If the Liberals Blink

carry on

Malcolm wrote:

Mycroft, while Senate defeat can delay legislation, the convention is clearly established that the unelected Senate (quite rightly) will ultimately defer to the Commons.  Defeat of the measure in the Senate can serve to delay egislation, but a the end of the day, that is all.

BTW, the Senate may well have threatened to defeat free trade,  but they didn't.  And Mulroney invoked the provision for 10 additional Senators based on Liberal threats - the Senate had not voted on the GST.  (Ironically, the additional Senators were pivotal in the defeat of the abortion bill.)

Senate delays and threats, however ineffectual in the long run, can serve to attact media attention and galvanize public opinion around issues where the Commons "opposition" fails to do so. The GST and Free Trade, for example, became much bigger [i]causes celebres[/i] because of the Senate's sober second thoughts.  

Malcolm wrote:

Now, I'm sorry, but I fail to see how anyone can claim to believe in democracy when they are advocating that a gang of unelected hacks and flacks can and should exercise the full scope of their notional powers.  Advocating that the Senate defeat legislation from the Commons is inherently anti-democratic.

Now, I'm sorry, but I fail to see how anyone can claim to believe in democracy when they are advocating that a governing party in the Commons supported by a minority of voters should be permitted unimpeded licence to exercise the full scope of their legislative powers.

And again, you are lying and misrepresenting my position in order to score cheap points. I have made my position clear in this thread; there is no urgency whatsoever to stop the Senate from doing what they have been doing all along, until we have a progressive government in the House of Commons, which is not going to happen any time soon. Abolition of the Senate, in today's circumstances, does not further either progressive or democratic goals.

Malcolm wrote:

The Senate of Canada is a festering pustule on the arse end of Canadian democracy.

The House of Commons is a festering pustule on the front end of Canadian (non-existent) democracy.

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hunter s wrote:

Are you not answering your own question? The Senate is ineffectual in the long run.

Of course it is. So my point is why should its abolition be a higher priority than dealing with all the other [b]real[/b] crises that we face? (my post #4 above).

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The Senate has not served to galvanize anything.

You are wrong, my friend. Nobody in the Queen's Loyal Opposition noticed Harper's motion picture censorship provisions last year until the Senate got hold of the Bill and actually read it. Then all hell broke loose when the Senate drew the public's attention to it, and Harper ended up withdrawing the proposal. 

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In general, I fail to see your point.

I agree.

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You seem to be implying because of the House of Commons is undemorcratic, we need an unelected group of partisans to set the ship straight. I don't think so. All the Senate does is make our system more undemocratic not less.

I didn't say or imply that we need the Senate. What we need is a truly democratic system of government. We don't have one at present, and the Senate is far from able to "set the ship straight." But the Senate is not the source of our problems with democracy, and abolishing it will only leave a clear path for Stephen Harper to have his way with us. That, to me, would make our system more undemocratic, not less.

Nor is the Senate the source of the reactionary legislation we have been getting and will be getting from Parliament for the foreseeable future.

One would expect that left-wing Senate abolitionists would be able to rhyme off a list of crimes and misdemeanours committed by the Senate in support of their campaign to make its abolition one of the top priorities for a Koalition deal with Harper, as Malcolm wants to do (opening post). They can't rhyme off such a list, because it doesn't exist. The only time the Senate makes any difference at all is when they stand up to the ruling party in the Commons. Why would I want to protect the ruling party from that?

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Let's keep in mind here that in actuality the parliamentary system was functioning quite well when the coalition was formed and the opposition parties moved to defeat the government.

I couldn't disagree more.

The parliamentary system has been dysfunctional and undemocratic for decades; if we had a properly functioning democracy Stephen Harper would never have become PM in the first place. 

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I think Spector´s point is valid. 

 Malcolm´s suggestion that the NDP support the Conservatives for a likely useless referendum on Senate abolishment while trading away real reform of the House of Commons is both strategically and morally flawed.  Its a surefire path to the NDP becoming irrelevant.  

