It takes two things to fix Canada’s constitution. It takes ideas and leadership. Without suggestions as to how we will fix it or people to lead the parade, it is rather silly to take polls as to how people feel about our sorry mess.
As it stands to-day, Canada is tied in a constitutional lock-down. Giving petty dictators running provinces the power to deny Canadians a better future is undemocratic and a failure in negotiation. It will only be when we can all see the potential for Canada’s future that we might come to agreement.
The first step in the process is to convince Canadians that a constitutional conference needs to be held. This can be created by a national referendum. It can be kept to a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The proposal could deal with the creation of the conference and the questions about the future that need to be discussed. And then, after the conference, we can have a vote by all Canadians as to whether they approve of the suggestions coming from the conference.
The constitutional conference could be fashioned as a parliamentary assembly—with maybe two persons per constituency. What we would not want would be for them to run to be members of the assembly as members of a political party. We would certainly want input from the parties but this is a situation where geographical input should come first. We really want the people to represent the people in the constituency that sent them.
What we need to stay away from is choosing members as though in a raffle. We saw what happened in 2007 when Ontario picked people at random for a conference and the guy chosen to run it led the raffle winners down the garden path. It was a waste of time and the majority of Ontario voters agreed.
At the same time, we have to stay away with results such as the Charlottetown Accord. The 1992 accord was a politician’s view of a solution to Canada’s discord. It was a plan put forward by the leaders of the federal and provincial governments. After former prime minister Pierre Trudeau came out against the Accord, it was also a waste of time.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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