When I read James Travers column on the troublesome decline of Canada's democratic institutions, I thought that we should come up with a power score for each group of players who are involved in Canada's parliament.
Each Member of Parliament holds 1/308 or about 0.325% of the authority in the House of Commons. I'll ignore the senators for now. However, each member holds a different amount of power where one is able to influence and exercise his or her authority in different ways.
I decided to come up with a power score from zero to 100 where all the players involved in federal politics have a combined score of 100. Who has the power to shape political opinion and make political decicision?
These are my power scores:
- Prime Minister Harper: 45.0
- Prime Minister's Office: 5.0
- Cabinet Ministers: 5.0
- Conservative MPs (combined): 1.0
- Opposition leader: 1.0
- Opposition MPs (combined): 1.0
- Businesses: 20.0
- Media: 10.0
- Unions: 10.0
- Canadian voters: 1.0
- Rex Murphy: 1.0
These scores should add up to 100. Note that if someone or some group gets a power score of over 50, that does not mean that he/she has 100% if the power as this is already a power score index. For example a dictator of a country might have a power score of 99.0. He/she may make 99 percent of all of the decisions. However, other other people might exercise one percent of the influence in their parliament.
My above scores are only guidelines to get a discussion going. If you have other scores, please present them. I only ask that you keep with a combined score of 100.