September 12, 2024
LaSalle–Émard–Verdun September 16 Federal By-Election
Political Elite’s Fear of Change
• Political Elite’s Fear of Change
• Persistent Demands to Democratize the Electoral Process
• Another Genius Expresses Disdain for Longest Ballot Project
• Vitriol of Former Chief Electoral Officer
• Proposals to Amend Electoral Law to Make Longest Ballot Project Illegal
LaSalle–Émard–Verdun September 16 Federal By-Election
Political Elite’s Fear of Change
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It is not surprising that those who champion the electoral system no matter how much it disempowers the people are not happy with the Longest Ballot Project and the participation of so many candidates in the LaSalle–Émard–Verdun (LEV) federal by-election which will be held on September 16. In this by-election, to accommodate the names of the 91 candidates presenting themselves for election, the ballot will be nearly one metre long (30.5 x 96.5cm).
This seems to have infuriated some of the defenders of the status quo who have spoken out against it. There are not a few attempts to turn electors against the Project by declaring that the time to cast votes and to count the ballots will be much longer, greatly inconveniencing electors, Elections Canada workers and so on. While they cannot come up with any arguments to defend their interference in the election – arguably a blatant use of their positions of privilege and power to influence the outcome – they call the Longest Ballot Project disruptive, frivolous, a nuisance, infantile and other such names and demand that methods be found to stop it.
While they enjoy enough power and money, much of it provided by the state, to come up with new ways to suppress attempts by Canadians to play a role in the political process in a manner which favours them, these attempts are sure to backfire. Eventually, the efforts of the citizens of this country to democratize the electoral process will prevail because it is so blatantly anti-democratic!
Let’s see what the LEV by-election reveals this time about the first-past-the-post method of counting votes. The MLPC itself has a serious program to democratize the electoral process and is presenting Norman Chouinard as its candidate in this by-election to enlist the citizens of LEV to join this important work. The MLPC is also carrying out work to support various other Longest Ballot candidates to make their presence known, as well as other independent candidates and “third parties” raising specific concerns.
As it stands, the Longest Ballot Project is gathering more and more adherents and becoming an ever better organized force.
Persistent Demands to Democratize the Electoral Process
There are 91 candidates registered for the federal by-election in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun (LEV) on September 16. Of these 91 candidates, 79 are part of the Longest Ballot Project. This means that 87 per cent of the candidates are running under the same banner to express their opposition to the first-past-the-post method of counting votes and to give citizens a chance to join in.
Over the years, Canadians have demanded a new electoral law which empowers them, not cartel parties which usurp positions of power and privilege by means of an electoral law designed to keep the people out of power. For years those in positions of power and privilege have ignored the demands of Canadians to play a direct role in government. They have even amended the electoral law time and time again to protect and strengthen their privileges and marginalize the citizens and those who try to intervene in elections by running as candidates or participating under the category called “third parties.”
No matter what measures the elites take, across the country, people from different walks of life and political persuasions continue to oppose the first-past-the-post method of counting votes. They do so because the self-serving party governments this method of counting votes creates do not in fact wield the mandates they claim. Whatever “majority” of votes they manage to cobble together, they fall far short of the majority of eligible voters. Attempts by elites to try to sweep the lack of representativity under the rug are to no avail.
The Longest Ballot Project deserves congratulations for giving citizens the chance to speak out against this fraudulent method of claiming majorities which represent the people. Citizens are coming forward as candidates, directly expressing their opposition to the unrepresentative voting system and presenting the electors in an electoral district with the opportunity to do the same.
The more it goes, the deep crisis in which the democratic institutions in this country are mired reveals the need for the working class and people to take things in their own hands. The U.S. presidential election also shows how dysfunctional the U.S. democracy has become.
Pompous La Presse Editorial
The Montreal newspaper La Presse ran an editorial August 3 which expressed its obvious disdain for the Longest Ballot Project presenting 79 of the 91 candidates in the current LaSalle–Émard–Verdun (LEV) federal by-election to be held on September 16. Other than huffing and puffing in a manner which in no way illustrated its headline, “Nuisance Candidates Don’t Care About Our Elections,” the editorial revealed a great deal about the very undemocratic nature of the electoral system designed to keep the people out of power.
