DIRECT DEMOCRACY

That is what crankypants seems to be getting at. Imagine if you will, a politician being held responsible to the constituents at all times, not just at election. They might even do what their electorate wants them to do. Rather than following the autocratic leader of some partisan party, bought by the corporate hand.
I don't really advocate a free for all of independents, but we must have enough of them to topple the likes of the Harper regime, and stop our country from being sold out from under us.
The greatest resource this country has, is not oil, mines. water, logs or any of that. It is the people. When I start to wonder how Harper will sell that resource it becomes clear, he already has.
My great-grandson who hasn't even been born yet is already in debt due to the mismanagement and greed of our elected. Canada, the most resource rich country in the world, will have a population of tax slaves, working to standards that make them "competitive" in the global economy.

Food, shelter, and clothing, the basics of life we have. We grow our own food, we have all we need to shelter ourselves, and our clothing material is there to be used. Even with all this my great grandchild may well become one of the many children living in poverty in B.C. ("The most wonderful place to be").

We must either go for Direct Democracy or hand over our "futures" to the directors of multinational corporations. in the hope that they "may" offer (for a price) a "medical plan" to my already indentured, not yet born, great grandson.

It's a big world out there

Independent candidates, eh?
So far the ones we have seen are "one-issues" candidates, promoting some particular local solution to a problem.

Our world is more complex than whether we pay for gas before we pump, for instance.

So, do these independent candidates have an overall policy, and how will we know what they stand for? like by going to a 2 hour meeting and listening to their favorite rant? -- duh!

There is a reason for political parties: you know what their platform is and using a whip, they can implement those policies.

Too bad that local voters do not see the world view at times, and for instance insist on scrapping the long gun registry. I feel it is for the candidate to explain that there is a world outside the local boundaries and support his partys stand regardless.

siamdave - so what happened?

In reading through history - especially labour history, considering we've just "celebrated" another Labour Day, I really think that nothing much happened.

"Management" has been screwing with labour for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and while we hoi polloi may have roused ourselves (briefly) in the 60's, we have since gone back to sleep - or re-relinquished the helm if you will, to the shysters we let run the world.

crankypants

Theoretically that is what we do have. For instance, we do not vote for a party or a leader. We cast our votes for a condidate representing a riding. The only people who vote for Harper, or Ignatieff, or Layton are the voters in those constituencies.

Where the system has gone wrong is where (as DNA posted) "...you *must* have the whip", whose job it is to ensure that MPs vote the party line and not what the voters demand.

As I have mentioned before, being an MP or MLA under our present system is an automatic conflict of interest. The politician is elected to represent the wishes of the electorate - yet is forced to vote the wishes of the party.

If we were to make any changes at all to the system, without throwing out the whole works, we should institute the secret ballot in Parliament and the legislatures. There would still be a record kept so voters could see how their representative voted, but the threat of censure would be removed if "the party" couldn't see how it's members were voting immediately.

Secret ballot? Party Platform?

A secret ballot would make it impossible to know if your representative voted for or against anything. How would the electorate know if this representative is worthy of being voted for again? There is too much secrecy in our political system as it is.

Also, I don't buy for a minute that most people vote for the person. Why do you think the parties spend most of their advertising on the leader of the party and the party itself while the actual candidate may as well be an asterisk. Another thing that indicates most people vote by party rather than the worthiness of the candidate is the number of polls were here about on almost a weekly basis. Would pollsters be asked to run these polls if the electorate votes for the person, not the party? Of course not because they would be of no value.

As for voting on a party's platform, that is almost laughable. Most of the platforms have expired before the votes are even counted and verified. Hell, we don't even really know who is governing us. Is it the Premier/Prime Minister or the bagmen that lurk in the shadows?

Independent representatives would be less likely to be able to be controlled by unknown, unelected influences. Besides, most of the real work is done by the Deputy Ministers and their staff. The Cabinet Ministers are nothing but talking heads for the most part, which is why they get shuffled around as much as they do.

Considering the political system we live under now, the politicians may as well be up front with the people and tell us we are inconsequential. The charade must be brought out in the open.

there is no incremental change to our political system ...

not now, for the hour is too late. The polticos do not see the problem, and cannot even comprehend it, because their careers depend on them not seeing.

