Parliament – Etymology The English term is derived from Anglo-Norman and dates to the 14th century, coming from the 11th century Old French parlement, “discussion, discourse”, from parler, meaning “to talk”.[2] The meaning evolved over time, originally referring to any discussion, conversation, or negotiation through various kinds of deliberative
Continue readingTag: MMP
THE FIFTH COLUMN: Now Comes The Necessary Part Ontario Edition
Nevertheless, and irrregardless of and notwithstanding that federal-provincial jurisdiction exists the actions that are necessary for the next Ontario government to take are the same as those the newly elected federal government needs to take. It’s the same electorate and the same Canadians and the same solutions that are required.
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Now Comes The Necessary Part
We can argue all we want over whether the election was necessary but what is definitely necessary is the government tackling the pressing issues of the day, issues that have been pressing for decades and in some cases since before Confederation. Indigenous Reconciliation The longest standing issue in Canadian political
Continue readingPolitical Potshots: The Death Of My Electoral Reform Idealism
Perhaps one of the most over-analyzed and oft-criticized campaign promises the Liberals broke from the 2015 campaign was the one on electoral reform – that the 2015 vote would be Canada’s last under first-past-the-post. I knew it was an empty promise from the moment it was spoken, and I would
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: THE FIFTH COLUMN 2018-10-13 19:17:00
On Democracy What a better way to restart The Fifth Column than by a treatise on how to make our democracy actually democratic. Hopefully this will be the first posting in a newly regenerated Fifth Column. I write this at a time when there are so many examples of democracy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the historical competition between the NDP and the Greens hasn’t precluded cooperation where it counts in British Columbia – and how the governing accord there might offer an example of cross-party collaboration for all levels of government. For further reading…– Martyn Brown wrote about the danger the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon #ERRE Links
A bit of electoral reform material for your weekend reading. – Nathan Cullen points out how the Special Committee on Electoral Reform’s report (PDF) serves as an effective road map to make every vote count in Canada. – PressProgress highlights how the Libs are attacking their own campaign promises in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
This and that for your weekend reading.
– Naomi Klein discusses how Canada’s longstanding – if far from inevitable – identity as a resource economy is standing in the way of both needed action on climate change and reconciliation with First Nations:
In Canada, cultivation and industrialization were secondary. First and foremost, this country was built on voraciously devouring wildness. Canada was an extractive company – the Hudson’s Bay Company – before it was a country. And that has shaped us in ways we have yet to begin to confront.Because such enormous fortunes have been built purely on the extraction of wild animals, intact forest and interred metals and fossil fuels, our economic elites have grown accustomed to seeing the natural world as their God-given larder.When someone or something – like climate science – comes along and says: Actually, there are limits, we have to take less from the Earth and keep more profit for the public good, it doesn’t feel like a difficult truth. It feels like an existential attack.…The trouble isn’t just the commodity roller coaster. It’s that the stakes grow larger with each boom-bust cycle. The frenzy for cod crashed a species; the frenzy for bitumen and fracked gas is helping to crash the planet.…Today, we have federal and provincial governments that talk a lot about reconciliation. But this will remain a cruel joke if non-Indigenous Canadians do not confront the why behind those human-rights abuses. And the why, as the Truth and Reconciliation report states, is simple enough: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.”The goal, in other words, was to remove all barriers to unrestrained resource extraction. This is not ancient history. Across the country, Indigenous land rights remain the single greatest barrier to planet-destabilizing resource extraction, from pipelines to clear-cut logging.
– Meanwhile, Marc Lee signals what we might expect from a federal climate change action plan based on the working groups currently reviewing the options.
– Laurie Monsebraaten reports on a needed push to ensure that child care funding is used to create not-for-profit spaces. And Ashifa Kassam points to Wellington’s loss of water rights to Nestle as a prime example of what happens when corporate dollars trump public needs.
– Finally, Alon Weinberg discusses why now is the time to implement a proportional electoral system in Canada. And Craig Scott makes the case for mixed-member proportional over the other options under consideration.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week.- Tom Bawden notes that inequality is as much a problem in our relative contribution to climate change as it is in so many other areas of life. And Steven Rosenfeld lists some of the ways in which the increasingly-weal…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Paul Edwards discusses the availability of a gradual transition to clean energy while avoiding more than 2 degrees of climate change – but only if we start swapping out fossil fuels for renewable energy now. An…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Barry Eidlin argues that Canada’s comparatively stronger trade unions have led to a far more equal distribution of income than exists in the U.S., and discusses what we need to do to reinforce that tendency: In a recent article and forthcoming book, I
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Electoral reform: Which party would benefit most?
Satire inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/electoral-reform-which-party-would-benefit-most-1.2857321
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Electoral reform: Which party would benefit most?
Satire inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/electoral-reform-which-party-would-benefit-most-1.2857321
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Electoral reform: Which party would benefit most?
Satire inspired by this headline: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/electoral-reform-which-party-would-benefit-most-1.2857321
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Rick Salutin on Democracy, Parties, and Electoral Reform
“Democracy,” as Winston Churchill famously stated, “is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Somewhat less famously, he also remarked that “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Notwithstanding this somewhat anemic endorsement,
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Stephane Dion’s Shiny New Voting System
Did I read that right? Did Stephane Dion, former head of the Liberal Party of Canada, just come out in favour of proportional representation? Better late than never! Well, that’s not entirely fair. Dion has shown a willingness to consider electoral reform in the past, as he did by backing
Continue readingPop The Stack: Dion Proposes New Voting System
Monday’s election results in Alberta demonstrate once again the strange outcomes that our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system can create. A difference in vote percentage between 43% and 34% leads to 61 vs 17 seats for the PCs. Meanwhile the remaining parties which received about 10% of the vote each get
Continue readingPop The Stack: Dion Proposes New Voting System
Monday’s election results in Alberta demonstrate once again the strange outcomes that our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system can create. A difference in vote percentage between 43% and 34% leads to 61 vs 17 seats for the PCs. Meanwhile the remaining parties which received about 10% of the vote each get
Continue reading