Direct Democracy

[ToadBrother]

You do realize how much that's sounds like an edict I hope.

It's a statement of fact, in my view. I view democracy as a continuum.

[g_bambino]

It's a statement of fact, in my view. I view democracy as a continuum.

Given that the definition of democracy isn't even static in the contemporary world, it's quite right to assert that democracy is a project, and always will be.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Given that the definition of democracy isn't even static in the contemporary world, it's quite right to assert that democracy is a project, and always will be.

[/quote

That is a good thing!

[g_bambino]

That is a good thing!

Certainly. But that doesn't override the point that governmental systems should be reformed when it becomes necessary to do so, not revolutionised for the sake of trying something different.

[ToadBrother]

That is a good thing!

It is indeed. If there's one thing the truly successful political systems have taught us, it's that you want some degree of dynamism. The reason the Westminster system has been so successful is because it balances traditional constitutional roles against the necessity of change. The complaint that it is somehow static is absurd, as my oversimplified tracing of English democratic history demonstrates. More generally , representative democracies balance the necessity for a stable executive level of government against democratic forces which are forever in flux.

Certainly other combinations are possible. The Swiss system is built on a very different historical tradition, one not really shared by very many other countries out there, so I feel it is a poor example, unless one really wants to remake a country. Outside of Quebec, I don't think anyone really wants that. Even Reform at its strongest only advocating a limited devolution of powers, or more properly a better recognition of the existing constitutional jurisdictions.

I think direct democracy has its place in certain instances, and traditionally referendums have been held on questions that were viewed as "too big" for the politicians alone (ie. the Charlottetown Accord referendum), or electoral reform in BC (in 2005 and 2009). But these all had very fixed scopes, and very specific questions.

My feelings, for instance, on the HST referendum in BC are very mixed. I can well appreciate the anger at the BC Liberals over the way the tax was brought in, and more to the point on a basically fraudulent budgetary process that lead to that hole in provincial finances that needed filling. The problem is that we need taxes, and there will be occasions when we need to raise general taxes like sales/consumption taxes or income taxes. If the precedent is set that the general populace, through ill-placed sentiment, will simply override a long-standing power of our legislative branch, BC will indeed become like California, a basket case.

As much as my elected representatives often enough don't represent my views, I feel more comfortable within a representative model than within a direct model. It's not perfect, and certainly does create a political class that can become out of touch with the electorate at large. It also delivers four or five years of "elected dictatorship", though I think frankly the direct democracy advocates tend to exaggerate the issue. But that stability of the core functions of government are worth some of sub-optimal side-effects of representative democracy.

[eyeball]

As much as my elected representatives often enough don't represent my views, I feel more comfortable within a representative model than within a direct model. It's not perfect, and certainly does create a political class that can become out of touch with the electorate at large. It also delivers four or five years of "elected dictatorship", though I think frankly the direct democracy advocates tend to exaggerate the issue. But that stability of the core functions of government are worth some of sub-optimal side-effects of representative democracy.

Sub-optimal side-effects...Is that what you call it when a century old fishing industry, the thousands of people it employed and the communities these sustained up and down the coast are pretty much just blown away?

As I pointed out earlier, nearly 2$ billion worth of fish just swam right past the front doors of all but a few of these communities and they were excluded from catching even a single penny's worth. I am not exaggerating.

Certainly. But that doesn't override the point that governmental systems should be reformed when it becomes necessary to do so, not revolutionised for the sake of trying something different.

Why didn't this reasoning apply to the radical change the government inflicted on my community? Oh right, I forgot we live in a dictatorship, but what the hey I guess I should be thankful it's the best dictatorship in the world. Stinking good for nothing pile of crap is all it represents to me.

Becoming radicalized is just like becoming galvanized except it's a slower process. This makes it easier to appreciate exactly who and what your enemy is and just how malevolent it's indifference really is.

[ToadBrother]

Sub-optimal side-effects...Is that what you call it when a century old fishing industry, the thousands of people it employed and the communities these sustained up and down the coast are pretty much just blown away?

As I pointed out earlier, nearly 2$ billion worth of fish just swam right past the front doors of all but a few of these communities and they were excluded from catching even a single penny's worth. I am not exaggerating.

There's an old rule that hard cases make bad law. The fishing issue, in particular, has more to do with peculiarities of the constitutional arrangement. Upending an entire democratic system because you want to catch more fish seems a rather extreme form of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Why didn't this reasoning apply to the radical change the government inflicted on my community? Oh right, I forgot we live in a dictatorship, but what the hey I guess I should be thankful it's the best dictatorship in the world. Stinking good for nothing pile of crap is all it represents to me.

