The decline in the quality of public life in our province over the past decade is matched by a decline in other places across Canada and in Ottawa.
For those who may not have noticed some of the commentary on this here are three pieces worth considering:
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In a speech to the House of Assembly on 14 June 2012, Collins used derogatory terms to refer to CLD, and claimed we had financial motives in publicising our research. CLD is no stranger to working in difficult political environments. Over the past year, we have conducted projects in Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Somalia and many other countries that are known for being particularly hostile to democratising forces. However, this is the first time that the integrity and professionalism of our organisation have ever been directly attacked by a political leader. [Emphasis added]
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After the throne speech, the leaders of the opposition parties get to have their say in the legislature.
Just as the throne speech sets the government’s agenda, so too can the replies set the agenda for the opposition parties. They could be committed to biting at the government’s heels and demonstrating, as one former opposition leader put it, that the public could toss out the incumbents and trust the Opposition with the government at the next election.
Liberal leader Dwight Ball, the official opposition leader, offered a few “thoughts as we collectively work together to secure a brighter future.”
The rest of his speech covered health spending, search and rescue and a handful of other topics all of which fit with the government’s agenda very neatly. Any differences – on things like the fishery, for example - were more cosmetic than substantive.
So with Ball basically pledging to be a partner for the ruling Tories, what of the New Democrats and Lorraine Michael?
Well, Lorraine talked as though she didn’t have a caucus. There were plenty of references to what Lorraine had said before. There are a great many “I”s in the NDP team.
But most telling of all, was Lorraine’s reversion to her old approach, of the supplicant going to authority to beg favours:
What we are asking for, Mr. Speaker, is very, very basic.
What they are “asking” for. Not what they are working for. Not what they will push for and not what they will do when they form the government.
No, as they did during the election, the NDP want to ask for things from those in power.
So with the Tories pledging to stay the course, they can count on a new partnership with the Liberals as the NDP come on bended knee to ask for something or other.
Anyone in Newfoundland and Labrador will have to look somewhere other than the House of Assembly if they want new ideas.
As for those clamouring for democratic reform, they could put a dozen new committees in the House. Since none of the elected members seem to have any idea what they should be doing with them, democratic reform will have to come from somewhere else as well.
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One New Democrat is fighting the re-count in Burin-Placentia West on grounds that the special ballot provisions of the provincial Elections Act are unconstitutional.
Let this be the first measure to turn back the anti-democratic current of the past eight years.
Now fighting against the anti-democratic tide is familiar stuff to SRBP readers.
Note the date.
That’s when your humble e-scribbler first raised questions about the changes the House of Assembly made to the Elections Act the previous spring. The amendments sailed through the legislature in of its typical speedy sessions with no debate beyond the bare minimum needed to make the amendment bill into law.
Others - notably Mark Watton – saw the same thing around the same time, bit into the issue with their considerable knowledge and gusto.As Mark wrote in 2008:
In the lead-up to a by-election, when there are no candidates in the running, these provisions are just plain silly. But in the weeks preceding a general election, they afford a tremendous advantage to incumbents. It is hard to imagine a greater democratic injustice than rules permitting incumbent candidates to campaign (and do so free from electoral-spending scrutiny) and collect votes while their potential opponents cannot even register. It's no wonder the amendments passed through the House of Assembly with no opposition.
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Over a decade ago, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada stated: "Elections are fair and equitable only if all citizens are reasonably informed of all the possible choices and if parties and candidates are given a reasonable opportunity to present their positions. ... "
More recently, this court ruled the provisions of Canada's Elections Act, which effectively ensured "that voters are better informed of the political platform of some candidates than they are of others," violated Section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and struck them down.
In the words of the Supreme Court of Canada, our rights under the charter go beyond the "bare right to place a ballot in a box"; they "grant every citizen a meaningful role in the selection of elected candidates."
In the three years since Mark published those words, nothing has changed. The special ballot provisions still smell to the high heavens and generally the people who ought to be raising concerns about this have been silent. One call-in radio host today left the impression he’d never heard of this issue before. Let’s hope he misspoke in the rush of the moment.
Well, nothing until one candidate and her lawyer decided to take a simple judicial re-count and strike a blow to restore fair elections to the province. The New Democrats did include changes to the House of Assembly as one section of their election platform last month but special balloting and the other changes the NDP supported in 2007 got not so much as a whispered mention.
Fair elections are a basic democratic right.
It is such a basic right in our society that we often take for granted what it means. But we need look no farther back than 2007 to see just exactly how fragile our most basic democratic principles are.
They are so fragile that the very group - the members of the House of Assembly - we expect to protect our democratic rights are the ones who happily and blindly violated them.
Of course, no one is surprised by this given the sustained assault on our fundamental democratic principles the past eight years have brought.
Just to give you a sense of what we are talking about here, let’s look at those democratic principles as laid out in the Bill of Rights (1689) and the examples of the attack on those principles.
And make note of that date: 1689.
To be sure, the fundamental contempt displayed by the government for the legislature continues unabated with the the change in Premier.
What is encouraging, what is different is that for the first time in eight years, more people are starting to argue against the Conservatives’ contempt for democracy.
This court case over a simple re-count could prove to be one of the most important legal decisions in the province’s history.
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Kathy Dunderdale thinks the provincial legislature is dysfunctional.
Well, if the House sat more often than it has since Dunderdale’s been a member, they might be doing better.
Dunderdale as premier is carrying on the tradition of her predecessor of avoiding the province’s legislature as much as possible. As labradore pointed out on Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador has had the shortest election campaigns in the country and gone the longest period between voting day and when the legislature sat next.
In 2007, the Tories – Dunderdale was deputy premier – went 153 after the election before they showed up in the legislature.
SRBP has been pounding on this issue since 2006. Dunderdale is continuing her predecessor’s ignoble tradition.
Uppity Date: labradore produced another picture that shows the time lapse between voting day and Throne Speech. The results for some provinces changed dramatically.
But guess what? Newfoundland and Labrador still drags its ass across the finish line in the democracy marathon. Or sprints effortlessly to an easy win in the anti-democracy dysfunction.
It all depends on how you look at it.
Either way, it’s nothing to be proud of.
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