La Presse said it finds it “quite paradoxical that a group that wants to make the electoral system more democratic should use a method that undermines the exercise of democracy to achieve its ends.” Except to say that so many candidates are very bothersome, it fails to show how the Longest Ballot Project undermines the exercise of democracy. Its aim is revealed when it adds: “But what’s more serious is that polluting ballots with a host of bogus candidates sows confusion among voters, who find it harder to make their choice. […] At a time when our democracy is threatened by foreign interference, the electoral process is no joke.”
The La Presse editorial is problematic in various ways. One problem is the false idea it repeats that elections offer citizens a “choice” of candidates. If the choice is too big, citizens will get confused, it says. In typical elitist arrogant style, the La Presse editor who wrote this piece dismisses what the citizens actually think and their capacity to see through the bogus electoral system. The editor should do some mass work alongside Longest Ballot candidates to get an earful of what the people have to say about the cartel parties, cartel party candidates and cartel party governments! The editor dares to say the citizens are “confused” with so many candidates because it is not in the interest of whomsoever the editorial board serves to listen to them and what they have to say.
But most revealing of all is the arrogance of the pompous presumption of the elites who justify their electoral law by erecting themselves as the righteous protectors of the citizenry against allegedly frivolous attempts to confuse them by nuisance candidates. In the mass work to get the nominations of the citizens of LEV for the 79 Longest Ballot candidates, everyone was eager to sign. All of them were very vocal about what they thought about the electoral system. Many gave detailed accounts of what it means to them when the only role they are given in the choice of government is to cast a ballot for a cartel party candidate with enough power, privilege and money to market themselves and be picked up by the monopoly media and polls who declare they espouse the issues electors feel are important.
Citizens in LEV guffaw at the pompous idea that voters are confused or that the role of the monopoly media is to protect vulnerable voters!!! As if this isn’t risible enough, they find the idea absurd that they need protection from those ordinary citizens with the courage and boldness to present a project that calls on voters to cast their ballot against the first-past-the-post method of counting votes. To the chagrin of La Presse, the project is innovative and has given people in the riding a meaningful way to participate in bringing about necessary change, as they have always done when an opportunity presents itself. And this is just the beginning, all over again!
At this point, as the citizens get organized to make the democratic renewal of the electoral process a reality, the crisis in which the current electoral system is mired goes a long way to further discredit itself and to persuade citizens to take action to make sure it bites the dust once and for all.
With horrendous displays of power and privilege, elites are presented for election who are seen to be self-serving and even liars, cheats, sell-outs and more. As the citizens and residents who are not part of the electoral machines of the cartel parties say – these are the nuisance candidates, not those who champion democratic renewal.
Another Genius Expresses Disdain for
Longest Ballot Project
Following the August 3 editorial published by La Presse expressing its utter disdain for the Longest Ballot Project in the LaSalle–Émard–Verdun (LEV) federal by-election to be held on September 16, another genius to come forward to express his frustration with the fact that there are 91 candidates on the ballot was Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois. The youth of Quebec can’t believe Blanchet’s love for the liberal institutions imposed on Quebec by the British Imperial Government in 1840. That is when it imposed these institutions and its system of elections designed to concentrate power in a ruling class of property holders through the nefarious Act of Union. Besides other things, the intention was to extinguish the sovereignty of the Quebec people once and for all.
Given that this party claims to represent Quebec’s interests what would make its leader defend a system of elections and counting votes inherited from the British empire-builders to keep the people out of power? How foolish is that! The British declared the Act of Union in 1840 to impose the system they call responsible government on their dominions in British North America. This was after they suppressed through the use of force the attempt to form the Republic of Quebec in 1837-38 and the Two-Star Republic the patriots in Upper Canada fought for during the same period. The elites representing the oligarchic power of the British Empire in those days took half of Quebec’s territory – known in those days as Lower Canada – and gave it to Ontario – in those days called Upper Canada. It forced half of Ontario’s debt on Quebec. The British formed the first Parliament of Canada whose two factions were so evenly divided, it could not function. This then gave rise to the idea of confederating Canada’s four British dominions which led to the imposition of the British North America Act in 1867 which has kept Quebec in thrall ever since.
