32 Replies to “As Canadians From Coast to Coast Cry Out For More Parliamentary Navel Polishing”

  1. In Chong’s bill, “if 15 percent of caucus members want a leadership review, it has to happen.”
    15 percent? That sets the bar waaay too high: I suggest that if even one former MP’s wife’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s stepson wants a leadership review, it has to happen.
    Seriously, though, that 15 percent is the stupidest, most unnecessary and ill-thought-out thing I’ve ever heard of, for some the reasons Alice Funke mentions, including the fact that there’s nothing preventing caucuses from initiating leadership reviews now (it’s happened in the recent past, as she points out), and that such a low threshold (15%) could “exacerbate regional tensions.”
    No kidding on that last one. One couldn’t come up with a better way to pit region against region within a party.
    If 15 percent is all that’s required for a leadership review, we could see governing parties having intra-party mini-elections/overthrows every second week for the next fifty years. I’m sure that would really increase a government’s ability to focus on important issues, like, say, governing.
    /sarc

  2. Navel polishing?
    And here I thought the shine was from a ruby, emerald or diamond.
    Instead, they’re mesmerized by their own reflection in their self-polished navel.
    The ignominy of it.

  3. Michael Chong doesn’t like being an impotent backbencher so he launches a palace coup in an attempt to elect the Liberals. I think it would be odious to pass more laws as to how political parties operate. The dick head wants an old fashioned Conservative free-for-all that guaranteed generations of Liberal government. Did I say the guys an idiot?

  4. Yep, 15% makes it too easy for regional blocs to band together to force US-style earmarks and asymmetrical federalism in exchange for votes. Especially when our electoral system over-represents some regions/provinces. It should be at least 50% to trigger a review. The Liberals and NDP, with their reliance on Quebec, would be particularly vulnerable to this type of extortion.
    I’d like to see term limits. Career politicians inevitably lose touch with voter’s concerns. That and the longer they’re there the more likely the Ottawa entitlement mentality takes over.

  5. Actually, I do think the PM has too much power. I thought so when Chretien was PM and I think so now. I think the Chong proposal should start a longer discussion that considers worst-case scenarios more seriously because unintended consequences of rushed legislation can do more damage than the status quo.

  6. Impotent backbenchers will always be impotent. I don’t like my Conservative MP as a person or as a politician. Were he not part of a larger whole, I would never vote for him. The 3 ring circus we are seeing of civil servants judging politicians is silly and we need no more of it. I still haven’t figured out how the Consevatives transferring cash during an election is a crime while everyone else does it without it being a crime. We don’t need more of that.
    Does Harper have more power than other prime ministers? More than Trudeau? More than Chretien? I really doubt it.

  7. Its a bad idea that has never worked any where its tied. You get spaghetti government with no meat balls.
    It promoted even more tribalism.
    More Statism. Parties filled with the insane.

  8. The time is already overdue for a frank debate about where this government seems to be going. I don’t think the answer is in legislation, the caucus already has the power to force changes, and they should man up and do it. The current Cabinet seems top heavy with globalists and paranoids looking for phantom enemies on the internet. Ottawa as a town seems obsessed with this, and I am guessing that too much time spent there has a poor influence on cognition in general. Even Harper has been influenced by this. Around here, I find some people disturbingly unable to find a single fault in the man or his style of leadership. Either he’s the greatest conservative politician in the history of western civ, or we have a bit of cult of personality going on. I’m not totally against the guy, but would welcome a change in direction on the role of MPs and talking points, internet freedom issues, and the level of confrontation we are willing to sustain with the forces of political correctness. It’s those people who need to be given the talking points. Can you imagine John Crosbie in this caucus? We need a few independent minded people willing to stand up to the Fantinos of that group.

  9. “John Major”
    That’s what happened to Margaret Thatcher.
    This is how the english government does it, so I oppose it. The process of delegates being elected to make this decision, isn’t broken, doesn’t need to be thrown out, merely tweaked.

  10. Naval brass polishing and spit shine boots…in the Royal Canadian Navy perhaps; in Parliament highly unlikely.
    Navel you say…not naval.
    In that case, Parliament is unlikely to compete:
    Hot Bollywood Actress Navel Compilation
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iln_p9aEDD8
    Ostensibly, there has been an influx of Bollywood divas but I doubt they would let any Parliamentarian polish their navels…
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  11. Scar has it right both times. Our local MP is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but most people in this riding vote for the party and what it stands for.
    Trudeau started this system of PMO power, Chretien polished it neatly, and PM Harper is just continuing the policy.
    Chong is suddenly the hero as the media, Liberals and the NDP see a chance to damage PM Harper.