 And to pretend the HOC was functioning "quite well" takes a lot of Kool Aid, we just had an election that was caused over the PM(with one of the weakest minority government´s in our history) claiming the House was dysfunctional purely because he wanted to get a jump on the financial crisis.   Even though the Conservative´s ideology has openly and dramatically proved a global failure, the election was about leadership characteristics instead of policies.  Yet despite getting a clear minority of votes and seats, the Cons still have an incredible amount of power and would have had a completely unobstructed path if they hadn´t openly spit in the oppositions face.  Even then, its likely that nothing will change.  Our democracy hasn´t functioned well in a long time and that is reflected in the increasing amount of people who can´t be bothered to validate it through participation.  

Fidel wrote:

Why not include a question on electoral reform in a referendum on abolishing the non-elected and non-accountable senate? Or would that be too much like democracy for our two oldest political parties?

How about including some other questions:

1. Every government (or individual MP) that breaks an election promise (as determined by a special sitting of the Supreme Court) must immediately resign.

2. All MPs have the right to vote their conscience any time they want. Any party leader unduly pressuring or threatening an MP as to how to vote will be subject to sanctions.

3.  In a majority parliament, the Prime Minister can enact any legislation s/he wants at any time at all - votes in the House, if any, will be a mere formality. [Whoops, that one's redundant.]

4.  Abolish all party designations in the House of Commons. Individual elected MPs will have to discuss together all pieces of legislation and achieve a consensus.

I'm not sure what problem you see with the Senate, Fidel. The only loud and principled voice against Harper's neo-con Crime Bill came from the Senate - in addition to all the other evidence that M. Spector has marshalled. There was one dissident voice in the House, but he was silenced and disciplined by his party leader.

M. Spector wrote:

Nobody in the Queen's Loyal Opposition noticed Harper's motion picture censorship provisions last year until the Senate got hold of the Bill and actually read it. Then all hell broke loose when the Senate drew the public's attention to it, and Harper ended up withdrawing the proposal.

It was Canadian artists who drew attention to this bill not the Senate.

M.Spector wrote:

Nor is the Senate the source of the reactionary legislation we have been getting and will be getting from Parliament for the foreseeable future.

The Senate isn't the source of anything because it doesn't do anything.

M.Spector wrote:

The only time the Senate makes any difference at all is when they stand up to the ruling party in the Commons. Why would I want to protect the ruling party from that?

The Senate never actually makes any difference and it does not stand up to the ruling party in the Commons but only serves to stall legislation which will pass in the end if the government so desires. It serves no purpose.

Malcolm, I was responding to this

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We should shoot for proportional representation - if only so that removing it from the table can get us something.

But now that I reread it, I guess you were talking about the Senate and PR in the House isn´t even on the table.  I think "begging for change" is an accurate description.

hunter s wrote:

The Senate isn't the source of anything because it doesn't do anything....

The Senate never actually makes any difference and it does not stand up to the ruling party in the Commons but only serves to stall legislation which will pass in the end if the government so desires. It serves no purpose.

If that is so, then why the flaming urgency to abolish it?

In fact, it [b]does[/b] make a difference, however small.

If we had taken Malcolm's advice and abolished the Senate say, two years ago, we'd now have our film industry subject to Harper government political and moral censorship, but Malcolm and you could rest easier in your beds, knowing that Canada had edged closer to your platonic ideal of democracy.

After all, the [i]purity of the process[/i] far outweighs the noxious end product!

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What a strange set of policies to want to go to the mat on!

Why don't we spend our time thinking about policies that will protect jobs, pensions and savings right now? Whether it benefits us at the polls or not, that's what Canadians deserve.

Yeah David Lewis lost a bunch of seats for giving Canadians better programs and policies. Canadians benefited; the NDP did not. Fortunately, what matters to New Democrats, I hope, is the common good, not partisan advantage.