What is Blanchet thinking? Logically, one would expect that the leader of the Bloc Québécois, created to defend Quebec’s interests, would espouse a conception of nation-building which vests sovereignty in the people, not a state controlled by a ruling class based on a system of rule called King-in-Parliament. Whether or not he wants to swear allegiance to this foreign monarch who is declared to be Canada’s Head of State, it is precisely the electoral system he is upholding which deprives the people of their right to govern themselves. He is the last person one would expect to defend Canadian institutions which are the main block to the aspirations of those who stand for the interests and sovereignty of the Quebec working class and people.
Nonetheless, Blanchet attacked the Longest Ballot Project as follows: “When activism replaces institutions, when activism replaces science, when activism replaces justice […] this is a major trend in our society.”
Given that he poses as a defender of institutions, science and justice, what does he himself have to say about the crisis in which all three are mired due, presumably, to “activism”? Nothing. He is reduced to describing some evidence of the crisis in which the electoral system in mired, following which it is not the institutions and who they serve he questions, but “activism.” He says:
“There are politicians who have exploited contempt for political commitment for the purposes of their own re-election or to drag opponents into their own turpitude when their popularity has collapsed. Some media players also play the card of contempt for politicians, perhaps to enhance their own reach, their own prestige, and today, political parties systematically take up ‘dirty politics’ by disregarding the truth in order to deploy smear campaigns and influence the most vulnerable voters. I hope we don’t have to lose democracy to realize how precious it is. …”
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So there you have it. He too is a protector of “the most vulnerable voters.” The lives of these “voters” – as citizens of the country are labelled – are not in trouble because they are at the receiving end of the most brutal neo-liberal anti-social offensive the country has ever seen. They are presumably not in trouble because the institutions called democratic have shown themselves to be corrupt, rule by decree and run roughshod over the claims of the people on every front of endeavor. No, “voters” are vulnerable because activists demand that these institutions account for themselves. “Voters” are vulnerable because of their demands that the state and its institutions put the needs of the people in first place, not those of the rich who are making fortunes in the name of the high ideals they quote when they destroy the social and natural environment.
Blanchet has certainly won no friends with these silly pseudo-intellectual comments. To sneer at the efforts of hundreds and thousands of people in Quebec and Canada doing their utmost to defend the cause of social justice, the path of peace, freedom and democracy in the world, the rights of all and the social and natural environment is a hopeless political choice if ever there was one.
Vitriol of Former Chief Electoral Officer
Another frustrated servant of the Canadian state has emerged with the performance on Quebec radio of the former Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley who lambasted the Longest Ballot Project with great gusto. According to his vitriol, “What’s most regrettable about this initiative is that we’re ultimately making voters pay. It creates, I would say, extreme confusion. On top of that, it makes the ballot very difficult to handle with the election officer. The election workers, in the polling stations, are obliged to dissect all this afterwards.”
Again, as in the case of others, Mr. Kingsley has risen to defend Canada’s democratic institutions which are clearly mired in a profound existential crisis. If he is to use his prestige as Canada’s former Chief Electoral Officer, perhaps an argument can be made that he should know better than to advocate the case of those with privilege and power who bury their heads in the sand. These forces cannot bring themselves to jeopardize their positions of privilege and power by acknowledging Canada’s democracy faces a profound existential crisis.
Why not inform Canadians that, indeed, the issues raised by the Longest Ballot Project about the lack of representativity and representation as a result of the first-past-the-post method of counting votes and who controls the political power in Canada has been on the agenda of the Canadian polity since at least the 1988 federal election when a majority of electors voted for candidates that said they were against NAFTA, but the Mulroney Progressive Conservatives declared that they had a “mandate” to implement the trade agreement with the U.S. anyway.
