Is It Time For a Canadian Magna Carta?

After reading about Karzai's latest power grab in Afghanistan, I find my attentions turning back to Canada's parliamentary democracy and find myself musing about the concentration of power in the PMO, and the way that Stephen Harper has abused his access to these powers.

I find it intriguing that Nanos has just released a poll looking precisely at the perceived distribution of power in various aspects of our government. The Nanos poll shows 41% of Canadians think that the PMO has too much power, and 40% think it's "just right", which is for all intents and purposes a statistical tie.

However, in light of a Prime Minister whose record for acting capriciously has been astonishing to many, and rumblings from all corners of the political spectrum about the growing concentration of power in the PMO, perhaps it is time to consider restraining the powers of the PMO in law.

The original purpose of the Magna Carta was to constrain the powers of a monarchy that often acted in its own self interest rather than that of the people the monarchy was ostensibly governing. While Harper is certainly not the first Canadian Prime Minister to manipulate the levers of power purely in his own self interest, he is certainly the first to act in a manner that is arguably seriously damaging to the principles and purposes of our parliamentary system.

I'm not talking about just 'fixed election date' laws (and we all know how effective Harper's attempt at that really was, don't we?), but a comprehensive re-evaluation of the powers vested and concentrated in the PMO. It's time to place some constraints on the office itself, and in doing so, force the PMO to delegate actual authority outside of itself.

- Things like the ability to request the dissolution of parliament must be done with the consent of the House of Commons, except at the end of the parliament's five year maximum life.

- Appointments to various arms of government must be subject to review outside of the PMO decision making process

- Greater independence for the ministers of the crown. Under Harper, the cabinet hasn't dared say anything without it being vetted in advance by the PMO. It is my belief that this has dramatically weakened the effectiveness of the government by restraining all of our leadership to the abilities of the PMO.

- Discretionary powers of the PMO must be enumerated and reviewed. Where appropriate, legislative constraints limiting the exercise of those powers should be imposed.

- A similar exercise should be undertaken with respect to the office of the Governor General.

In short, we have a PM who is running amok with the powers vested in him. In doing so, Harper has shown us that the same problems that led to the Magna Carta being necessary are now present in our PMO. It is time to codify the powers and responsibilities of the PMO - and the PM - and constrain the office itself.

More Stephen The Refoooormer

Shorter Stephen Harper:

Reform is a great thing ... as long as I continue to have the perogative to ignore the changes I advocated for

You have to love it - Harper and his party fought and screamed and stamped their feet to get the process for filling Supreme Court vacancies made "more democratic". But, while he has parliament prorogued, Harper decides to circumvent the very process that his party was instrumental in creating.

By the time Canada gets rid of this turd of a Prime Minister, his name will be a synonym for 'hypocrite'.

Steve Stacks The Senate

So, Harper has appointed 18 senators.

Mr. Harper has always believed senators should be elected and he refrained from filling most vacancies while trying to make the upper chamber more democratic. Those efforts ran into roadblocks erected in Parliament and by Ontario and Quebec.

Oh yes, Mr. Harper's half-baked attempt at Senate reform - formally call Bill C-43, and was one of the most ridiculous bills tabled by the HarperCon$ in 2006. It did not deserve to pass - any more than Harper's equally ridiculous (and now irrelevant) "fixed election dates" law. (which he saw fit to ignore this past fall)

“We've invited the provinces to hold elections. We've put an electoral bill before the House of Commons. But for the most part, neither in Parliament nor in the provinces has there been any willingness to move forward on reform.”

Wow, can you hear the tone of petulant whining in this quote? My goodness, Mr. Harper, you must really be missing the point. Nobody buys that your "reforms" are meaningful.

What really irritates me about these appointments comes in two forms:

1. Mr. Harper is making these appointments during a prorogue of Parliament that he triggered to avoid a confidence vote that he would likely have lost. As far as I'm concerned, along with a bunch of other patronage appointments made during this period of parliamentary limbo are simply a demonstration of how Harper abuses his position.

2. As The Toronto Star points out, Harper has tried to attach strings to these senatorial appointments:

According to Harper’s office, today’s appointees have all promised to support his plans for Senate reform, including eight-year term limits. But they are not bound to run for election themselves.

So - in short what Harper has done is bought his votes in the Senate, by insisting that they vote for whatever brain damaged legislation he puts forth.

Mr. Harper neither understands nor appreciates the function of the Senate in Canada as a check and balance to the often fractious House of Commons. He apparently believes that Senators are subject to the same kind of arm twisting and thuggery that he routinely applies in the House of Commons caucus.

[Update 23/12/08]
Comments on this article are closed before they degenerate any further.
[/Update]

So Much For Harper's "Principles"

For a man who has been on a tirade about senate reform for years, it's amazing to me how quickly Harper lowers himself to tradition when he's suddenly under pressure.

Of course, in typical HarperCon fashion, it's all the opposition's fault:

The Tories want to avoid the possibility that the 105-member Senate gets filled with members opposed to Senate reform -- or with separatist leanings.

"The Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition has indicated it plans to fill the Senate with coalition members and this includes the prospect of appointing senators who do not believe in Canadian unity," the official said.

I see ... so Harper's round of appointing senators (none of whom will have been elected - in spite of his previous arguments that they should be voted on by the citizens) is really all out of fear of the "Evil Coalition"™ - uh huh. I'll put better odds on Harper is simply being dishonest with Canadians, and continuing to play his petty partisan games, all rooted in his ideology.

Just as his repeated suspensions of parliament are anti-democratic, so is his approach to Senate Reform - which appears now to be just empty words.