It's radical from the bottom end. From the top end, it simply a matter of long-standing constitutional powers. I fail to see how campaigning for the unachievable (ie. completely obliterating our system of government in favor of the Ross Perot Voting Machine, or whatever) will do much good. That's not a rational act, just simply a variant on "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

Becoming radicalized is just like becoming galvanized except it's a slower process. This makes it easier to appreciate exactly who and what your enemy is and just how malevolent it's indifference really is.

I don't think your radicalized. I just think your bitter. You're just dreaming up systems that get you your way. Your solution is simply to game the system some other way.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ToadBrother

[eyeball]

There's an old rule that hard cases make bad law. The fishing issue, in particular, has more to do with peculiarities of the constitutional arrangement. Upending an entire democratic system because you want to catch more fish seems a rather extreme form of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This is what I mean by malevolent indifference. My community simply wanted to continue sustaining itself with the resources it is adjacent to and you dismiss this by making it sound like 20 years or more of trying to get the existing system to simply allow this is no better than a baby crying for more lolly.

I don't think your radicalized. I just think your bitter and impotent.

We're all equally impotent, some of us are just more aware of why.

[ToadBrother]

This is what I mean by malevolent indifference. My community simply wanted to continue sustaining itself with the resources it is adjacent to and you dismiss this by making it sound like 20 years or more of trying to get the existing system to simply allow this is no better than a baby crying for more lolly.

The problem here is the underlying assumption that those resources belong solely to your community. West Coast salmon, in particular, are a complex issue, involving not just Provincial-Federal dynamics, but also the United States. Remove the Feds from the equation, and I suggest to you that what you would soon find is a whole bunch of American fishermen on your doorstep, and since you so dislike Federal involvement, I'm sure the Feds would be in no hurry to correct the situation.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ToadBrother

[eyeball]

The problem here is the underlying assumption that those resources belong solely to your community.

No, the underlying assumption is that a community should be able to sustain itself with the resources its adjacent to.

[ToadBrother]

No, the underlying assumption is that a community should be able to sustain itself with the resources its adjacent to.

Like I said, those fish belong to more than the community, and there is a bigger picture to take into account. Not that I'm defending the DFO, but let's face it, it's charged with protecting a fish on the West Coast that no one even now has much idea as to its full lifecycle.

It's precisely this kind of giving in to the fishermen that saw the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ToadBrother

[g_bambino]

Why didn't this reasoning apply to the radical change the government inflicted on my community?

Why do you always judge the world against your little community?

[dre]

It is indeed. If there's one thing the truly successful political systems have taught us, it's that you want some degree of dynamism. The reason the Westminster system has been so successful is because it balances traditional constitutional roles against the necessity of change. The complaint that it is somehow static is absurd, as my oversimplified tracing of English democratic history demonstrates. More generally , representative democracies balance the necessity for a stable executive level of government against democratic forces which are forever in flux.

Certainly other combinations are possible. The Swiss system is built on a very different historical tradition, one not really shared by very many other countries out there, so I feel it is a poor example, unless one really wants to remake a country. Outside of Quebec, I don't think anyone really wants that. Even Reform at its strongest only advocating a limited devolution of powers, or more properly a better recognition of the existing constitutional jurisdictions.

I think direct democracy has its place in certain instances, and traditionally referendums have been held on questions that were viewed as "too big" for the politicians alone (ie. the Charlottetown Accord referendum), or electoral reform in BC (in 2005 and 2009). But these all had very fixed scopes, and very specific questions.

My feelings, for instance, on the HST referendum in BC are very mixed. I can well appreciate the anger at the BC Liberals over the way the tax was brought in, and more to the point on a basically fraudulent budgetary process that lead to that hole in provincial finances that needed filling. The problem is that we need taxes, and there will be occasions when we need to raise general taxes like sales/consumption taxes or income taxes. If the precedent is set that the general populace, through ill-placed sentiment, will simply override a long-standing power of our legislative branch, BC will indeed become like California, a basket case.

As much as my elected representatives often enough don't represent my views, I feel more comfortable within a representative model than within a direct model. It's not perfect, and certainly does create a political class that can become out of touch with the electorate at large. It also delivers four or five years of "elected dictatorship", though I think frankly the direct democracy advocates tend to exaggerate the issue. But that stability of the core functions of government are worth some of sub-optimal side-effects of representative democracy.

I think youre misreading things out here in BC in part. I think a lot of people understand that taxes need to be raised sometimes... Theyre challenging the HST because it helps businesses at the expense of families. I think it also made them wonder what kind of retards are running this country. The same government that brought us the HST just spend billions on reducing the GST

In the end... I think the need to protect ourselves against "government gone wild" justifies recall legislation.

And all that aside I wouldnt really consider that direct democracy anyhow... I see direct democracy as the voters making actual decisions. But all BC's recalls can do is force the government to take a second look at the legislation. The government can simply pass the same law again, or maybe an amended version that tackles some of peoples concerns. A recall means nothing unless you sway the legislators to change their votes from what they were the first time the legislation was voted on... and the act of doing that is definately representive in nature, not direct.