Right after that election, the Lortie Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing was established and said in its 1992 report, “… many Canadians made it clear at the Commission’s public hearings that in evaluating the processes of our electoral democracy they have found it lacking in several crucial respects. These Canadians are demanding that electoral reform not merely tinker with the electoral law; they are demanding that electoral reform focus on the broader and central purposes of electoral democracy.”
Kingsley could explain that since then, one amendment to the Canada Elections Act after the other has merely served to further disempower the people.
One would not be wrong to think that Parliament’s former custodian of what are called free and fair elections would be worried that they are neither free nor fair. In fact, during his tenure from 1990 to 2007, on several occasions, he expressed his concern that even though Canada’s democracy was extolled as the freest and fairest of them all, this was indeed not the case. In his recommendations to Parliament after the November 2007 election, he called for the free broadcasting time that is allocated on a preferential basis to the parties in the House of Commons to be divided equally among all registered parties. He referenced the Lortie Commission’s Report which stated that “fairness in electoral competition requires that the contenders be given reasonable access to those media channels that are likely to be most effective in carrying their arguments to voters.” “Equally,” he wrote in his recommendation, “the public has a right to be informed in a ‘fair and objective way.'”
Chief Electoral Officers that followed Kingsley made the same proposals, only to be rejected by the cartel of parties in the House. After his retirement, when Justin Trudeau refused to make good on his promise to end the first-past-the-post method of counting votes, Kinglsey told CBC: “A goodly number of Canadians have said 39.5 per cent of the votes gives you 54 per cent of the seats … A lot of people are starting to feel this is not jelling. There’s something happening that is not OK.”
What has changed? Perhaps Mr Kinglsey can tell us what changes have occurred to make the Longest Ballot Project something Canadians should condemn.
The long history of Canadians demanding the democratization of the electoral process in Canada has seen Royal Commissions, Parliamentary Committees, independent studies and polls time and time again recording the low esteem in which the people of this country hold governments, the cartel parties, politicians of these cartel parties and institutions such as the House of Commons as well as the Senate. It is also the case that the results of one election after the other show the truth of the matter based on governments formed with small percentages of the votes cast and claiming mandates to govern.
Finally, the rejection on the part of the people of the pay-the-rich schemes and measures governments are taking to criminalize dissent has by no means diminished today when the revolving door between the CEOs and officers of the most self-serving private interests and cabinet ministers and point persons of the state exchange places as fast as they change suits. So too, what the entire world is witnessing take place in the presidential electoral campaign in the United States to whom Canada is beholden lock, stock and barrel, is hardly an endorsement of the crisis-ridden democratic institutions.
But no, this former chief electoral officer proposes more targeted changes, such as forcing candidates to submit 100 signatures from voters who have not already endorsed another candidate, and not allowing official agents to represent more than one candidate. Such an amendment to the electoral law would not be surprising given all the others which have been designed to protect the cartel parties and their positions of privilege and power.
Yet another proposal is for the electoral law to once again require a $1,000 deposit from candidates, as was previously the case but was thrown out when the courts found it unconstitutional. “What they’re doing right now is legal. But it’s not legitimate,” Mr. Kingsley said in an interview with La Presse in June. He echoed Elections Canada’s report following the 2022 by-election in Mississauga-Lakeshore, where candidates also ran with the Longest Ballot Project. It noted the “level of coordination among some candidates in the by-election.” The report said this “raise[d] questions as to whether candidates were truly seeking elected office on their own terms.”
Sowing doubt in the integrity of those who try to bring about necessary change is cowardly, but not new. How dare Canadians organize rather than just do their duty and vote once every four or five years! The fact is the people are quite capable of finding new creative ways to win the right to speak in their own names and will continue to do so.
The real problem is that the electoral system is not representative of what Canadians want. It was designed from the get go to keep them out of power by casting a ballot which authorizes someone they do not know and over whom they exercise no control to make decisions on their behalf. This is not even only those who are called Members of Parliament. Their parties are also merely there to present the veneer of a democracy comprised of a party-in-power and a party or parties-in-opposition which together are said to represent the entire polity. Meanwhile, it has become the norm for the abstentionists to make up a similar percentage of the electorate to the percentage who vote for any one of these parties and they do not even count!
