"Heavin' Stephen" -it'll take 3 of you, to toss him
Executive Summary -
a) Precedent suggests (and now practice proves) the Governor General was wrong to grant a dissolution to Harper this past September '08.
b) We need to concentrate on re-establishing public acceptance of the mandate of the Office of Governor General & totally re-configure the selection system for recommending persons to that Office..
Dear Canada,
The recent minority vs coalition / "Heavin' Stephen" (it'll take 3 of you, to toss him) Media Uproar is very enjoyable for someone with my biases:
1) I'm no fan of Mr Steven Harper. Although he'd just prompted me to admire his "balls-i-ness" with gutsy plan to cut the Quarterly Bailout of Political Parties, he then surprises me when he caved at the first whiff of serious opposition - if it was a good idea on Monday, why is it so bad on Saturday .... fire all your advisors ... you're looking worse than Mr Dithers on this one.
2) I think 50%+1 is insufficient for a legislative decision (we should have a system were 66.67% is standard practise to pass a bill) and Electorally, less than 50%+1 can NEVER be considered a mandate .. it's a provisional, caretaker-stewardship at best.
A Minority ACTING LIKE a Majority is foolhardy hubris plus being an affront to the opposition and thinking Canadians. (witness Joe Clark 1979, Harper now)
Consider - Can the opinion of 50%minus1 be SO wrong that they totally lose? Why do we have 7/50 & 100% requirements constitutionally?
3) I think our current PMO/PCO 'kingship' is an abomination to the spirit and as-written letter of the BNA/Consitution 1867.
Consider - In BNA, Queen, GovGen & Privy Council are in the Executive, The Senate and Commons are the Legislative - there is no mention of the Prime Minister.
4) If the "unified" Reform+ProgressiveConservatives under Mr S Harper can govern with 37.6% why cannot another unequally-yoked pairing with 44.4% not have a chance to govern when the smartest-guy-in-the-aforementioned 37.6% blunders so obviously to create that very opportunity?
5) The King-Byng 'thing' was much different - in this much-cited-recently situation, the opposition Conservatives HAD MORE SEATS than Mr King, the Liberal PM, who had, legally-retained/stubbornly-refused-to-relinquish, power after "a defeat" in the popular election.
excerpt from Claude Bélanger,Department of History,Marianopolis College:
"Mackenzie King's Liberals had come to office in December of 1921 (party standings: Liberals 117, Progressives 65, Conservatives 50, Labor 2, and Independent 1) but had been unable to achieve a majority because the Western provinces had supported a third party which promised reforms demanded in the West.
Despite its minority position, the King government stayed in power until 1925 particularly because the Progressives continuously supported them. An election was called by King for October 29, 1925, under the pretext that the government lacked "a clear majority" and could not dispatch certain important business. The voters responded poorly to the appeal of the government. The results were: Conservatives 116, Liberals 101, Progressives 24, Labor 2, Independents 2."
A carefully reading of the whole backgrounder by M Belanger, will lead the observer to conclude that based on this historic example (verified by our recent 2008 results), the Governor General should NOT have granted Mr Harper a dissolution in Sept 2008 and should have considered THEN what is being bounced around NOW regarding an All-the-Talents-(except Harper) Coalition-of-the-Willing-to-try-anything-to get rid of this overbearing Mr Dithers Redux.
rce
UNSOLICITED POLITICAL RECOMMENDATIONS
Every cloud has a silver lining
Perhaps attention can be re-focussed on the method of selecting the next person to be recommended to the Queen as holder of Canada's greatest office, our TRUE Executive Head & National Leader - the Governor General.
If the GovGen was atop the Canadian power totem, all this wrangling in the lowest order of gov't would be minor details in the running of the country - barely needing the attention of the press and/or our Constitutionally empowered Executive.
The partisan 'leadership' of the biggest bunch of charlatans in the elected assembly WAS NEVER intended to run Canada.
My preference is for that person to be found by a popular election held simultaneous with every-other General Election, with the term of Office to start 365 days after the House returns (Since any Citizen could run, a single-transferable ballot system -asking voters for their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc choices all at once - would be the only way to get even a 50% result).
IMHO only by electing the GG can we hope to have an Officeholder with the mandate to return our bastardized-by MacKenzie-King/too-much-PMO/PCO-power government system to the supremely-suitable and wonderfully-crafted, as-written format described in 1867. Perhaps you'd like to read the Plain Language Version of it
a) Precedent suggests (and now practice proves) the Governor General was wrong to grant a dissolution to Harper this past September '08.
b) We need to concentrate on re-establishing public acceptance of the mandate of the Office of Governor General & totally re-configure the selection system for recommending persons to that Office..
