We have political foundations that have evolved out of this land, not from other places.
Electoral details from other countries may be of useful technical nature, but shaping a more representative democracy is our Canadian project.
It is an important assurance that may quell underlying suspicion because deep down, we remember that our political exports have often worked out better than the import products.
On one side of the ledger are:
• Tommy Douglas’s medicare, as well as his manufacturing infrastructure initiatives and declaration of human rights;
• Lester Pearson’s imaginative diplomacy;
• Macdonald’s Confederation;
• Jim Boss/Elijah Smith/Tony Penikett influenced re-initiation of indigenous self-government and economic innovation initiative;
• Agnes Macphail’s justice reform;
• McLuhan and Harold Innis-inspired high-tech revolutions; and
• all the way to Avro Arrow-level aerospace industry leadership.
In perhaps preventing nuclear catastrophe during the 1956 Suez crisis, prime minister Pearson may have had a greater war and peace impact than even Vimy Ridge heroes Arthur Currie and electronic artillery guidance inventor Andy McNaughton. (McNaughton was known to ride with a lion sitting in the staff car.)
In balance, there are expressions of Euro/American provincialism, as in Chicago economics, dressed up as globalized free-trade that brought losses of good jobs, trade restrictions for renewable energy investments/carbon sinking sustainable farming, Big Pharma price rigging, carbon-price subsidies for backward 1600s mercantilism of the Big Oil cartel in the style of East India or Hudson Bay companies.
Then as now, free trade inside of the royal charter that otherwise rides on handouts of protectionism.
There is weakening of lawful government by NAFTA-type Investor State Dispute Settlement, which refuelled a backlash of racism, violence and protectionism in many countries and a sidelining of functional GATT trade rules.
Forgetting who we truly are as Canadians is what is wrong with fearful clinging to an exclusive first-past-the-post system and by trying to back this up with a referendum.
In that thinking, details of our current electoral system become a great static stone tablet, which it never was.
When they grow out of grassroots movements, referenda may have their place driving legislation into governance, at times and in places re-enforcing a public good that is sidelined by dangerous special interest lobbies, such as the wounded, uncompetitive oil monopoly for example.
On the other hand, a government that would launch a referendum frivolously and self-serving may also flash back misuses of power along with inviting trick questions such as in the 1995 Quebec referendum.
Following the Canadian writer John Ralston Saul’s learning a little further, he reminds us: “The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestation two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy.”
A warning echoes through the sons of empire from the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique lobbies, who opposed Canadian independence in the 1840s by divisively seeking to keep minorities in their place.
When the Crown didn’t support any longer their undemocratic corruption privileges, on Sept. 10, 1849, 325 leading Tories from the Family Compact and associated Château Clique members signed the “Annexation Manifesto” requesting annexation by the U.S.
It is still questionable, perhaps un-Canadian, to argue without content and use the electoral discussion to tie us into the static, brittle narrative of European/U.S. kind of nation states that skin-deep are still religion-single language-race oriented.
The European model, with its wrongheaded multi-cultural tolerance, functions in a non-egalitarian way, with quasi-percentage ceilings of Muslim and other minorities, appearances of rare non-Caucasian looking MPs or, at best, token ethnic members of government cabinets.
Not good enough for Canada, where political stability comes not from status quo authority but from growth of character that is inter-related as a living, sophisticated organism.
That being said, after browsing through various details of serious proposals, first past the post in some incarnation is pretty well here to stay for electing about half the representatives to parliaments.
After introducing the vote for women, First Nations, other non-Caucasians and non-landowners, electoral reform, once again, is just catching up a bit further with old aspirations of fair representation.
