The Reform Act 2013

[flamingfingers]

This looks rather interesting:

The bill that would save Parliament
Andrew Coyne
Published: November 29, 2013, 7:07 pm
Updated: 17 hours ago

The title of the bill that Conservative MP Michael Chong will introduce next Thursday in the House of Commons, “An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Parliament of Canada Act (reforms),” makes it sound like a modest bit of housekeeping. Yet it contains the seeds of a revolution.

Should it pass, Parliament would never be the same again. The bill would fundamentally recast the relationship between party leaders and caucuses, and with it the whole structure of our politics. The balance of power would shift, irrevocably, in favour of MPs and their riding associations, and away from the leaders and their apparatchiks. In sum, this is a vastly consequential bill, and fully deserving of the historical echoes in its short title: The Reform Act, 2013.

In brief, the bill would do three things:

1. It would formalize the convention that the party leader serves only with the confidence of caucus (here defined as the party’s delegation in the Commons; the Senate, being unelected, is properly left to one side). A leadership review vote could be triggered at any time on the receipt of written notice bearing the signatures of at least 15 per cent of the members of caucus. A majority of caucus, voting by secret ballot, would be sufficient to remove the leader, and begin the process of selecting a new one.

2. It would similarly empower caucus to decide whether an MP should be permitted to sit amongst their number. A vote to expel (or to readmit) would be held under the same rules as a leadership review: 15 per cent of caucus to trigger, 50 per cent plus one to decide. A member would also be readmitted automatically on being re-elected to the House under the party banner. In other words, membership in caucus would no longer simply be up to the leader to decide.

3. It would remove the current provision in the Elections Act requiring any candidate for election to have his nomination papers signed by the party leader. Instead, the required endorsement would come from a “nomination officer,” elected by the members of the riding association. In other words, the riding association, and not the leader, would decide who its nominee was. There would be no leader’s veto.

These may not sound like large changes. In fact, they would change everything. The practice in Canada of electing party leaders by the membership at large — or, as in the recent Liberal leadership race, by people with no connection to the party at all — has effectively freed the leader from any obligation to be accountable to caucus. Conversely, the power to expel a member from caucus, or to prevent him from standing at the next election, has given leaders enormous, indeed existential leverage over members of caucus.

The Reform Act would turn each of these on its head. Henceforth, party leaders would serve at the pleasure of caucus, and not the other way around. Leaders would still be powerful — in the case of the prime minister, immensely powerful. They just would not be all-powerful.

I said this was a revolution, but in truth it would do no more than to restore the basic principles of the Westminster model on which we were founded, and under which we were governed for many years. The convention that party leaders must maintain the confidence of caucus at all times may have fallen into disuse in Canada, but it remains very much in force in other parliamentary democracies — witness the removal of Julia Gillard as leader of the Australian Labour party (and prime minister) last June. Likewise, the power given to Canadian party leaders to decide the fate of every candidate or member is one that, to my knowledge, exists in no other parliamentary system.

The bill will go too far for some tastes, not far enough for others. For example, some might object to entrenching the powers of caucus in law, rather than leaving these to each party to decide — though, given the centrality of caucus as a parliamentary, and not just a party institution, this might equally be defended. Others might prefer that caucus were given the power, not just to remove leaders, but to elect them — though I suspect the preferences of caucus members, given their new powers, would be of huge, if not overwhelming importance in any alternate process.

Two more points are worth making. One, a point Chong himself stresses: this is not about the current prime minister, or any party leader. The bill is intended to alter how power is exercised in future Parliaments, not to settle scores within the existing one. To resolve any doubt, the bill would not take effect until after the next election.

Two, this does not by any means exhaust the list of reforms, large and small, our damaged parliamentary democracy requires, from electing committee chairs to changing the electoral system. But it is the key to all the others: until we crack the leaders’ lock on power, nothing else will flow. (Recall the all-party beat-up on MP Mark Warawa this spring, merely for asking to speak without clearance.) Indeed, the mere act of MPs passing such a bill, over the certain opposition of their leaders, would be something of a revolution in itself.

That’s leaders, plural. This is a challenge for members of all parties, not just the Conservatives. If the Reform Act is to have any hope of passing, MPs will have to learn to cooperate across party lines. They’re not used to doing that, and in any case will live in fear of the whips.

Some may even prefer the security of jumping to the leader’s tune to the responsibility of thinking and acting for themselves — or rather, for the people they are supposed to represent.

So they will need encouragement from members of the voting public. Long shot though it is, this is the best chance for meaningful reform of Parliament we are likely to have for many years.

The question every MP should be obliged to answer between now and next spring, when the bill comes to a vote, is: will you support the Reform Act? And if not, why should we support you?

http://o.canada.com/news/national/the-b ... arliament/

[NAB]

Snips from: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... democracy/

All of this, as I say, before anyone had so much as seen the bill, let alone thought about it. All anyone needs to know in this country is that a reform or innovation of some kind has been proposed to come up with a hundred reasons to reject it, on the principle made famous by F. M. Cornford: that nothing should ever be done for the first time.

Well. Broadly speaking, we can divide the opposition into two groups: the Sophisticated Yawners and the Unbridled Hysterics. The first hold, variously, that the bill is unnecessary, ineffective, or unlikely; the second are united by the belief that it is actively harmful, even if they cannot agree what those harms are.

The first group is perhaps easiest to dispatch. If it is indeed the case that MPs already possess the power to remove their leader, as an unwritten convention, it can hardly do any harm to put it in writing: to clarify the rules, to remove any uncertainty, to telescope what has often been a long, ugly, divisive brawl into a quick and orderly judgment. It took a year to remove Stockwell Day, two years to dislodge Jean Chretien. Margaret Thatcher was gone in a matter of days.

What of the case for hysterics? It is easy, of course, to conjure up all manner of devils from the unknown. But in this case the unknown is well known. The proposal before us is merely to replicate the model already in place in the other Westminster democracies: the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It is, indeed, the model on which this country was founded, and under which it grew to maturity, but from which we have strayed in recent decades. It is to that system — the system of Macdonald and Laurier — that the bill would return us, nothing more.

[hobbyguy]

What I've seen of this proposal so far looks like a real step in getting us back to democratic system where the voters expression via voting actually means something. That would bring more people to the polls, and then perhaps some more reforms could follow.

[dreamon]

This Reform Act reminds me of something that played out in the South Okanagan/Boundary country recently.

November 15th. http://www.castanet.net/news/Penticton/ ... ative-seat

Penticton city councillor Helena Konanz announced this week, she is seeking the nomination for the Conservative Party of Canada in the new Riding of South Okanagan West Kootenay.

November 29th. http://www.castanet.net/news/Penticton/ ... nomination

Penticton city councillor Helena Konanz announced this week she has decided not to run for the Conservative nomination.
In a statement, Konanz said she has done a lot of reflection and decided holding the position of MP in this large riding is not in the best interests of her family

December 03. http://www.castanet.net/news/Penticton/ ... -announced

Penticton resident and real estate agent Marshall Neufeld officially announced Tuesday that he is seeking the Conservative nomination for the new federal riding of South Okanagan West Kootenay.....
.....Neufeld sat for two terms on the National Council of the Conservative Party of Canada and is past president of the local Conservative riding association.

He is also the former senior parliamentary assistant in Ottawa to the Hon. Stockwell Day.

Day expressed his support for Neufeld, stating "The people of South Okanagan West Kootenay would be well served by having Marshall as their representative."

[RedGiant]

Go Michael Chong!!
Brave man standing up to P.M. Harper, and trying to take Canada further along the path of democracy!
We need more people like Michael Chong in our parliament!