  12. The one item in the Chong bill I completely agree with is the removal from the Elections Act of the requirement that the Leader of a political party must sign a candidate’s nomination papers. This essentially retards change in all political parties and, as none of them are quite perfect, needs to go.
    As to what can and should trigger a leadership review: what business is that of the Canadian State? If the Tories want to review Harper’s leadership they should come up with their own rules – and caucus is just one player.
    More to the point, any time a caucus wants to it can refuse to support its leadership. If that is a government caucus that will lead to a) the fall of the government, or b) the resignation of the leader because he or she knows she cannot command the confidence of the House. This is very basic Parliamentary democracy 101.
    Regionalism in a country like Canada can be a very good thing. After all, living in the West, I am never happy to see Central Canada demand centrality of its concerns. I would much prefer strong, regional, voices in Caucus and around the Cabinet table.

  14. I agree with LC. PMs have too much power, ALL of them act like dictators when they get a majority government.

  16. I disagree.
    I think PMs are far too influenced by the nut job factions in their parties and for better or worse that tempers the power of the PMO.
    How, for instance, were the Liberals able to institute some fiscal restraint in the mid nineties while at the same time pushing through the ‘2 million dollar’ gun registry?

  17. pushing through the ‘2 million dollar’ gun registry
    That’s exactly what I referred to with ‘acting like dictators’. The PM forced his caucus to vote the party line instead of what the MP’s constituents wanted.

  18. Oh stop it. Michael Chong is a non-entity passed over for a minister’s post whose only real complaint with the current system is that he’s not one of those guaranteed a lucrative sinecure on the board of a big bank upon retirement. Or is he planning mandatory “leadership reviews” at the Royal and Toronto – Dominion banks?
    Show me who controls the realm’s money supply, and I’ll show you who makes the laws. The rest is pantomime.

  19. In spite of what the creator of this bill may have intended the obvious has happened.
    Said MP is now a media darling as the punditry see’s yet another avenue to speculate on Harper’s control of the party and (they hope) his resignation.
    Mr Chong’s bill may be a blessing in disguise.
    There still has to be a debate and the media seems intent on investing a great deal of political capital on covering the story..I say let them.
    The opposition seems intent on supporting the bill as a way to undermine the PM, without considering the unintended consequences.
    Oddly, the same opposition parties that support this don’t seem quite as supportive of reforming the upper chamber by having the members chosen by voters instead of being appointed by the PM.
    A professional press gallery would ask this question….

  20. I think Peter comes closest. If MPs on the government side of the House want to push a ministry off the front benches, they can damn well vote to do it. Only fear of the whips stops them; their “impotence” is largely self-inflicted.
    Party discipline fetishists are bad for democracy no matter what party they support. The Libranos invented it, which should be enough to discredit the whole concept right there. (Aside: it is complete crap when parties assert that a majority vote of members to elect a party leader is “democratic”; it’s not, it’s straight out of the one-party dictatorship manual. MPs exist to do two things, period: legislate, and boot out governments via the power of the purse.)
    Governments have used the fear that they will resign over a defeat in the House to force dissenters in their own parties to vote with them no matter what; but there’s nothing in the conventions of Parliamentary government to force an election just because the government has been defeated on one measure (see Forsey and Eglington, 1984, “Twenty-Five Fairy Tales About Parliamentary Government”). A defeated government does not have an automatic right to a dissolution.
    Yes, we might sacrifice some measure of “stability” in Parliament. But we’d get more of that messy “democracy” stuff we all keep saying we like. (Not just caucuses, pace Peter, but electors too, need to man up.)
    The biggest problem I see with the Chong bill is that it fixes the concept of political parties in law, and develops a bunch of rules about how they should behave in Parliament. But less mixing is better: no legal constraints on how political parties constitute or govern themselves, but equally no role for the Party (the scare-cap is intentional) in governing, which is left to Cabinet, or in legislating, left to MPs.
    Chong’s a good, principled guy, from what I’ve read. But I think he’s got the wrong end of the stick. I could be persuaded otherwise if it addressed a separation of party from Parliament.

