We are now  seeing “parties of independent candidates”. For example, in Ontario, in the October 2011 election, Onarians were introduced to the Canadians Choice Party – a party of Independent Candidates.  In Quebec,  the CAQ is  a  party (at least according to the following article) formed largely  from Independent Candidates.

See the following article:

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1085378–a-powerful-new-party-rises-in-quebec

In June, he dumped the Parti Québécois, for which he acted as the immigration critic and is sitting as an independent for the riding of Deux Montagnes, northwest of Montreal. But over the summer, he said, he found himself more and more captivated by the new Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec.

“I find it interesting, and I think many Quebecers are on the same page,” Charette said. “For the first time in 40 years we are proposing to bring people together on a base different from the national question. It’s refreshing.”

Come the next legislative session early in 2012, he and a handful of other independents and members of the rightist party Action démocratique du Québec, could become members of the CAQ.

On Monday, the new party will officially join the restless Quebec political landscape, but unlike most start-ups, this one stands a good chance at winning power.

Polls say if an election were held today, François Legault’s new party would win. Support for his coalition at 39 per cent, the Liberals at 22 per cent, the PQ at 17 per cent and the ADQ at 11 per cent.

Led by a former ardent sovereignist within the PQ, the coalition believes strongly that Quebec has big problems with its economy, debt, health and education systems that must be tackled before the old federalism-sovereignty debate.

Legault’s remarkable polling numbers — coming before his party is even formally launched — comes from a general appetite for his ideas, to put off any referendum and focus on the economy, for instance, but also from the current upheaval in provincial politics.

The Liberals are dogged by corruption allegations and a premier who appears out of touch. The PQ faces internal squabbling, backstabbing and resignations, fuelled by an inability of leader Pauline Marois to capitalize on the Liberals’ problems.

“People have the impression that nothing is going on in Quebec and they want to see change,” said Legault’s spokesperson, Jean-François Del Torchio. “What Mr. Legault is proposing is positive change.”

Legault was not doing interviews before the Monday launch, but he is sufficiently a threat to Premier Jean Charest and Marois that both are both questioning his motives and leadership.

Recalling that Legault has called himself a “leftist sovereignist,” Charest said earlier this week that “the people know what they’re getting with a Liberal government, not with a party led by a former péquiste minister who has put aside sovereignty.”

The sovereignty issue has been a touchy one. Legault says he’s been a sovereignist his whole life, and used to be the PQ’s most vocal pusher of independence.

But since leaving the party and founding the coalition he has managed to attract prominent federalists, including his coalition founding partner Charles Sirois. Del Torchio, for instance, worked with three federal Liberal leaders, including most recently, Michael Ignatieff.

“What he’s saying,” Del Torchio explained, “is that he’s not going to promote sovereignty. Nobody wants to hear about it anymore. Quebecers want to see the real challenges tackled.”

Legault, 54, is married with two teenaged children. His wife, Isabelle Brais, runs a high-end clothing store in Montreal’s trendy Plateau neighbourhood. He grew up in a household of modest income, his father a postmaster, his mother a homemaker.

But he became a successful businessman, co-founding Air Transat, before turning to politics. Within the PQ government in the 1990s, he headed several ministries, including education and health. As a critic, he dealt with finance.

For Charette, the party might be ideal; he left the PQ precisely because Marois wasn’t promising hold off on a referendum. Sovereignty, for him, remains an ideal but is the “dream of a young man.” He’d prefer to work on pressing issues until such time as the debate is viable again.

For Marc Picard, another independent legislator and former member of the ADQ, the coalition fits his style for ideological reasons. It has a centre-right orientation. “The coalition wants to tell the truth to the citizens,” Picard says, “and it has the courage to . . . deal with things that have never been dealt with, like the debt.”

Legault’s team is preparing an “action plan” to present Monday. He’s proposing to cut thousands of government jobs, do away with school boards and mid-level heath agencies, raise teachers’ and doctors’ salaries, use resource royalties to pay down the debt, and finally make Quebec a “have” province.

Whether from genuine support of his ideas or traditional party malaise, polls indicate Legault would win the premier’s seat.

The figure of 39 per cent support for the coalition, reported in the CROP poll of 1,000 Quebecers in late October, would translate into a landslide 102 of the province’s 125 seats, according to the website threehundredeight.com.

And if the coalition and the ADQ merge — a real possibility — the party would get a whopping 48 per cent of the vote, something a CROP executive called “surreal.”

These numbers spell catastrophe for Marois.

Despite record support at the party’s congress last April, she has had to deal with a kind of ongoing mutiny. Last spring, five prominent members quit the caucus. In late October several caucus members, fearing Bloc Québécois -style obliteration, were said to urge her to pass the torch. There have been resignations in local riding associations. One Laval association sent a letter to her last week asking her to go.

But following Monday’s party launch, Charest and Marois will have their work cut out for them. So, too, will Legault.

The honeymoon period will come to an end. Legault, however, has committed to give 10 years more of public service.

It could be a long romance.

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Apr. 13, 2011 2:00AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Apr. 13, 2011 4:50AM EDT

Gordon Gibson

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/democratic-reform-should-be-the-central-issue-of-this-election/article1982405/

We are now well into one of our occasionally scheduled games of “futures markets in stolen property,” otherwise known as an election. (Thank you, H.L. Mencken.) The promises are flying.

Stripped of all the fine words, the parties all come to us with a remarkable proposition: “We will confiscate a goodly portion of your hard-earned money and remove it to Ottawa. There we will launder and shrink it and then return some of it to you. We will also issue a series of orders called laws and regulations that will tell you what to do with your lives. You may now say thank you.”

More related to this story

• The torture of Question Period
• An election is war by other means
• We don’t have fixed election dates, and can’t

Strangely, we mostly buy into this pitchman’s plan. This is partly because much of what government does is necessary, even good. But alas, much of what government does is also stupid or wasteful or improperly gives the advantage to one region or group over others to buy votes. This doesn’t sound attractive, but the politicians are so cunning in their packaging, the issues are so complex, the media so lazy and the voters so resigned or so busy with other things that the shiny tinsel looks good enough to draw support for one party or another.

This is notwithstanding the fact that three of the parties – the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Greens – have no conceivable chance of implementing their promises (and so can promise anything at all). By contrast, the Conservatives or Liberals might be able to implement their promises – they just have no believable way of paying for them, short of higher taxes or higher debt – both things, as we know, they’d never, ever do.

Agreed, this is a cynical view of a political system wherein are entrapped many good people who genuinely want to make the world a better place. And it could be a lot worse – one need only look south of the border to see a great nation now struggling with a truly sick democracy. So we must get past the cynicism, look at what we have and ask, “How can we make it better?”

That should be a central issue of this election – democratic reform. The available options are well known and researched. At the top of the list is more power to the ordinary MP. After all, this is the only person you get to vote for and thus the only person you can call to account.

The list goes on to more freedom and resources for parliamentary committees (where the iron discipline of the party whip is less in evidence) and a sharp restriction in the matters deemed to be issues of “confidence” (and thus capable of forcing an election) by governments.

There are institutional matters such as electoral reform and campaign finance. And there are things such as a truly muscular freedom-of-information law, so that the knowledge and options available to the government would also be available to the public. Without good information, there can’t be good accountability. Without such knowledge, the shiny tinsel carries the debate.

The trouble is, the reforms that would make our political system work better involve a transfer of power. Some would move power from the Prime Minister’s Office to Parliament. Some would move power from governments to voters. Unlikely. An iron rule of politics says no one ever voluntarily gives up power, and the PMO has been centralizing more over the past 40 years. But some great people have voluntarily done so in the past and, more rarely, some great citizens’ movements have forced change. We can hope.