Dear Canada,
The recent minority vs coalition / "Heavin' Stephen" (it'll take 3 of you, to toss him) Media Uproar is very enjoyable for someone with my biases:
1) I'm no fan of Mr Steven Harper. Although he'd just prompted me to admire his "balls-i-ness" with gutsy plan to cut the Quarterly Bailout of Political Parties, he then surprises me when he caved at the first whiff of serious opposition - if it was a good idea on Monday, why is it so bad on Saturday .... fire all your advisors ... you're looking worse than Mr Dithers on this one.
2) I think 50%+1 is insufficient for a legislative decision (we should have a system were 66.67% is standard practise to pass a bill) and Electorally, less than 50%+1 can NEVER be considered a mandate .. it's a provisional, caretaker-stewardship at best.
A Minority ACTING LIKE a Majority is foolhardy hubris plus being an affront to the opposition and thinking Canadians. (witness Joe Clark 1979, Harper now)
Consider - Can the opinion of 50%minus1 be SO wrong that they totally lose? Why do we have 7/50 & 100% requirements constitutionally?
3) I think our current PMO/PCO 'kingship' is an abomination to the spirit and as-written letter of the BNA/Consitution 1867.
Consider - In BNA, Queen, GovGen & Privy Council are in the Executive, The Senate and Commons are the Legislative - there is no mention of the Prime Minister.
4) If the "unified" Reform+ProgressiveConservatives under Mr S Harper can govern with 37.6% why cannot another unequally-yoked pairing with 44.4% not have a chance to govern when the smartest-guy-in-the-aforementioned 37.6% blunders so obviously to create that very opportunity?
5) The King-Byng 'thing' was much different - in this much-cited-recently situation, the opposition Conservatives HAD MORE SEATS than Mr King, the Liberal PM, who had, legally-retained/stubbornly-refused-to-relinquish, power after "a defeat" in the popular election.
excerpt from Claude Bélanger,Department of History,Marianopolis College:
"Mackenzie King's Liberals had come to office in December of 1921 (party standings: Liberals 117, Progressives 65, Conservatives 50, Labor 2, and Independent 1) but had been unable to achieve a majority because the Western provinces had supported a third party which promised reforms demanded in the West.
Despite its minority position, the King government stayed in power until 1925 particularly because the Progressives continuously supported them. An election was called by King for October 29, 1925, under the pretext that the government lacked "a clear majority" and could not dispatch certain important business. The voters responded poorly to the appeal of the government. The results were: Conservatives 116, Liberals 101, Progressives 24, Labor 2, Independents 2."
A carefully reading of the whole backgrounder by M Belanger, will lead the observer to conclude that based on this historic example (verified by our recent 2008 results), the Governor General should NOT have granted Mr Harper a dissolution in Sept 2008 and should have considered THEN what is being bounced around NOW regarding an All-the-Talents-(except Harper) Coalition-of-the-Willing-to-try-anything-to get rid of this overbearing Mr Dithers Redux.
rce
UNSOLICITED POLITICAL RECOMMENDATIONS
Every cloud has a silver lining
Perhaps attention can be re-focussed on the method of selecting the next person to be recommended to the Queen as holder of Canada's greatest office, our TRUE Executive Head & National Leader - the Governor General.
If the GovGen was atop the Canadian power totem, all this wrangling in the lowest order of gov't would be minor details in the running of the country - barely needing the attention of the press and/or our Constitutionally empowered Executive.
The partisan 'leadership' of the biggest bunch of charlatans in the elected assembly WAS NEVER intended to run Canada.
My preference is for that person to be found by a popular election held simultaneous with every-other General Election, with the term of Office to start 365 days after the House returns (Since any Citizen could run, a single-transferable ballot system -asking voters for their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc choices all at once - would be the only way to get even a 50% result).
IMHO only by electing the GG can we hope to have an Officeholder with the mandate to return our bastardized-by MacKenzie-King/too-much-PMO/PCO-power government system to the supremely-suitable and wonderfully-crafted, as-written format described in 1867. Perhaps you'd like to read the Plain Language Version of it
posted by Walk a Kb or Two in my cassins | 10:15 pm
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