Taxation Without Representation

Canada’s federal election is only a couple of weeks away and while all the candidates are campaigning for my vote, I can definitely relate to how people can become disillusioned and apathetic with the whole process.

Our federal representation is based upon population with our local Member of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons and representing the will of us constituents. Unfortunately Canadian politics is such that MPs do not represent the will of the constituents that elected them but rather the will of their political party as dictated by the leader of their party. While we may have 308 seated members in the House of Commons, typically it is mainly only one, the Prime Minister, who really holds all the power. No MPs of the Prime Minister’s political party dare vote against him in Parliament without suffering the inevitable consequence of being removed from caucus and being forced to change parties or sit as an independent. Not really an appealing option for someone who wishes to keep his job and earn another term in office with the promise of a pension. And thus if the ruling party holds a majority, the Prime Minister pretty much runs the country on his whim. So much for my personal representation in Ottawa.

The disillusionment and apathy that our political system has generated has fueled voting strategies that make individual MPs irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Rather than voting for the riding candidate of their choice to represent them in the House of Commons, people are voting for the candidate that represents the political party that has the best chance of defeating their least favorite candidate for Prime Minister. In an attempt to avoid splitting the left vote, websites like http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/ have been created to ensure that Stephen Harper’s poor environmental record does not get a chance to resonate for another four years.

Like with the financial crisis in the the US, wouldn’t it be better to just fix the system to run the way it was designed to operate as opposed to coming up with strategies to work around and patch a flawed approach? Why do we not demand that our MPs be allowed to vote the will of their constituents without political consequence? This would make all 308 Members of Parliament relevant again and would restore the faith of the Canadian people that they do have a voice in the House of Commons.

“Canadians can disagree, but it takes a lot to get Canadians to intensely hate something or hate somebody. And it usually involves hockey.”
- Stephen Harper ( b. 1959)