The bottom line is this: The gatekeeper to reform is the prime minister of the day. That’s the person who can make change – or stop it. If you believe that reforming a dysfunctional system is more important than any of the other issues in play, then the thing to do is look at Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff and ask: Which one is the more credible reformer? Which one will make plain-language commitments, no fingers crossed, no cross my heart and hope to die, to institute this or that reform?

Maybe neither. But one thing is certain – if we don’t ask, nay, demand, things will go on as before and perhaps get worse.

November 21, 2010

Susan Delacourt

A group of climate change activists chant on the front steps of Centre Block after being removed by security personnel from the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 26, 2009.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/894307–is-canadian-democracy-in-real-danger

OTTAWA—What does Canada’s Parliament have in common with the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Both still have their true believers, according to political scientist David Docherty. But around this time of year, annually it seems, Leaf fans and fans of Parliament are coming to the same, sinking conclusion.

“Every season starts out with so much promise,” Docherty told a roomful of political-science experts on Friday in Ottawa.

“And then, ’round about November,” they’re out of the playoff picture. “And around about November, after a few weeks of the House being in session, you think: ‘Nah, this isn’t the year either.’ ”

It has been a bad month for people like Docherty, who believe that the House of Commons should be the centrepiece of Canada’s democracy.

This past week, it was the unelected Conservative senators audaciously killing a climate-change bill passed by a clear majority of elected MPs in the House of Commons.

The week before, it was Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with tacit agreement from the Liberals, deciding to bypass the Commons in any debate over extending Canada’s troop commitment in Afghanistan — a decision that itself flew in the face of a Commons vote to end the mission in 2011.

“This Senate should be abolished,” New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton thundered in the Senate foyer last week after the climate-change bill was defeated.

Parliamentary experts might argue over whether Senate abolition would be a wise move in the future. Their more pressing concern, however, might be whether the elected House of Commons — the one that’s supposed to be the real, working half of Parliament — is already being abolished, bit by bit, day by day, in Harper’s Ottawa.

The slaps to the Commons’ authority are, after all, merely the latest in a series of direct challenges to the chamber in recent years.

This time last year, for instance, the Harper government decided to disregard a Commons resolution, duly passed by a majority of MPs, to produce all documents pertaining to the treatment of Afghan detainees handled by Canadian troops.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, with only a cursory phone call to the governor general, Harper shut down Parliament until March.

That decision appeared to wake up Canadians to something amiss. Demonstrations were held in cities across Canada to protest against the prorogation — a word that probably wasn’t in most Canadians’ vocabulary until the past two years.

But the Commons’ problems aren’t just a case of open and closed doors. Nor can they simply be reduced to the now-familiar, though very real, worries about decorum and partisan antics in question period. If it’s true that the Commons’ actual power and authority are eroding, then all this bad behaviour looks more like the band playing while the Titanic goes down.

Docherty, a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, says successive prime ministers, culminating now with Harper, have been increasingly treating the Commons as an inconvenient impediment to their rule.

“It’s seen as an obstacle,” says Docherty. “I think Canadians should be alarmed.”

Interestingly, Harper doesn’t seem to see the Senate as an obstacle any longer, now that he’s put 35 of his own appointees in the Upper Chamber and it is able to carry out his wishes — killing the climate-change bill last week, for instance.

Equally alarming to some is the way that the Commons is being treated as a safe venue to take cheap shots at political rivals — since statements in the chamber are protected from libel or slander rules. All political parties have played fast and loose with this privilege in recent decades, but the Conservatives have particularly exploited the time reserved for members’ statements to read out party-written condemnations of Liberal rivals.

This past week, Conservative MP Shelley Glover and others took this to new lows with allegations Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had made racist remarks, citing a fact-twisted editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press. Even after the Free Press retracted and apologized for the article the MPs were using to back their claims, the Conservative statements in the chamber continued.

Liberals have formally complained to the Commons Speaker, but Peter Milliken has seemed powerless to stop the misstatements.