Ya come on!!. The Senators are a hard-working bunch of guys. Alfie mighta looked like his skates were tied together last night, but he gives 'er shit every game he plays. They'll start scoring soon. Someone needs to light a fire under Spezza and Heatley. They're just warming up. It's only mid season. You'll see.

Fidel wrote:

Ya come on!!. The Senators are a hard-working bunch of guys. Alfie mighta looked like his skates were tied together last night, but he gives 'er shit every game he plays. They'll start scoring soon. Someone needs to light a fire under Spezza and Heatley. They're just warming up. It's only mid season. You'll see.

At least these Senators earn their money. At least if not in this year, in most ones previously.

Malcolm wrote:

MS, the Senate did not prevent passage of the proposed Tory arts funding legislation.  Nor would it have done so.

Well, please tell me who did, because it sure as hell wasn't the somnolent opposition in the Commons.

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For me, using a completely undemocratic institution to defeat the legislation of a democratic (if imperfectly so) institution is utterly immoral to me.  Even if it did have a use defeating reactionary legislation (a dubious prospect at best), it would be accomplishingh a moral end by immoral means.

Fatuous nonsense! Making this into some kind of moral crusade is ridiculous. I refuse to accept that it is "immoral" to prevent, by any legal means, the illegitimate government of Stephen Harper from passing reactionary legislation.

Reactionary legislation is immoral. If your morality can't see that, then it is worthless.

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I am glad to see you acknowledge that your position has to do with "progressive politics" and not with "democracy."

I have no idea how you came up with that one. Progressive politics is all about democracy - politics that benefits the majority of the population.

And just because Senators are not democratically elected it does not prec lude them from occasionally acting in the interests of the majority and against the wishes of the illegitimate minority governing party. You, however, see that as "immoral." Shame on you.

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Malcolm, I don't know where you get the idea that I find the little influence the NDP has right now to be sufficient. Nor do I understand how this insufficiency somehow demands that we repeat, yet again, the same "shoot the moon" electoral strategy that has failed sixteen times in a row to bring social democracy to Canadians or, for that matter, to produce any statistically-perceptible upward trend in popular support over the past sixteen elections. If this strategy were producing incremental improvements, I might see you point but it hasn't.

"Olly, that is a coherent tactical argument against my proposal.  Quite refreshing from much of the knee-jerk crap.  That said, Stephen Harper doesn't really seem to be suffering much punishment (outwith the chattering classes) for proposing a end to party funding, nor for his calls for Senate reform."

I think he has been substantially hurt by it. Most people don't care that much about political funding either, but a lot of people were mad that Harper put that at the centre of an economic statement at a time when we are in financial crisis. People wanted action on that, not stupid politically motivated tinkering with party funding. It showed he didn't take the crisis seriously.

Although we know the coalition came together because of the party funding thing, ostensibly its raison d'etre is that there was no economic stimulus package. If the NDP were to start on about senate reform instead of all out plan to help the economy, it would be suicidal in my opinion.

Malcolm wrote:

As for the "shoot for the moon" strategy, there are various reasons why strategies succeed or fail over the long term.

Some of those factors are "the luck of the draw.  (For example, had Harper not played to his weakness in Quebec re: arts funding and crime policies, would the Liberals and Bloquistes have managed to stage the electoral recovery that we saw?  Polling to that point showed the potential for significant NDP gains in Quebec.) 

And some of those factors lay "not in our stars but in ourselves."  Frequently, in the past, the federal NDP has failed t d the necessary groundwork in advance for a "shoot for the moon" strategy to bear any fruit.  The NSNDP made the shift from being a marginal third party to being the alternate party of government in significant part by a long-term organizational strategy.  This was not sufficient, on its own, to change the NS political dynamic, but it ensured that the NSNDP was ready to sieze the opportunity when the window opened.

In the meantime, I fail to see how one builds a viable social democratic alternative by engaging in short term tactics that only benefit a right wing party - and a particularly corrupt right wing party at that.

