Nadine Lumley Needless to point out, the Harper Conservatives did not win a 50-plus-one mandate in the 2011 election. Nor did they campaign on changing the nature of the Supreme Court, the Senate or the election laws. thestar/news/politics_blog/2014/03/let_s_have_an_election.html snip snip: Canada’s chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand , has been saying for several weeks now that this country is on the verge of changing its electoral laws in a very unusual way -- unusual not just for this country, but compared to others in the world. Normally, electoral reform is done with wide, multipartisan consent, simply because our democratic rights are so basic. (They are often why wars are fought, for instance.) But there’s been no wide consultation -- much less consent -- for what the Conservatives are planning. Political-science professors, domestic and international , have joined the protest. Mayrand himself is out there on a limb. NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, encouragingly, is taking the matter to the people. But unlike the Supreme Court, which had the power to stop the changes, none of the election-law dissenters has an ability to defend the democratic institutions from undemocratic changes. If it’s good enough for Quebec, it should be good enough for the whole of Canada. A truly “fair” electoral reform would have the consent of 50 per cent plus one of the population, based on clear questions posed to the electorate.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 13:58:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015