government. To do anything else is to admit defeat. After all, he formed a minority government back in 2006, increased his seat count in 2008, and got a majority in 2011. The man has experience governing in a minority parliament.

However, this year would be different. Going from a comfortable majority to a minority would be seen as a defeat. During the first minority governments of Stephen Harper, his party was always showing an upward trend; this would show a downward trend. Also keep in mind that back then, the other two parties were hesitant to force an election against a Conservative party that was increasing in popularity while their own fortunes might be failing. It was in this way that Stephen Harper kept the confidence of the House; everyone knew that he had a legitimate mandate.

This time I’m not so sure.

If the Conservatives come in with a result any lower than a majority, they lose. Sure, if the current numbers were to be somewhat similar on election day, then the Governor General will ask Mr. Harper if he can form a government. The only thing that will stop that is if Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Trudeau agree to form a coalition government in the first hours following the election. Chances are a formal coalition is not going to happen as it is not in Justin Trudeau’s best interest as leader of the party to give up that leadership to Tom Mulcair. The machinery of the once dominant Liberal Party would never let that happen, it would be too much of a defeat.

Here’s the thing though. As I understand our Parliamentary System, you do not need to have the most seats in parliament. You don’t need to form a formal coalition. All you need to govern is the confidence of the House. That puts Tom Mulcair in charge.

It is not that difficult to reason that Stephen Harper’s government falls at the first non-confidence motion introduced in the House of Commons. After almost a decade of Conservative government, the opposition parties would not be able to say that they have confidence in the Government. For the NDP and Liberals, a confidence motion will defeat the Harper government, neither can be seen to support him at this point.

This puts Tom Mulcair in a very interesting position, he doesn’t need Justin Trudeau, just his party’s votes. As long as he gets more seats than Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, Tom Mulcair most likely becomes Prime Minister before the following election. With so many overlapping policies, the Liberals would surely have to give their support to the NDP if just to throw out the Conservatives. A formal coalition doesn’t seem to be required. Personally, I think Mulcair knows this and his offer of a coalition was an attempt to make himself look like the bigger statesperson.

In this election, I’m sure everyone is playing to win. However, for the NDP or Liberals, while a majority would be nice, first place the more likely prize, but in this case second place is pretty much as good. For the Conservatives anything less than an outright majority is devastating.

Believe it or not, despite the numbers, it is Harper who is in the most precarious position this election.

Elizabeth May should probably be in the election debates this fall. She is the leader of a national party with two MPs currently serving in Ottawa, and they run a fairly full slate of candidates across the country. The Green Party of Canada is truly a national party.

Of course, the other parties would like to keep her out. In an election, getting exposure is the number one priority, so limiting your opponent’s exposure, if you can manage to do it, is something worth doing to improve your own chances. The big three established parties, formerly four with the Bloc, will therefore use their “official party status” in the House to try to keep May out. Since the three have a lot of pull with the broadcast consortium that televises the debates, they will generally get their way.

I don’t understand why they have any pull at all.

Frankly, in my mind the debates should be scheduled and determined by our independent election watchdog, Elections Canada. They are a neutral third party, and should therefore form the rules and tell the party leaders where and when to show up. Every election I hear about negotiations between broadcasters and the parties to make these debates happen. It’s like we didn’t know the damn things were coming every time the writ is dropped.

As for rules, I think it should be pretty simple. For your leader to be in the debate, you should need to be running candidates in at least 25% of ridings (I think even 40% or 50%) would be reasonable, in at least two different provinces. I would also like to see the two province rule applied to the House, so that a one issue and single province party like the Bloc Quebecois could never happen again. A party should need to represent more than one narrow interest to get national funding. It would also prevent an Ontario-centric party from forming at any time in the future. It promotes nation building as opposed to regionalization. These simple rules let the Green Party,  a national party, in and they keep the regional party out, namely the Bloc.

I don’t think that this is too far fetched of an idea and I really don’t understand why it hasn’t happened before now.

I also have my own reasons, I have narrowed my choices down this year to the NDP and the Greens, and I have to admit I’m leaning heavily Green. Their policy statements cover a lot of the same ground, but the Greens cover a few points that the NDP don’t touch on, that I find important . It seems that the Greens are actually unafraid to take a stand. I respect that. I also want to see how the leaders of those two parties perform those nights.

I want Elizabeth May to have a fair chance.

Sometimes it is easy to pick a side in a debate, one side is so clearly wrong that one can easily point out the problems and holes in their logic. Some debates are black and white.