  21. “Only fear of the whips stops them; their “impotence” is largely self-inflicted.”
    I disagree with the first part: the only fear they have is for their own seats, which Boris Johnson correctly identified the other day in respect of Mrs. Thatcher’s demise.
    No matter. Mr. Chong, who’s the MP from an adjacent riding, actually, and who got passed over in Mr. Harper’s second cabinet, and who’s had his nomination papers signed by Mr. Harper four times, is living proof of why we don’t need an extra 30 MPs. No mention of that in his bill, I’m guessing.
    “Bland works”, according to William G. Davis, a Stephen Harper supporter who only won his first contest in Peel County (1959 general election) by 1,023 votes, but nonetheless went on to win four general elections for the Conservatives:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Davis
    Folks around here that I know will be voting for Steve again, as will I. No cult of personality, really. The “revolutions” that need to happen are at the provincial level.

  22. I am highly sympathetic to Chong here but I have to side with Currie that this is the wrong way to go about things. Make the PMO weaker. Hell just focus on getting rid of Harper first off.
    or we have a bit of cult of personality going on
    You think? One of the posters above can’t talk about this bill without putting in terms of ‘hur hur will help Liberals hur hur’. Harper is just another statist.

  23. Chantal Hebert on Chong’s reform bill:

    “MPs ultimately sink or swim based on their party’s buoyancy in public opinion and no reform bill will change that reality. Rocking the boat through serial leadership challenges and/or removals could only bring about a political shipwreck.”

  25. I suspect the ship hit the rocks in the late 70’s. At this point it is the lifeboats we’re trying to save.
    Embedding the leaders of political parties -and the parties themselves – in the Elections Act was just another nail in the coffin of the Westminster tradition. All of a sudden, what was implcit and a matter of evolving usage became express and bound by statute. Another branch of civil rather than legal society was ground to dust.
    To our very great loss. Why do you think voter participation is low and falling? One reason is that the grand tradition of the MP having his own constituency power base was destroyed by the requirement of the leader’s signature. The local party, the constituency itself, no longer mattered.
    This was quite intentional – Trudeau saw MPs as nobodies off Parliament Hill – the legaliztion of the party leaders’ positions made that flip commentthe law of the land.

  26. The Democrat-Republican, Liberal-Conservative dichotomy is an artificial construct to keep people bickering and backstabbing among themselves while the rich exploit them. Elections are like changing deck chairs on the Titanic.
    ..and it works so well, cuz they fall for it every time
    go lemmings go !!!!

  27. “Trudeau saw MPs as nobodies off Parliament Hill” — true, and as somebody (John Fraser, I think) said, the problem is that they’re nobodies when they’re ON the hill too. Not only Trudeau (who was a pretty unvarnished anti-democrat) but Librano leaders back to Mackenzie King pushed Parliament toward the periphery of government. It was King that was first elected to Party leadership (oh-oh, there’s that damned scare-cap again) by a convention and not by the sitting MPs.
    The normally very sensible Andrew Coyne has a terrible blind spot about the place of parties in a Parliamentary system, which leads him to support the Chong bill as well as farces like proportional party representation.

  28. The only thing you can get Libranos and Dippers to agree upon in parliamentary “reform” is the concentration of power and escape from public acco.untability

  29. One of the article’s comments included:
    I commend all the debate and discussion on how to strengthen our democracy, but what would really get me excited is a bill to end the use of Omnibus legislation and time allocation.
    Both those abominations were brainchildren of noted champion of democracy, PET. You can bet TSP will be falling all over himself (doesn’t he do that already?!) to keep them in place.
    But the most important part of Chong’s bill is the removal of the party leader’s approval of the nominee. This requirement results in things like Iggy’s parachuting into Etobicoke, where the riding staff locked the doors and hid inside to prevent two legitimate candidates from filing nomination papers.

  30. We have elections.
    We vote people and parties into power.
    We vote people and parties out of power.
    Is there something wrong here that needs more tinkering and “reforming”?
    What have I missed?

  31. Why do we need legislation? If 15% of the Tory MPs decided, right now, to defy the PM he would have a very real, non-theoretical problem: if he kicked them out of caucus, he’d be a minority PM.
    MPs are only powerless because they have made themselves that way.

  32. David Southam “Mr. Chong is living proof of why we don’t need an extra 30 MPs.”
    We need 30 more MPs to maintain a semblance of representation by population. The idiot Trudeau (idiot father not idiot son) stuck us with a formula that requires increasing the size of the House of Commons to maintain a sort of provincial parity.
    With 338 seats, eliminating 1/4 of everyone’s guaranteed seats and we could have 254 total, a very workable number. P.E.I would end up with 3 seats but the same proportion and we would save hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately the constitutional amendment process would require unanimity of provinces and les Quebecois would demand 10 extra to protect la langue morte.

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