Canada’s Clever Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and
Intergovernmental Affairs Comes Up to Bat
Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, quoted in Le Devoir on August 28, said he is open to amending the Elections Act to “limit the number of frivolous candidacies that disrupt the vote, but only if recommended by Elections Canada.”
Way to escape responsibility Mr. LeBlanc! Everyone knows that the role of Elections Canada is to conduct elections and make sure they are what is called free and fair as defined by the Elections Act which is, not surprisingly, neither free nor fair. But leaving that aside for the moment, the fact is that Elections Canada’s role is not supposed to be what is called political. Political decisions are understood to be the domain of the House of Commons, not the agency of the state assigned to conduct an election once called by the Prime Minister according to their prerogative powers. But, with the full backing of the intelligence agencies, Elections Canada is being pushed more and more to the brink to take on a political role. This will only further bog down the electoral process and push it to reach a point of no return.
It is all done in the name of national security, defending the democracy against foreign interference and now, apparently, in the name of defending its integrity against frivolous, nuisance candidates.
Elections Canada is due to publish its full report on this summer’s by-elections next year and Canadians will see for themselves what arguments it manages to give for what. What they can expect is that like anything else taking place across the board, anyone who cannot provide the arguments the state is looking for will not be asked for their opinions!
One wonders what kind of democracy these media, politicians and senior civil servants are defending when they attack and scorn citizens in Canada and Quebec who are asserting their right to stand for election. All these statements and accusations against the Longest Ballot Project and all those who refuse to accept the status quo are aimed at ensuring that the fundamental question of the crisis of liberal democracy itself is not addressed. This only strengthens the conviction of democratic Canadians and Quebeckers that their attempts to speak out are justified.
The electoral system’s crisis of credibility and legitimacy will not be alleviated by attacking those who seek to put an end to its defense of privilege and power. It is by giving a voice to the people and keeping the initiative in their hands that people are empowering themselves.
Proposals to Amend Electoral Law to Make
Longest Ballot Project Illegal
Casting doubt on the intentions of the Longest Ballot Project’s candidates is a refusal to recognize the people’s longstanding demand that the first-past-the-post method of counting votes be ended. Those who do so do not even want to address why so many Canadians are collecting signatures in support of Longest Ballot candidates to encourage public discussion on the need to democratize the electoral system.
The experience of the MLPC is that candidates fighting for a cause the people espouse as their own have no problem getting 100 nomination signatures. People flock to them to give their own views on the need to get rid of an electoral system which dismisses them with such contempt. But the cartel parties complain it is very difficult to get signatures – probably because so many doors are slammed in their faces! They are frustrated and even outraged that the Longest Ballot Project in the La Salle-Émard-Verdun (LEV) federal by-election managed to get some 13,000 signatures in two days. They are proposing to amend the electoral law to reduce the number of nomination signatures required to 75, down from 100. One party even calls this a victory for democracy!
The fact is that much money will now be spent to pay consultants to advise the powers that be how to make this Longest Ballot Project illegal. The moribund democratic institutions are spawning specialists who come up with new laws and changes which criminalize speech and association and argue why the police powers must be put in charge of monitoring those they consider are putting their undemocratic system at risk, as if its own performance is not doing a good job of this all on its own.
Canadians can expect, amongst other things, more self-serving amendments to the electoral act in the name of enhancing the democracy! All-candidates meetings and debates are already things of the past – but then who wants to be held hostage to the clown act of a Kamala Harris or Donald Trump and the same from their doppelgangers in this country? The monopoly owned media certainly have no interest in providing information about candidates who speak in their own name and what they stand for. Clearly, in the minds of the ruling elite, going to the people interferes with their own entitlements in some way or another!
It is up to Canadians and Quebeckers to tackle the problem of a party system of governance that blocks them from having a say in the affairs that affect their lives. Today, to keep power in the hands of the cartel party governments controlled by supranational narrow private interests is dangerous indeed.
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