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32nd
Anniversary of Royal Commission on
Significance of CPC(M-L)'s Brief to Lortie CommissionFollowing the 1988 federal election and the circumstances surrounding it, the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing (the Lortie Commission) was created on November 15, 1989. The period during which the Lortie Commission carried out its work coincided with that of upheaval in the former Soviet Union and countries in eastern Europe which subsequently led to their collapse. The introduction to the Lortie Commission's report, titled Reforming Electoral Democracy, pointed to this:
The Lortie Commission was also established in response to challenges brought to the electoral law under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The introduction to the Lortie Commission's report explained: "This new focus on the ethical dimensions of political culture and practice has a particular salience in the Canadian context. The Charter gave rise to new expectations about the legitimate claims of citizens. It also transformed the basic structures of governance. Citizens no longer have to rely on parliamentarians or political parties to have their claims included on the decision-making agenda. Citizens can now pursue their constitutional claims through the courts. "These changes are not merely hypothetical. On several critical issues related to electoral democracy, Charter challenges have resulted in court decisions that have altered the basic electoral law. Citizens have also used the ethical principles implied by the Charter to evaluate many election-related practices, especially by political parties, and they have found these practices wanting. As these evaluations make clear, practical reforms must proceed from ethical principles; ethics is not merely a concern of democratic theory."[2] What the Commission did not say is that every electoral law commission and/or other review body that has been created in Canada since elections were first held, has been prompted by one of two things: 1) scandals and improprieties which discredited the electoral process and brought it into disrepute in the eyes of the people, and/or 2) the desperation of the political parties in the House of Commons, in particular the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP, for money. They passed electoral changes using the state treasury and their control of the legislature to extend their positions of power and privilege which, in the end, created the cartel party system of government. To date, there has been no review which was initiated from the standpoint of bringing the electoral law into conformity with the requirements of modern democracy, taking into account the developments in the polity and its needs and the experience of the people in Canada and internationally. Changes have been self-serving and most of them merely deepen the legitimacy and credibility crisis in which the system of representative democracy and liberal democratic institutions are mired.
The leader of CPC(M-L) Hardial Bains dealt with the Report and Recommendations of the Lortie Commission in the book A Power to Share: A Modern Definition of the Political Process and a Case for its Democratic Renewal. Besides other things, the book elaborated the key principles and concepts upon which the Canada Elections Act is based, such as the notions of "free and fair elections," "equitable treatment," and "political parties as primary political organizations."[3] The two years which followed the Royal Commission's hearings were marked by dramatic changes, including the defeat of the establishment in the referendum on October 26, 1992 on changes to the Constitution, known as the Charlottetown Accord. Literally hundreds of thousands of people expressed their discontent with the political process and the politicians. Despite this, after the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord, no change was made to government policy on any major question of concern to the electorate. On the contrary, the government declared "business as usual." On the front of electoral reform legislation this meant more self-serving measures to consolidate the regime which keeps the parties with positions of power and privilege ruling through a cartel that keeps the people disempowered. On November 26, 1992, the Special Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, comprised of PCs, Liberals and New Democrats in the House of Commons, met in camera to discuss a Draft Interim Report on changes to the electoral process. Most significant about this was that, once again, the political parties in the parliament rammed legislation through irrespective of the wishes of the electorate. The more time passes, the more it is abundantly clear that whatever government is brought to power through elections in which the people exercise no control over any aspect, the more they are not seen to have the consent of the governed and the more the legitimacy crisis in which the liberal democratic institutions are mired deepens. The so-called major parties with seats in the House of Commons will not put themselves at the service of the electorate and bring about the necessary changes which would empower the people. The electorate has no choice but to find a way to ensure that these parties are defeated and members are elected who are part of the striving of the people to empower themselves. Summing up the experience since September 20, 1990, when Hardial Bains presented the brief of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada to the Lortie Commission, our Party has further developed its proposals for democratic renewal of the electoral process so that the people can represent themselves and not hand over the power to speak and act in their name to so-called representatives over whom they exercise no control whatsoever. In fact, once elected, these so-called representatives swear allegiance to a fictitious person of state who is said to represent the nation.
CPC(M-L) has been taking a non-partisan approach to the issue of electoral reform, which is a prerequisite to the successful empowerment of the people. CPC(M-L) calls on everyone to take up the program for democratic renewal to make themselves capable of dealing with the period of reckoning which is now upon us. It reveals itself as the imposition of "business as usual" which is a result of the usurpation of the decision-making power by narrow private interests which tell governments what to do. The role of Black Rock in what is called economic recovery shows clearly how decisions are being made, by whom and for what. [4] The concentration of power in fewer and fewer narrow private interests increasingly endangers people's lives. Now is the time to keep pushing for changes in practical ways which empower the people by building organized forces with political aims. Notes1. Reforming Electoral Democracy: Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Volume 1 (Ottawa: January 1, 1991), p. 1. 3. Hardial Bains, A Power to Share: A Modern Definition of the Political Process and A Case for its Democratic Renewal, (Canadian Renewal Party: Ottawa, 1993). 4. See "BlackRock -- The Super Cartel" by Peter Ewart and "The Canadian Connection to BlackRock," TML Weekly, June 13, 2020. (TMLW Archives, Hardial Bains Resource Centre (HBRC) Archives)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
"The people of
Canada were not unaffected by these historic
developments in freedom and democratic government. Canadians
looked with new appreciation on their democratic society and its
political and economic rights and its freedoms. But even as they
did so, 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."[
The
Lortie Commission published an extensive volume of work
including its research on the high level of discontent amongst
Canadians with the political process. Its findings in this regard
were corroborated by what Canadians in their thousands said
during the Spicer Commission, formally known as the Citizen's
Forum on Canada's Future whose findings were published in its:
Report to the People and Government of Canada in
June
1991.
The changes
CPC(M-L) proposes
are directed towards empowering
the electorate at this point in time. They comprise both the
theory behind them and what needs to be done immediately, in a
practical sense.