NWT Elections

[Higgly]

The NWT is having an election. There are 19 ridings and 19 seats up for election. There are no political parties. At the assembly, all 19 reps sit in a circle and elect a speaker. They also decide who the premier should be.

Is this a better system than the system we have in the rest of the country with political parties? I think it's worth thinking about. What do you think?

[BornAlbertan]

The NWT is having an election. There are 19 ridings and 19 seats up for election. There are no political parties. At the assembly, all 19 reps sit in a circle and elect a speaker. They also decide who the premier should be.

Is this a better system than the system we have in the rest of the country with political parties? I think it's worth thinking about. What do you think?

The dynamics are significantly different. With only 19 people representing less than 2,300 each on average...no...it couldn't work. 19 is like a cocktail party...not a political party.

When you have as many representatives as the provinces do, you need parties in order to determine policy. A common ground in which the majority of representatives under that banner are willing to agree upon or compromise under that common political flag.

[shavluk]

No it just starts this way.

Look at civic politics , even there parties are taking over.

Its natural for us to gang up, stack the deck , cheat in anyway we can under the guise of stretching the laws.

Its the natural progression of the system we use.

Rules and then the guts to actually use them with out corrupting the process has always been the stinker hasn't it.

For example if all parties were baned and each mp was responsible for only his own constituents , how would they decide major capital investments in the country and where they would go?

The who is who is who decides.

Its natural and the NWT will have parties as that's just how the evolution works within our rules , just need a little more greed to set in and wallah party politics!

[jennie]

The NWT is having an election. There are 19 ridings and 19 seats up for election. There are no political parties. At the assembly, all 19 reps sit in a circle and elect a speaker. They also decide who the premier should be.

Is this a better system than the system we have in the rest of the country with political parties? I think it's worth thinking about. What do you think?

Is this a traditional Indigenous participatory democracy by consensus model, higgly?

If so, it will be very interesting to watch how it works.

[geoffrey]

Is this a traditional Indigenous participatory democracy by consensus model, higgly?

It probably helps when there is only a few thousand people living in a remote isolated environment where most are indigenous, crazy or both.

Can't work in modern society.

[kengs333]

Is this a traditional Indigenous participatory democracy by consensus model, higgly?

If so, it will be very interesting to watch how it works.

It's supposed to be a blend between parlaimentary democracy and "traditional" consensus decision making, but during the five minutes that I watched the election, there was a piece about how it doesn't really work and that party politics will likely become the norm. So I guess what we have here is an example of how all this talk about how things were done way back when is overly idealized and ignores the fact that there was always one factor involved that always mucks up ideal forms of governance: human behaviour.

[fellowtraveller]

Is this a traditional Indigenous participatory democracy by consensus model, higgly?

If so, it will be very interesting to watch how it works.

No, it's a typical first past the post system, without party politics. It is not as romantic as you would hope.

With about 43,000 population the NWT has four distinct levels of government and an absolutely absurd number of civil servants. Government is easily the #1 industry, with govts at the federal, territorial, civil levels and a burgeoning network of Forst Nations governments. It's a growth industry, and almost everything is funded ultimately by Canadian taxpayers.