With the mainstream finally covering the protests across the country over Stephen Harper’s prorogue of Parliament and the Liberals releasing a new plan to place checks on a Prime Minister’s ability to close the house, political discourse is taking an interesting turn.
Call it the excitement of effecting change, but conversation has shifted from, well basically nothing, to how we can actually make our government work for us; make it better.
And this is the section where I piss all over this lovely concept.
The ebullience is temporary. Let’s face it, 99.9% of the time, this country is just far too apathetic to change this country for the better.
Let’s bring up the whole election referendum that came up in the Ontario elections a few years ago. Voters were given a chance to choose: Do we stick with the existing First Past the Post system or do we go for a new Mixed Member Plurality. It was downright hilarious to watch people try to say that voters “chose” the way they elected people. To me that means people would actually be able to tell you what they voted for, however if you had asked people on the street to describe the two system the overwhelming majority would have no clue how to respond. The people didn’t care enough to educate themselves, not that it stopped them from making a check in a random box.*
So I have to laugh when people say “Hey! Let’s reform the senate!” Especially when they think that a party in power has any kind of interest in reforming the senate. Of course at the moment this refers to Stephen Harper, who people think will reform the senate while he is busy filling its ranks with Conservative because… he is so good at being honest? Who knows, but the party does not matter. It would be a miracle if Senate reform ever came from a ruling party.
*OK not so random. Let’s face it, First Past the Post was listed first and was labeled on ballots as the current system.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.