[ToadBrother]

I think youre misreading things out here in BC in part. I think a lot of people understand that taxes need to be raised sometimes... Theyre challenging the HST because it helps businesses at the expense of families. I think it also made them wonder what kind of retards are running this country. The same government that brought us the HST just spend billions on reducing the GST

Overall consumption taxes are better. Anybody who thinks the PST was a better tax never ran a business. I'm not trying to defend Campbell, I have stated on this board before that I'll vote against the BC Liberals, mainly for making their own Fudge-it Budget prior to the 2009 election. But the HST is a sound tax, and revoking it is a bad idea.

In the end... I think the need to protect ourselves against "government gone wild" justifies recall legislation.

And all that aside I wouldnt really consider that direct democracy anyhow... I see direct democracy as the voters making actual decisions. But all BC's recalls can do is force the government to take a second look at the legislation. The government can simply pass the same law again, or maybe an amended version that tackles some of peoples concerns. A recall means nothing unless you sway the legislators to change their votes from what they were the first time the legislation was voted on... and the act of doing that is definately representive in nature, not direct.

I'm not so sure. I think there's been a change in the mindset. The issue becomes bigger than the HST. Will future governments become gun shy when it becomes necessary to create new taxes? Governments are sometimes forced to do deeply unpopular things (look at the Coalition government in the UK with sweeping cuts, the largest Britain has seen since WWII). The whole point of a representative democracy is to create a divider between the popular will and the government, to give the government some latitude to do what may be necessary, while still ultimately allowing the populace to express their dissatisfaction.

The real irony in BC is that one of the leaders of the charge, Chris Delaney, was until recently the member of a party who had as a major plank in their platform tax harmonization with Ottawa.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ToadBrother

[eyeball]

The problem here is the underlying assumption that those resources belong solely to your community. West Coast salmon, in particular, are a complex issue, involving not just Provincial-Federal dynamics, but also the United States.

I recall when Canadian and US fishermen used to fish along side one another up and down the coast from Oregon all the way to Alaska. The 200 mile limit changed all that. What's lost on most Canadians is that a lot of BC bound fish are caught off Alaska and Canadians used to catch US bound fish off BC, mostly Vancouver Island.

Remove the Feds from the equation, and I suggest to you that what you would soon find is a whole bunch of American fishermen on your doorstep, and since you so dislike Federal involvement, I'm sure the Feds would be in no hurry to correct the situation.

Funny you should mention that but a whole bunch of Americans were already on Ottawa's doorstep. What happened is that the feds simply removed the Canadians who were fishing off BC so the US fish could swim on home and be caught there.

So now we have Americans catching BC bound fish off Alaska and American fishermen catching US fish off America, and a pitifully small handful of Canadians fishing in between, mostly on the big company owned boats that could weather the storm that radically changed our coastal economy.

In addition to these problems was the fact that so much damage had been allowed to happen to salmon habitat in BC (thank DFO/Ottawa for dropping that ball too). We argued that we should do what the Alaskan's did and are still doing which is build hatcheries to keep the fishery going while we begin restoring our salmon habitat. DFO reluctantly built one hatchery where I live that produced something like 4 million fish over a couple of years. DFO promptly shut it down when other communities up and down the coast started asking that similar hatcheries be built. The only reason I recall that DFO gave for doing so is that they thought it was too much like playing God.

Alaska is still playing God and their fishing communities are still thriving. That's probably because Alaska, not Washington DC, is in charge of their fisheries management.

[eyeball]

Why do you always judge the world against your little community?

Because little fishing communities like mine are like canaries in a coal mine. If we can't make it, it means you probably won't either. It's just a matter of time.

[ToadBrother]

Because little fishing communities like mine are like canaries in a coal mine. If we can't make it, it means you probably won't either. It's just a matter of time.

I don't buy that at all. Resource-based communities are always in severe boom-bust. The fact of the matter is that the DFO's mandate is a lot bigger than just some small town fishery. Yes, it sucks, but particularly after the collapse of the Atlantic fishery, and the threat to important salmon runs like the coho runs, the DFO became a helluva lot more conservative. It sucks for communities who are reliant on a single resource. Just ask the potato farmers in Ireland.

[ToadBrother]

So now we have Americans catching BC bound fish off Alaska and American fishermen catching US fish off America, and a pitifully small handful of Canadians fishing in between, mostly on the big company owned boats that could weather the storm that radically changed our coastal economy.

Ah yes, the old "Those salmon in your waters are really our salmon!" I recall the fight well.

At any rate, you're a good example of why single issue people are the last people on Earth I'd ask for advice on reforming any system.