Docherty, who has studied the long-time use of these members’ statements, notes that they once were ways to put issues and people on the parliamentary agenda that may be left out in the day-to-day business of politics. The statements often mentioned women or other underrepresented groups.

Now, however, Docherty says that the party machines seem to have wrested control of this part of the Commons’ business as well, forcing MPs to act as megaphones for dubious political charges that couldn’t be thrown at anyone outside the privileged walls of the chamber.

Commons committees have fallen victim as well to the same forces, with the Tories actually writing a handbook to MPs on how to frustrate the workings of the committees and use procedure to thwart opponents.

The gamble, of course, is that Canadians don’t really care what happens to the House of Commons — that a few metres away from Parliament Hill, it all seems like an arcane, political museum. Harper himself may regard it that way.

And that’s where Docherty’s comparison falls short in similarities — between Parliament and the Leafs. Harper still has lots of time for hockey.

Josh Wingrove

Edmonton— Globe and Mail Update

Published Monday, Nov. 22, 2010 4:38PM EST

Last updated Monday, Nov. 22, 2010 4:58PM ES

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prairies/alberta-mla-booted-from-caucus-after-criticizing-healthcare-policies/article1809200/

A maverick Alberta MLA and doctor who went public recently with criticisms of his own government’s healthcare policies has been kicked out of his party, a move panned by opposition parties as “pathetic” and a “dark day for democracy” in the province.

Raj Sherman, an emergency room doctor who entered politics just two years ago, went public last week criticizing the government’s sluggish response to what other physicians have called a “crisis” in emergency room overcrowding. The province’s emergency room wait times (particularly in Calgary and Edmonton) are far above the government’s own targets, and doctors have begun speaking out calling for reform to ease crowding.

Dr. Sherman, who served as parliamentary assistant to Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky, effectively broke rank to raise the alarm that his own government isn’t doing enough. On Nov. 17, he wrote an e-mail to colleagues saying he can “no longer support the healthcare decisions” made by his own government. He later publicly criticized former Health Minister Ron Liepert, who is currently Minister of Energy.

On Monday, the Progressive Conservatives elected to “suspend” Dr. Sherman indefinitely from caucus, citing Dr. Sherman’s unwillingness to comply with unspecified restrictions placed on him by his party after the e-mails became public last week. They said a set of conditions have been laid out that would allow Dr. Sherman to return to caucus; both sides declined to discuss what those conditions are, and Dr. Sherman expressed no strong desire to return to the party.

“This is an issue of caucus discipline,” PC whip Robin Campbell said tersely Monday, declining to say specifically what Dr. Sherman was ejected for. He said only the decision was nearly unanimous among caucus. (While he spoke, Premier Ed Stelmach slipped by and into the legislature, and did not speak to reporters).

A chastened Dr. Sherman said Monday he’d now sit as an independent indefinitely – joking he didn’t know where his desk would be – and continue to push for ER care reform.

“For me, it’s disappointing. I ran for public service advocating for patients,” says Dr. Sherman, who formerly led a coalition of emergency room doctors in the province in calling for an improvement in service. He was first elected in 2008, and still works weekend shifts in the ER. “I guess the rules of parliamentary democracy are such that you advocate behind the scenes. I advocated publicly. As you know, I’ve been quite vocal… for me, it’s a matter of principle. I took an oath as a physician, a covenant that I make to patients. I have a moral and ethical duty to report to the public what’s happening.”

Mr. Stelmach, questioned by other MLAs within the legislature, called the questions “theatrics” and did not address Dr. Sherman’s firing directly, saying the discussions will remain personal.

“What has done has been done,” the premier said. “All I know is there is a plan in place, and let’s get on with it.”

Outside the house, opposition parties united in criticizing the move.

“This is pathetic. It’s a dark day for democracy. These guys must have completely lost their minds, this government. They just fired an ER doctor – the only ER doctor in the government – during an ER crisis,” said Wildrose Alliance MLA Rob Anderson, a former PC member himself. “It’s unbelievable.”

