JamesHackerMP

Australia does seem to have a system by which the Senate is useful, without being overly obstructive to the will of the People. I met someone playing Diplomacy who was a senator's aide in Canberra, and gave me a run down on the system. I think---and this is just my opinion---that Canada could adopt their method of internal checks & balances, via an elected Senate that the government cannot always control by political patronage instead. There is a mechanism to prevent the political infighting between House and Senate that they've developed. It's actually pretty ingenious in my opinion, and for Canadians, who seem afraid of the Senate turning into an obstructive machine, it might actually work in Canada. Or not. Who am I to say? In any case, PR would make your problem worse. I majored in political science, as my profile says, and we discussed and analyzed systems using PR and FPTP systems. Would you have the ENTIRE Commons use PR? or would it be "half and half" like the Bundestag in Berlin?

Anywho, yeah I'd love to be a senator. One of you called it Low Responsibility mixed with High Pay. I couldn't ask for better, at this juncture in my life.

Yes, but the requirements (OK, for the white people) were dropped by the 1840s, mostly. The electorate expanded to "universal" suffrage* by the 1850s. (*"universal" = all the white males over 21)

Blew what cover? LOL

When you vote for MP, how many candidates are there on the ballot in the average riding? And which parties normally win; is is pretty much just the Conservatives or Liberals?

From what I have read, and this surprised me, there is no mention at all of a prime minister in the Constitution Act; as in our constitution, there is no mention of a cabinet, for example. But he does have an awful lot of power, that our presidents would only dream of having. Maybe that's where to start?

As far as him---not to get off topic---both candidates could use a whipping back into reality. I'm one of those Americans who's fed up with the behavior of both parties. This is where the flaws of both types of democracies become apparent.

Keep FPTP but drop the "whipping" that makes the cabinet a party elite.

Um, I'm not telling you what to do. Read my first post. I'm here for the opportunity of "information exchange". If it helps, I was a political science major who's taken courses in comparative politics and international relations at university. Funny how everyone tells America everything we're doing wrong, but if an American questions--even just questions--something another country does, this very fascinating double-standard comes to light. Dialamah at least had the decency to understand that I was trying to understand, not tell you what to do. Honestly, bjre, do you think that as an American I'm unaware of the problems in my own country? Why would I be on a discussion board like this if I were that ignorant. Well, the countries that use PR, they tend to just benefit the two largest parties even more so than with first past the post. They say the tail can wag the dog (the little parties thanks to PR being able to rise up), but in cases like that, I'm pretty sure the dog is doing a pretty fine job of wagging its own tail. Is it not possible that there is another solution to restore "responsible government" to the parliamentary system?

Again, forgive me for weighing in when it's not my own government. Then again, as one of you pointed out here, his countrymen are always ready to weigh in on US politics. So maybe it's just only fair that I return the favor? One of the discussions, on the Canadian Senate, led to an allegation that the real problem is not the Senate itself but the Commons. A discussion led to the following: should Canadians elect their lower (and more important) house based on proportional representation, all of its problems of being held captive by party hacks/elites would magically vanish with PR. Having been a political science major, I can tell you that, in the experience of other countries that use it, the Canadians who advocate PR in the Commons are way off. (Sorry if nobody likes hearing a Yank tell them what's not going to work in Canada, but fair enough, right?) PR, ostensibly, represents the views of the people better because the percentages of the people voting for a party--which has a particular platform and a particular agenda along with it that it's going to do for the people--equal the number of seats it wins in the house. The point this misses is responsible government: will PR actually foist the control of the executive government of Canada out of the hands of the party hacks and return power to the people because it's "more democratic"? Probably not. Because you've now just started voting for parties, rather than singular MPs in a plethora (338) of ridings across Canada, and it will make the party machine even MORE important to the mechanism of responsible government than it is now---which to some of you seems pretty hard to imagine. Well, imagine it. I've studied (yes, in a classroom) other systems of government, some of which use PR instead of FPTP. Both have their problems inherent. My own personal verdict from south of the 49th parallel: you'd trade one set of problems for another.

OK that was a little off topic and seemed to have stalled the conversation for a few days, sorry. I was surprised (shocked actually) to learn that the Canadian Constitution (since the original when it was confederated to create the Dominion of Canada) requires a senator to own $4,000 of property (after mortgage/debt etc.) and a new worth of at least $4000 in the province the senator represents. That's shocking...although good of you to not have indexed that for inflation. I wonder what $4,000 Canadian dollars in 1867 would be today? That sounds like a crap-ton of money for that year. Thankfully, the authors of you constitution had the wisdom not to index that for inflation.

I was told by a Canadian, that you actually have stronger provincial governments (vis a vis the federal government in Ottawa) than the USA has state governments (vis a vis our federal government in Washington). Is this true? It's what my compatriots from South of Northern Virginia call "State's Rights" only, naturally, you call em provinces. Is it true the federal government in Ottawa allows far more powers to the provinces than the federal government in Washington allows to the states? Over time, the US federal government has become more and more powerful.

well it probably doesn't matter, then. If I might ask, how strong is party control within a provincial legislature? Is it as strong as I've heard some of you complain about the House of Commons?