Others are so many shades of grey. There are nuances that few tend to see, and as you start to peel away the layers of the onion, one problem after another starts to appear. Sometimes, a decision seems like the right one, but starts you down a slippery slope that you only realize has happened once you’re halfway down the damn thing.

Sometimes there is just no fair answer.

I fear that this is the problem we face when we deal with religious rights and what is known as reasonable accommodation. It is a laudable goal to respect a person’s religious rights and to make reasonable adjustments when those rights seem to go against what others may consider normal practice. The problem of course becomes – What is reasonable?

I fear we have hit that wall on the issue of religious articles of clothing such as the Niqab and the Hijab.

Justin Trudeau made a speech at McGill University on Monday night on the politics of fear that is being practiced by the current government of Prime Minister Harper and the Conservatives. He is right, the bills introduced of late by the Conservatives have often been about stoking the fear of Canadians and using that fear to sell a law and order agenda that frankly is unneeded, and by most reasonable people’s interpretations, would go against the Charter. For much of his speech, I am in wholehearted agreement with him.

However, during his speech he commented on the topic of religious face and head coverings. He referred to a recent court decision that said that it goes against the Charter to ask a religious person to not cover their face with a Niqab during a citizenship ceremony. He also brought up a recent case where a Muslim woman was denied a court hearing in Quebec because she would not remove her Hijab.

Firstly, I do not think it unreasonable to expect a person to show their face when taking an oath of citizenship. To be able to see one’s face, to be able to see that the person taking the oath is the one that is supposed to take the oath is not an unreasonable request. Even the Charter uses the term reasonable.

Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The second problem I see here, and perhaps those of us that are secular humanists and atheists see this differently than the general population, is that sometimes religion gets an extra set of rules that it gets to play with. Case in point, the court in Quebec that denied a Hijab wearing woman her day in court.

Now let me be clear, my gut feeling on this is that the judge most likely was coming at this from a position of bigotry. I have a feeling that there are many people who came into said courtroom in the past, wearing religious headgear of some other religion, and this judge took no issue. I suspect that that is the case. There is no way for me to know at this moment, but I suspect that that has happened in the past. If religious headgear or symbols have been allowed in that courtroom before, and if the judge allows people to swear on the Bible or the Koran, then the claim of that court being secular is total bunk. I suspect that that is the case. I have that feeling.

But lets pretend that the judge does run the courtroom in a secular manner; just for argument’s sake. Lets say that everyone in that courtroom affirms that they will tell the truth with a secular oath. With that established, lets say that the judge asks the woman to please remove her Hijab as a sign of respect for the secular courtroom. Is that unreasonable? I’m not going to answer that.

I would actually put it a different way. If we as a society think that it is wrong to make that woman remove her head covering because it goes against her deeply held religious beliefs, then are we obligated to honour those feeling? Before we answer that, another situation.

Robert is a hypothetical individual. Rob is an obsessive fan of the Montreal Canadiens. In 1993, he was wearing the cap of his favourite team and for some reason he never took it off outside his house that year. The team went all the way, won the cup. From that point on, every year the Habs make the playoffs, Rob wears his hat. It’s his good luck charm, and despite them not winning the Cup since, Rob truly believes that wearing his cap makes a difference. It is a deeply held, personal belief. I can judge it, I can think it’s a ridiculous belief; but it is his belief and he has every right to have it.

So, one day Rob lets his son borrow the car, and the car gets impounded. Rob goes to court to get his car back. The judge refuses to hear the case because Rob refuses to remove his hat. Rob gets kicked out of court.

How is this not the same thing?

Both “Rob the sports fanatic” and the woman wearing the Hijab are doing the same thing, refusing to remove an article of clothing that they have a strong belief that they have to wear when they are out in public. The fact that Rob’s belief is not based in a religion does not make it any more or any less valid. All that matters is that he has a deeply held personal belief and that going against that belief will cause him deep personal angst.

As an atheist, I cannot see Rob’s situation as any less or as any more than that of the woman wearing the Hijab. I have seen many people comment that a baseball cap is not the same as a religious headpiece? I would ask who are they to make that judgement on behalf of the person wearing said non-religious headpiece. If the religious person gets to wear their head covering, then everyone gets to wear their head covering as they see fit. To do otherwise is religious discrimination against those that do not hold said religion. It gives special treatment to those who claim a religious exception over those that live a secular existence.

It would seem that I have Mr. Trudeau on my side.

“For me, this is both unconscionable and a real threat to Canadian Liberty. For me, it is basic truth that Prime Ministers of liberal democracies ought not to be in the business of telling women what they can and cannot wear on their head during public ceremonies.”

I would hope he’d be just as fervent in Rob’s defense.