Inconsistent or Just Dishonest - You Pick

I see Dear Leader has decided to bypass his own process for putting judges on the bench of the Supreme Court of Canada:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has nominated Nova Scotia judge Thomas Cromwell to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada.

The move – which bypasses an all-party selection committee just two days ahead of an election call – will fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Justice Michel Bastarache.

Judge Cromwell currently sits on the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.

Mr. Harper said Judge Cromwell's candidacy was “highly recommended by judges, lawyers and other Atlantic Canadians.”

The announcement suspends the work of Parliament's Supreme Court selection panel, which has been working on a short list of recommended candidates.

Uh huh - so Big Daddy thinks that it's just fine to suspend process and reforms that he claimed were so vital to his government's agenda - just as long as it fits his immediate political agenda.

In related news, David Emerson is going to 'co-Chair' the Conservative election campaign.

Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson may be leaving parliament, but he will remain a key backroom figure in the Conservatives' re-election campaign.

So ... Mr. Harper is going to take campaign advice from Mr. Emerson. I have to wonder if this is a case of 'honor amongst thieves' taking place...

It's All The Feminist's Fault!

Or, at least so Anthony Esolen believes.

I'm not going to dissect Esolen's argument piece by piece here - that's just too much like sandblasting a soda cracker at the moment and doesn't reach the topic that Esolen's brushed up against.

Long time readers will have long ago figured out that I don't exactly "follow" anybody's particular religion. The simple fact is that I have yet to find a religion that isn't more about furthering the personal power and objectives of its clergy than the congregants.

Esolen's entire argument (which is amazingly sloppy, actually) boils down to the notion that because his Bible happens to reflect a civilization where a patriarchy is dominant, that somehow all of society's ills today are related to feminism and the gains that it has made.

Now, that's a pretty silly argument if you look at it rationally, but consider the roots from which Esolen is arguing - a set of scriptures that are (depending on the particular book) between 2,000 and 4,000 years old. Two thousand years ago, men were the natural leaders of the world by what right? No more than brute force. By sheer force of muscle, men ruled the world - treating women as property and children even worse.

The social roots of any faith are very interesting, but they also speak to the time in which that faith emerged. However, as a given faith matures, it moves from being quite dynamic and adaptive (the early Christian church is an excellent case study - as it adopted "new" traditions to replace the various pagan traditions it encountered while it spread through the known world.

However, as a faith matures, it also becomes codified. Things are written down, common practices become "law" within the community. Uniformity becomes valued quite highly, and strong hierarchies emerge within the leadership. (This is especially true of Christianity, which emerged to replace the amazingly structured and legalistic religion of the Roman Empire.)

However, with codification seems to come a calcification of thought as well. The need to adapt to the world one finds is replaced by the need for the world to adapt to you instead. After a while, the roots of various beliefs and proscriptions are lost in time, and simply become "the way it is" (or should be), and literalists begin to emerge, claiming "inerrancy of scripture" and other semantic tools to justify their positions.

The longer that a religion has been codified, the more inflexible it becomes, until it reaches a point of brittleness where it fractures into multiple sects. Such is the place that Esolen finds his faith today. He looks about the world in which he lives and complains loudly that feminism is the cause for all the disruption he sees socially, without acknowledging that in the intervening millenia from when the scripture he worships from was written, that society has changed dramatically - new knowledge has emerged, people have questioned and rejected large tracts of "scriptural truth".

As if to reinforce my point earlier that religion is more about power and control than anything else, we find Esolen closing his argument with the following whinge:

And we men, who should be the heads of our families, what do we do about it? We help the folly along, just to keep the peace, as if a great spiritual harridan had invaded the nation, one that must be appeased at all costs. We are the chumps. And women -- conservative, leftist, traditional, feminist, young and old -- despise us for it. As they should, eh?

I think, Prof. Esolen, that it is time to get your head out of the idealized world of the past you inhabit, and start asking yourself how your faith can be relevant in today's world. There is a reality today that didn't exist 2,000 years ago - or even as recently as when the King James bible was created. Your claims that "men are the natural heads of households", and other essentially anti-feminist ravings, are based a world that no longer exists. ( and arguably hasn't existed since sometime in the 19th century - although it has taken much of the 20th century to even begin the process of breaking down the clinging grasp of past power structures ) Rigidity of belief merely ensures that the faith will eventually shatter.

A Departure From The Usual Rantings

[Update 10/3/07]
From the Globe and Mail, we have a column by the Bishop reflecting his views. Well written, and interesting.
[/Update]
This one should get the wingnuts going. It seems that Right Rev. Michael Ingham wants Christianity to develop a "better theology of sexuality". In recent years, it has seemed to me that most of the time when a religious leader has opened their mouths to rant about sexuality, they have clung to an amazingly narrow view of things - opposing everything from homosexuality to birth control.

"Christianity as a religion stands in need of a better theology of sexuality," he said, "a better understanding of the complex role sexuality plays in our human nature and of the purposes of God in creating us as sexual beings."

He said the church has misunderstood references to homosexuality in the Bible, wasted energy in persecuting individuals who have argued for a new understanding of sexuality, and failed to comprehend how much the Bible and church doctrines have been shaped through the lens of male experience.

While this won't cause me to run off and join an Anglican congregation, it's a refreshing change from the increasingly irrational rantings of Bishop Fred Henry, or other "leaders" like Charles McVety - whose vitriol is deeply disappointing to encounter.

Like John Shelby Spong, this is another man who has looked into current Christian Theology and found it wanting. Perhaps they are voices doomed to be drowned out by demands for "absolutes" from conservative theologians, and congregations filled by people uncomfortable with "shades of grey".