If it was Sir John A. Macdonald that brought Canada together with the railroads, it has been our national political parties that have kept Canada together since. And it is our national parties that have given Canada stable government for almost 150 years. So why has a special parliamentary committee spent the summer looking at ways of eliminating the need for national parties?
And why is the Liberal Party of Canada spearheading this direction? With the support of the New Democrats and the Green Party MPs, the Liberal MPs are looking hard at various forms of proportional representation (PR). It is the same way the Liberals duped the Conservatives in the flag debate more than 50 years ago–by looking like you are going in one direction and then reversing on the final vote.
But why head in a direction that could destroy your party’s national character? Maybe the answer to that is in the changes that Justin Trudeau has already pressed on the Liberal Party of Canada. The first change was to allow participation in the party to people who just indicated an interest. These joiners became part of the core of the Liberal Party’s funding base in the extra long election campaign in 2015.
And since then Justin Trudeau’s inner circle has rewritten the Liberal Party of Canada’s constitution. Approved by the party at its May Convention in Winnipeg on the urging of the Prime Minister, the new constitution is a shallow document that puts all the power in the hands of a few elite around the leader. It denies electoral districts the right to choose their candidates and leaves them with no direct say in party policy or constitutional matters. To be a Liberal today is to be an obedient faucet that can be turned on to provide funds to be used at the leader’s direction.
What it adds up to is that liberals across Canada will have no say on proportional representation when it is proposed by the all-party committee in December. The demand by the Conservatives that there be a referendum before any change will be met by a promise of a referendum during the 2022 election to confirm the proportional method or to go back to first-past-the-post. The subsequent legislation will be passed with or without Conservative agreement by the Liberals, NDP and the one Green Party MP.
It is sad to be the bearer of bad news but that is what it looks like folks. We can only hope that the country is not destroyed in the process.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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