1. Everyone here acknowledges that politics is about exploiting opportunities in a chaotic environment. So, when what appear to be opportunities come along, like, for instance only 8% of Canadians having confidence in the ability of the Liberal Party's leader to run the country and the NDP having the most popular leader on the federal scene, we should take something away from the fact that we failed even to match our 1988 showing in either popular support or seats in the Commons. 

What you appear to be doing is hiding behind the fundamental contingency of politics to avoid facing the fact that no matter what opportunities are presented to us, we never get more than 20% of the vote or 15% of the seats in the Commons. 

2. Secondly, the capacity to do groundwork is contingent on the ability of the party to deploy volunteers in regions where we have not had support in the past. Where are these volunteers to come from? The Outrement byelection is a great example of the party being able to deploy its volunteers from every riding from Ottawa to Quebec City and the entirety of urban Montreal, combined with Muclair's personal organization. But this can hardly be replicated in a general election environment.

If you have a riding with very few members and even fewer volunteers, dispatching these individuals again and again into grassroots sign-up drives is as likely to enervate the organization as it is to build it. In my organizing experience, working a constituency association in a fundamentally unfriendly political environment too hard is as bad a move as not working it at all.

3. Your reading of the Nova Scotia NDP's success story is a very skewed one. The reality is that Alexa McDonough, as the first federal leader from the Maritimes since Stanfield was able to capitalize on a very friendly Atlantic media and massive regional hatred of UI cutbacks and plundering to produce a mass of NDP votes in the region [b]in advance of organization[/b]. Certainly, the provincial NDP could have, as happened in New Brunswick, failed to capitalize on the wind-assisted federal numbers in 1997 but to suggest that the growth in membership and organization preceded as opposed to following an uptick in the polls, seems rather inaccurate.

4. As Jack Layton so eloquently stated in 2004, neo-liberal policies kill people. They make them die. The idea that we should never make deals with the forces of capitalism to prevent real people from dying in the present so we can keep pursuing a strategy with a proven track record of failure is irresponsible. 

Politics is about nothing more or less than who lives and who dies. And I care a hell of a lot more about that than the institutional future of a corporation.

Malcolm wrote:

MSpector, ends do not justify means.  If they did, the we could simply shoot all the Liberatives and Conserverals.

But in the present circumstances the ends would be tragic and counterproductive to the cause of leftist politics. And thus they would not justify the means. Your example is therefore faulty. (There may come a time, however, when shooting some reactionaries will be necessary for the common good, and therefore justified.)

Please explain for us all: if the ends (i.e. results) of our actions do not justify them, what does?

Here's a thought experiment:

Suppose the Senate is closely divided on the question of, say, passing the anti-abortion Bill C-43 in May, 1990. The Bill has already been passed in the Brian Mulroney House of Commons, by "democratically" elected MP's.

Suppose you are a Senator. Without your vote, the Bill will pass the Senate by a single vote; if you vote against it, there will be a tie, and the Bill will not pass.

What do you do?

If you apply your [i]a priori[/i] abstract moral principles derived from god knows where, you will either abstain or vote in favour of the Bill, because it would be "utterly immoral" for you to block the will of the House of Commons, regardless of the consequences.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that the morality of your vote is determined, not by the means by which your power to vote was obtained, but by the ends that will result from the exercise of that vote, you might vote against the bill, resulting in its failure to pass. You might even consider it "utterly immoral" to do anything less than your utmost to prevent the passage of the Bill - not because you have no regard for democracy, but because you have regard for the safety and well-being of Canadian women.

What would you do, Senator Malcolm? Yay or Nay?

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Malcolm wrote:

MSpector, ends do not justify means.  If they did, the we could simply shoot all the Liberatives and Conserverals.

What a horrible thing to say!

I guess you will hide behind the misspellings and claim not to have uttered this.

Malcolm, what age are you?