32nd
Anniversary of Royal Commission on
Electoral Reform and Party Financing
Significance of CPC(M-L)'s Brief to Lortie Commission
Following 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 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."[1]
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
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 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. 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. 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. Notes
1. Reforming
Electoral
Democracy: Royal Commission on
Electoral Reform and Party Financing, Volume 1 (Ottawa:
January 1, 1991), p. 1. 2.
Ibid, p. 2. 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.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 48 - December 12,
2020
Article Link:
32nd
Anniversary of Royal Commission on
: Significance of CPC(M-L)'s Brief to Lortie Commission
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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