Edited October 21, 2010 by ToadBrother

[jbg]

There's an old rule that hard cases make bad law. The fishing issue, in particular, has more to do with peculiarities of the constitutional arrangement. Upending an entire democratic system because you want to catch more fish seems a rather extreme form of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Had more to do with Chretien wanting to chum it up on the "international community", NL be damned.

[dre]

Overall consumption taxes are better. Anybody who thinks the PST was a better tax never ran a business. I'm not trying to defend Campbell, I have stated on this board before that I'll vote against the BC Liberals, mainly for making their own Fudge-it Budget prior to the 2009 election. But the HST is a sound tax, and revoking it is a bad idea.

I'm not so sure. I think there's been a change in the mindset. The issue becomes bigger than the HST. Will future governments become gun shy when it becomes necessary to create new taxes? Governments are sometimes forced to do deeply unpopular things (look at the Coalition government in the UK with sweeping cuts, the largest Britain has seen since WWII). The whole point of a representative democracy is to create a divider between the popular will and the government, to give the government some latitude to do what may be necessary, while still ultimately allowing the populace to express their dissatisfaction.

The real irony in BC is that one of the leaders of the charge, Chris Delaney, was until recently the member of a party who had as a major plank in their platform tax harmonization with Ottawa.

Will future governments become gun shy when it becomes necessary to create new taxes?

Why would they? All a recall can do is force them to table the bill again. If they have the votes, they have the votes.

Iv run a few businesses and never had much problem with the PST.

[ToadBrother]

Why would they? All a recall can do is force them to table the bill again. If they have the votes, they have the votes.

It would be tantamount to political suicide for a Government to ignore or otherwise try to thwart such an initiative. The theoretical ability to reject it should not be confused with the reality that if enough people sign an initiative to get it to the next stage, it's politically impossible to just ignore.

Iv run a few businesses and never had much problem with the PST.

Then you've never had a PST audit. I used to do books for a living, and participated in three. The rules were extremely labyrinthine. Consumption taxes are much preferable.

[g_bambino]

Because little fishing communities like mine are like canaries in a coal mine. If we can't make it, it means you probably won't either. It's just a matter of time.

So, you really believe that the entire country must create and implement an entirely new system of government just to benefit your fishing community? Do you have a proper sense of scale?

[dre]

It would be tantamount to political suicide for a Government to ignore or otherwise try to thwart such an initiative. The theoretical ability to reject it should not be confused with the reality that if enough people sign an initiative to get it to the next stage, it's politically impossible to just ignore.

Well yeah... no duh. Of COURSE its politically dangerous to do unpopular things. Thats the case whether we have recall legislation or not. As for it being politically possible to ignore it, Im not so sure.

Problem is you see the risk being that the taxpayers might not support important measures at times. I agree but the OTHER risk (unaccountable government gone wild) is a million times worse.

Any any case... BC's recall legislation by definition is certainly not direct democracy.

[ToadBrother]

Well yeah... no duh. Of COURSE its politically dangerous to do unpopular things. Thats the case whether we have recall legislation or not. As for it being politically possible to ignore it, Im not so sure.

Look at the outcry when there was the merest suggestion from a backbencher. If enough people sign the initiative to get it through the 10% hoop in all the ridings, ignoring it would be like ignoring a freight train coming at you.

Problem is you see the risk being that the taxpayers might not support important measures at times. I agree but the OTHER risk (unaccountable government gone wild) is a million times worse.

I still don't see how the HST was "government gone wild". It was, of course, made necessary by the real sin, which was the 2009 fudge-it budget.

Any any case... BC's recall legislation by definition is certainly not direct democracy.

The recall legislation, no... But the citizen's initiative legislation comes as close as anybody in Canada has seen.

[The_Squid]

Alaskan's did and are still doing which is build hatcheries to keep the fishery going while we begin restoring our salmon habitat. DFO reluctantly built one hatchery where I live that produced something like 4 million fish over a couple of years. DFO promptly shut it down when other communities up and down the coast started asking that similar hatcheries be built. The only reason I recall that DFO gave for doing so is that they thought it was too much like playing God.

Hatcheries are not a good thing for wild fish....

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Overcrowded+oceans+threaten+wild+salmon+researchers/3624345/story.html

A link to the actual paper:

http://afsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1577/C09-054.1

Because little fishing communities like mine are like canaries in a coal mine. If we can't make it, it means you probably won't either. It's just a matter of time.

Like someone else said, communities that rely on resource extraction are often boom/bust...

As I pointed out earlier, nearly 2$ billion worth of fish just swam right past the front doors of all but a few of these communities and they were excluded from catching even a single penny's worth. I am not exaggerating.

I don't quite get what you are advocating... you think communities should have quotas of fish?

Edited October 21, 2010 by The_Squid