Whatever happens next week, there is a reasonable fear that the ignorance of Canadians about our system of government will once again be used against us. Tired of the "separatist coup d'etat" narrative? Fear not..."socialist coup d'etat" is just as bad (or even worse). Cue terrifying music. In addition to exploring anti-BQ sentiment, my other project has been trying to share key principles of Parliamentary Democracy, as agreed by well known, and respected figures (even if we don't agree on all aspects of what I have called the 2008 calamity). This has been interesting for me and led to …
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As promised. Can't take credit for this but I did find the experiment very interesting. I was contacted in early April after my prorogation paper was published. I am still working through the data provided but here is a first look at the Gordon Tory Experiment Despite hundreds of press releases to radio and print media since Monday, there has been virtually no interest by the mainstream media. What am I missing? Who decides what news is these days? …
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Debates tonight. Here is a piece published last week in the Mark. In short it is about how I use debates in classes I teach at a medium-security facility in Eastern WA and the problems associated with our approach in Canada. I know that politics is theatre. I just wish we set the bar a bit higher. …
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To argue, as I have done, that the 2008 prorogation was a constitutional "harm," it is necessary to define what such a harm would constitute. In this paper I suggested the way prorogation was used in 2008 constituted a harm to the principles of responsible government in Canada because it a) undermined Parliament's central role in Canadian governance; b) relied upon nationalistic tensions that had the effect of de-legitimizing a political minority in the House of Commons; c) appeared to sanction a larger attempt to reform Canada's constitution absent debate, discussion, or the participation of …
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While the 2009 prorogation brought people into the street, it was the 2008 prorogation that should have been of much more concern. It took me a year and a half, and a variety of arguments, debates, and drafts to produce something that was finally published last week. In this paper I argued that the constitutionally dubious prorogation to avoid a confidence vote in 2008 was based in part on the often overlooked role nationalistic tensions play in Canada. When I pointed out that these elements appear to be playing a role in this election in a piece I called Whose afraid of the Big Bad Bloc, I …
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