"All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of rabbits, rabbits." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Natural History of Intellect (1893)

We are so ill-educated and mislead that we don't realize that a government put in place by lot would be leagues better than representation by the stooges who have a seat purchased for them. Besides, we are only entitled to some "form of democracy" constitutionally, and that is what we have -- form with no substance.

More like a Demockery,

then democracy!

Politicians are beholden to the corporate and elites' agenda; whomever's bum warms the seat in the legislature, or house of commons, and sometimes even the municipal council chambers!

crankypants

You are right - they don't. But there is no provision on the ballot for voting directly for a party. That people do is their misinterpretation of the ballot. It is the NAME of the candidate that is beside the box to place the "X". Were it not so, then the ballot would simply read Conservative, Liberal, New Democrat, etc, etc, and the candidate would be irrelevant. But the failing of the present system is that the candidate represents the PARTY that backs her/his candidacy.

So tell me how said candidates can possibly represent the people of a riding AND the party backing them?

And as for a secret ballot, it could easily be arranged that the voters of a riding can access Hansard - but not immediately on a vote - a sort of time delay mechanism. It's only one idea. But it would serve to take the immediate pressure off a representative. Another would be to run every motion past the constituents before a vote. But then it would have be be made compulsory to attend such meetings to be effective.

The Local Candidate

is the contact person between the public and the government. The election of that person is the most important consideration that we, the public, can make in forming any government.

The electorate needs to elect that person with a 50% + 1 vote, and anything less than that should require run-off votes until a majority is achieved. And the government itself would be confirmed rather than elected by electing only one-sixth of the total membership annually.
Removing the absolute power from the PM and his four- or five-year term of office in favour of requiring the constant accommodation of opposition parties' proposals according to the constantly changing composition of the HoC could encourage democratic decisions.

Since there would be no dramatic changeover as we have now, long-term projects would be more feasible, and could be adjusted when necessary without dismantling them entirely and starting them again and again. Elections would only happen in a riding every six years, and only in one-sixth of the country each year, once a schedule was established, perhaps by having the Speaker of the HoC draw the names of the ridings and the year of the next election therein. Once the list was established, the sequence would become repetitive so that government would be stable but constantly changing, little by little, according to the electorate's will.

Des

An interesting, innovative idea, Des.... I need more time to think about it..... but agree completely with your suggestion about removing the absolute power from the PM's office....and while we're on it...provincially, let's remove the absolute power from the Office of the Premier as well.

In Our Modern

age of speed the country is spanned in a matter of hours. It used to take forever to travel to the different parts of Canada, and a long-lived, stable government was required. We now have instantaneous communication, so a constantly changing government becomes feasible, able to react immediately to every stimulus that comes from the electorate without waiting for the next election and planning for that election instead of actually governing in the interim. To survive, any government would have to consider the express wishes of the voters from year to year, expecting to live another year by providing guidance to all rather than partisanship directed to reward supporters.

The huge expense involved in nation-wide election campaigns, and the time wasted in conducting a popularity contest, would be eliminated if one-sixth of the ridings went to the polls every year, forcing the government to adjust its own platforms regularly to appeal to the ridings involved.

A majority might be achieved one year, then reduced to a minority or an opposition role the next year if the public perceived poor performance, or the majority retained by a good performance. The immediacy of pressure upon the government would be constant, but each riding would only have to endure its own election every six years.

Des

I think that your ideas have some merit. The problem is that the rules are made by those that want to keep the status quo. Today's politicians don't care about the electorate, only attaining power. Federally the Liberals and Conservatives are content to take their turn at the trough in much the same way the BC Liberals and BC NDP are provincially.

To our politicians, the will of the people ranks right up there with a root canal.

Des, some interesting proposals

... but I am afraid that until the mindset and moral makeup of Canadians changes, people who seek an elected office are going to be, broadly speaking, of the same character we have now - power hungry, ethically pliable, with a love of money and with egos that enjoy incessant stroking.

Machiavelli believed that politicians would behave better when they depend upon a virtuous population than when they rely upon one indifferent to moral considerations. In short, we need to look in the mirror and be responsible for permitting who and what we do in government.