acton@ubc-ean.CDN (Donald Acton) (08/21/84)
I know how our friend from Athabasca feels. During the last election
those of us on the west coast were treated, around dinner time,
to the depressing news that the Liberals had won. (For those of you
back east I must remind you that even though we are out in the hinterland
we can receive, much to the chagrin of Francis Fox, American TV stations.)
We were able to celebrate later in the evening when it became apparent
that western Canada was going to have enough foresight to refuse to elect
Liberal MPs.
However, my disdain for the current Liberal party would not be so great
if at least it appeared that those of us who do not live in central
Canada had some inp[Cut into how we are governed. I believe that the
feeling of western alienation could be diminished if politicians were
made more accountable for their own actions.
To be more accountable the politicains must first and foremost
represent the views of their constituents in the House of Commons and not
those of the party. To accomplish this all votes (except perhaps ones
that are fundamental party policy) should be free votes. If a politicain
fails to vote for policy acceptable to his riding then the voters should
be able to recall him. Just remember that if you or I do a bad job we
can be fired tomorrow but we can only fire a politicain at election time.
I can think of one specific example where I am reasonably sure someone
would have been out of a job. Several years ago Jack Horner, the MP
for Crowfoot (Alberta), crossed the house to change colour from Tory
blue to Liberal red. This did not go down very with the locals in that
during the next two federal elections our pal Jack went down to massive
defeats by ever increasing margins. If the locals could have recalled
Jack I am sure they would have. (Jack didn't need to worry though,
because for his short stint as a liberal < 1 year he managed to get
a nice soft patronage appointment to CN. Who said Crown Corporations
serve no useful purpose?)
In addition to being able to recall our politicians we should also have
a means by which the people can get the legislation passed that the
political hacks don't have the guts to pass for us. The example I site
here is Capital Punishment. All polls that I have seen indicate that
>70% of the people support capital punishment for certain crimes. Yet
the politicians, who are of course morally superior to the general
population, refused to allow capital punishment. To get such legislation
passed some form of local initiative should be available to the electorate.
Finally something must be done with the Senate. Either the weak-kneed Senate
should perform a useful function or we should get rid of it. To make it
useful I propose that its original basic function remain the same
but that members be elected for fixed terms instead of appointed for
"life". I also beleive that if the Senate were elected it would
exercise its power instead of being a rubber stamp. If we want a
rubber stamp then I am sure a stationary store in Ottawa (there must
be lots of them our there to service the growing government bureaucracy)
would be happy to sell one for a couple of bucks instead of the few
hundred thousand (million ?) dollars a year we are currently spending.
Now that I have said my bit I can get off my high horse here at
the edge of the rain forest where the mountains meet the sea.
Donald Actonmmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/23/84)
Why do we have poitical parties, and when should they enforce party
discipline in a vote?
Donald Acton argues that most votes cast by MPs should be in accord with
the wishes of the constituents on the particular issue. Perhaps some
should be, but unfortunately, the wishes of the constituents can be
self-contradictory or in conflict with natural (physical) law. The
case of capital punishment was quoted. On the one hand, the constituents
presumably wish to reduce the rate of crimes for which the death penalty
would be enacted, and on the other they wish to enact the death penalty
for those crimes. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that enacting
the death penalty reduces the rate for capital crimes, and there is
suggestive evidence that it does the opposite. So in acceding to the
wishes of the constituents for a reduction in the crime rate, the
politicians violate the wishes of the constituents to enact the death
penalty.
Many actions of governments are interlinked, in that the effects of one
will affect the possible results of another. Party policy is not a
set of unrelated choices, although it may be possible to find groups
of tightly bound choices that can be considered with less dependence
among the groups. Voters may not recognize necessary linkages that
are seen (rightly or wrongly) by people who have considered the choices
more carefully; in such cases, to vote the people's choice might be
to deny the people's choice on an apparently different issue.
Countries with large numbers of parties in Parliament (or whatever) tend
to find it difficult to adhere to a consistent policy. Even though
we may disagree with the policies of a government, consistency may
be better than inconsistently doing some things right and some things
wrong that interfere with the right things. A totally different but
consistent policy might be even better, but inbetween won't be.
We have an advantage, here, in that even a minority government can
work with a consistent policy. It may be tempered by the views of
the supporting third or fourth party, which prevents an extreme policy
from being implemented. We might be better with a little easier
access to parliament by small parties, to avoid single-party dominance.
But we would not be better off with constantly shifting coalitions
in the manner of Israel or the Netherlands.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmthenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (08/24/84)
> ................. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that enacting > the death penalty reduces the rate for capital crimes, and there is > suggestive evidence that it does the opposite. Pardon the language, Martin, but the "suggestive evidence" is, in a word, utter garbage. Such a counterintuitive assertion should be quite well documented before being believed, and the studies which claim to support it are -- in practice -- so beset by apples-vs-oranges problems that they are worthless. There isn't even much good evidence about the more general question of punishment deterring crime; there is no possibility of making any sort of supportable statement about the death penalty. > So in acceding to the > wishes of the constituents for a reduction in the crime rate, the > politicians violate the wishes of the constituents to enact the death > penalty. The politicians are doing nothing so rational. They are voting against capital punishment because they think it's barbarous and dreadful, from a vaguely liberal everybody's-really-a-nice-guy-even-the-criminals point of view. I see no reason to accuse them of being rational about this, regardless of whether there is enough evidence for rationality to be possible. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry