g_bambino

Talk about trying to mislead and cover things up...

Specifically regarding the case you're discussing, why should they?

I wonder if Bob and Doug could devise... No, they could pay someone to devise a machine that automatically responds to reporters by playing back the reporter's question but placing a recording of Doug saying "The Mayor did not..." over the "Has the Mayor" or "Did the Mayor" part. It would then play a randomly selected phrase from a collection including "gravy train", "saved taxpayers a billion dollars", "lots of people enjoy a few drinks on the weekend", and "drunken stupor".

I of course meant officially and of course there are people in this country who actually think "prime minister" is a quirky Canadian title for our president; I recently saw a tv show in which a guy on Parliament Hill said something about "all these statues of presidents" around him. Like him, all the others are wrong, too (he was thankfully corrected on camera), which is clearly only going to assist the decay of our democracy. Prime ministers love to be thought of as presidents, because then they can act like presidents, there to do as they wish until at least four years passes (though, even then, they can "call" "their own" election any time before that); but, keeping MPs as nobodies is a big factor in the prime minister maintaining as much of a presidential status as our constitution will allow. If people saw MPs actually hold a prime minister over a real (metaphorical) fire more often than only in minority parliaments, they might come to learn the prime minister isn't supreme over parliament, it's the other way around. [ed.: +]

The diminishment of MPs is exactly what's taken power from the grassroots.

That's different to "he won't get one"

That's off the Parliament of Canada website, but I can't access it from my desktop, for some reason, but can via my phone. So, no link. Sorry.

I see no reason why he wouldn't.

No, it'll die if it's still in the Senate; a proroation closes both houses of parliament. Bills also can go back and forth between the Senate and the House of Commons; I don't think it would be workable to have legislation from the previous session coming back to get mixed in with the new session's business in the Commons.

An article in the National Post yesterday (I think) spelled out just how many people in a prime minister's caucus can benefit financially, in one way or another, from sucking up to the PM; it was around half. I've always found Simpson to be a bit of a dolt.

You think? All that just to stop a bill? And, could what that bill proposes not then become an election issue? My suspicion is that, if Harper wanted the bill dead, he'd ask for a prorogation.

So many misconceptions in one short sentence...

No, a person in Harper's office is being accused of such a thing. Nigel Wright is not the government.

No, they choose a person for their representative in parliament and the majority of the House of Commons then says who it supports as prime minister. We don't vote for presidents. And if any Canadians think we do, don't encourage them.

You seem unaware of the definition of dictatorship.

They do. The provincial governments and parliaments have zero control over federal bills or laws and who is in or out of the prime minister's chair in Ottawa.

I think a lot of what he says there is misguided and thus misleading to others (electing everyone and everything isn't an ideal), but I can't disagree at all with most of the final paragraph.

"Our streets"? You make it sound like the whole country was made subject to martial law. Anyway, troops were first out on the streets of Montreal at the unanimous request of Quebec's political party leaders, per the National Defence Act. Then, at the urging of the Mayor of Montreal and the Quebec Cabinet, the federal Crown-in-Council declared a state of apprehended insurrection under the War Measures Act. It was all entirely legal, meaning your retort above is inapplicable.

No, leaders can also deny MPs any chance of getting into Cabinet or any other important positions and eject them from caucus altogether.

If it's found he did try to buy it, he'll simply say nobody asked him the right question.

How? Regardless of how the candidate for MP was nominated, it's once the MP is an MP that the party leader can whip him or her. Not absolute authority. But too much, yes. Or, at least, too much without enough democratic accountability to affect how it's wielded. Right now, almost all the limits there are are legal--constitutional--enforcable only by the governor general or monarch and only in the most dire circumstances because both are unelected; they're a last resort.

Well, because 15% may be a little low doesn't make the whole proposal stupid. Bills get reformed--hopefully improved--as they move through parliament; that's what parliament is for.

And then there's people who divert discussion off on tangents and make passive-aggressive attacks when they're publicly embarassed by their failure to explain how their own proposal would work.

Well, that is what Harper said and he will stand for no less than his devout followers saying what the leader says!

I don't think you quite grasp what responsible government is. It is having the government accountable to the House of Commons, the members of which are accountable to the electorate. A randomly chosen "citizens' assembly" is responsible to nobody.