In the House, New Democrat leader Brian Mason lamented the “secretive and incompetent” government, saying it was punishing a member for speaking out.

“Mr. Sherman has done what I view as a heroic thing, and he stood up against the big machine. He knew that discipline was a likely outcome and he did it anyway. I think that government MLAs should speak up on behalf of their constituents. And the government should not punish them for doing so.”

Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service · Tuesday, Jun. 15, 2010

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/deputy+denies+hating+Israel/3155071/story.html#ixzz0qvYbCC3h
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He’s done it again.

An MP widely considered invisible at best, and horrible at worst, has been saved from local rejection after party headquarters denied his own riding directors the chance to shop for a better Conservative candidate.

For reasons the national office will not explain, the Conservatives have thrown blanket protection over Calgary West MP Rob Anders to enforce his apparently unalienable right to carry their banner into the next election.

Not only did the party shut down any risk of the incumbent suffering a pre-election dumping, but last weekend it seized control of local membership lists, the cash box and the power to call an annual general meeting, shutting down a volunteer association elected only last March by Conservatives at large.

The only crime committed by these mutineering rascals was to request a vote among paid-up members on the possibility of contesting the re-nomination of Mr. Anders.

Fending off challengers might be understandable if the MP was a cabinet minister or MP with a hefty workload, but Mr. Anders is a zero-impact MP who only flares in the headlines when he opens mouth and inserts foot.

It’s true the Conservative constitution, as does all federal parties, permits national officials to annoint a candidate over local preferences. And there’s no denying party leadership the right to screen applicants vying to be its flagbearers for quality control.

But this heavy-handed move denies a local riding the right to even ask the question about contesting an incumbent of questionable quality. And that burns to the populist roots of a party whose first MP in that particular riding was named Stephen Harper.

Local sentiment is clearly against Mr. Anders as their preferred candidate. No other Conservative MP had a non-partisan website dedicated to defeating them in the last vote and no other association is so antagonistically divided over the merits of the local MP.

The Conservative party refuses all comment on the Calgary West fiasco, which only increases confusion on why it takes such a keen interest in keeping Mr. Anders on its backbench.

The hard-right, deeply pro-life Anders is an awkward fit with the upscale cosmopolitan voters of Calgary West, which boasts the eighth highest average family income in Canada.

“Rob is a true reformer and a true conservative,” Mr. Harper declared after saving his candidate from a challenge two years ago. “He has been a faithful supporter of mine and I am grateful for his work.”

Work? Really? Mr. Anders, 37, has spent his entire adult life as an rarely-seen MP, his only apparent profession being a paid heckler for a right-wing U.S. Republican candidate.

His main claim to political fame in the Commons was to deny the required House unanimity to bestow former South Africa president Nelson Mandela with an honorary Canadian citizenship.  His only contribution to Commons discourse last fall was to congratulate a local couple on their 55th wedding anniversary. His total verbal contribution to Hansard in 2009 was less than 600 words, making him the 302nd least talkative MP out of 308.

Even Alberta Conservatives are publicly complaining about Mr. Anders for his open flirtation with the upstart Wild Rose Alliance.

So why protect such a weak candidate when strong contenders would undoubtedly emerge to seek a seat which automatically delivers 50% of the vote to the Conservative?  Search me.

It would be a stretch to link the domineering nature of party managers to leader Stephen Harper, who is now suffering a backlash for dismissing Parliament on a whim and retaliating against opposition complaints by demanding longer sittings upon their return.

But Mr. Harper would undoubtedly have to sign off on this unprecedented act of national retaliation against locals whose only interest was to land the best possible candidate for their riding.

For the prime minister to treat rival parties with disdain is part of the political blood sport.

But to stomp on his own party members for daring to peep in protest at their low-calibre representative is freakish example of excessive control when member choice should prevail, particularly in a riding where being the ballot box Conservative is spelled M.P.

dmartin@nationalpost.com
National Post