I just figured out why Britain voted to leave the EU: IT'S THE EUROSAUSAGE!

But at any rate, about the sad state of your province (a Canadian girl was telling me exactly the same thing at a party I went to once in fact, she's a dual citizen)...sometimes people just re-elect bad governments. Again, and again, and again in some cases.

You said that "most Canadians know it stands for Underwood not Urquhart". Underwood's the US version, Urquhart the original British version. Not the other way around. I think there's a lot of people world wide who can blame the Brits for everything (even though they blame America instead....gee, I forgot it was the USA that broke up the Ottoman Empire, right? LOL) Well, the British settled us too. We may have made a "clean break" but there's still a lot of British influence in American politics. The Magna Carta, a Briton once told me, is actually more respected and cited by lawyers in the USA than in its country of origin, for example.

When I was growing up, we didn't exactly have a whole class on Soviet history and politics, but we probably should have. Although we did discuss it a lot in social studies class, of course. Mostly I asked because I picked up a copy of The Federalist Papers and one of The Anti-Federalist Papers & Convention Debates. A pretty America-centric thing (well, duh, it was a book about why the voters of New York should ratify the proposed US Constitution) but nonetheless, I think it's interesting. Then again, I think a lot of things are fascinating other people around me would find terribly dull. I've actually read the first 80 pp of The Wealth of Nations (which I see you have quoted in your signature). Not bragging, at all, because I certainly couldn't get through the thing, let alone to page 81. But someday...

Now, wait a moment: I hope you're not suggesting that the corruption in the Canadian federal and provincial government(s) is somehow our fault? Like we've release a contagion into the atmosphere, deliberately so it can drift its way north on the winds and blow across your borders, that causes government corruption? I don't mean to sound mocking, but your statement sounds like something that would have come from Al Jazeera. Then again, it's always more patriotic to blame another country instead of your own for one of its own problems.

In Starship Troopers and other books by sci-fi author Robert Heinlein (a political writer masquerading as a sci fi writer, actually) they did have a "meritocracy" of elected officials. You had to do federal service for at least two years to be able to vote and run for office. In democracy, as we know it, there's no barrier to either. In a democracy there really can't be, when you get right down to it. We give civil servants exams, yes. But they're administrators; their role is supposed to be apolitical, so what's on their exams is not something politically controversial. (In other words what I am saying is this: if we started requiring "merit" to hold office, what would the qualifications be? and who would determine those qualifications?)

Sorry, I know this quote is from page one and we're on page 5 now, but I thought it worth commenting on. Democracy is not government by merit. The civil service is run by merit, at least in theory, because you need to take exams and what not for promotions. There is no exam one needs to take in order to be an MP or a senator, right? While in my country, there are no such exams, either, a bill was put forth in the Arizona State Legislature to put the IQ of a candidate for office next to the candidate's name. Naturally, to protect their own power it is quite likely, the bill died in committee.

I think in LA, the Napoleonic Code is for criminal law as well as civil, though I could be wrong. No, it doesn't affect the appointment of SC justices. I have no idea what happens when court cases are appealed from LA state courts to federal courts...hmmm, interesting situation though, i'm sure it would be.

Impact, I'm glad you said that. I thank you. Actually America does the same thing (as per your example of Quebec): state law of the State of Louisiana is not British Common Law, as is the legal systems of the other 49 states and DC, but the Napoleonic Code of France. (Which surprised me when I found that out...that must be terribly inconvenient for lawyers who want to practice law in Quebec or Louisiana you'd think.) If you want to take my advice about what to do about the Canadian Senate, a decent model---though perhaps not a fully applicable one---would be that of my previous mention of Australia. Both chambers are elected, but they manage to avoid gridlock like you would think there would be. The 1975 constitutional crisis was rather exceptional, and had to be resolved by the Governor-General, in fact. But, today, if there ends up being so much gridlock between MPs and senators bouncing bills back at each other, the GG is allowed to call a "double dissolution election", in which all 76 senate seats, not just roughly half, are up for grabs. The new parliament then reassembles and works on all the bills that caused the gridlock and attempt to resolve them. It's actually not a bad system, and allows the people to operate in both branches of the federal parliament.

Also: while it's not my place to tell a Canadian what to do with his/her own sovereign government, it sounds like proportional representation would take the party hackery of the Commons and multiply it by a factor of 10. It usually does in countries with PR elections, btw. (I've studied this in political science classes in college.)

Impact: neat idea: in Jamaica (or the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, I forget which: check the CIA World Factbook where I found it), the appointment to the legislative council or whatever they call the upper house of one of its members must be agreed to jointly by the PM and the opposition leader. Neat idea?