Green Leader Elizabeth May says democracy ‘slipping away’

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Green Leader Elizabeth May says democracy ‘slipping away’

[ http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013 ... _away.html ]

Green Party leader Elizabeth May says the ballot-box question in 2015 should focus on what's happening to our democracy in Canada.

By: Susan Delacourt Parliament Hill, Published on Tue Dec 31 2013

OTTAWA—Green Party Leader Elizabeth May says the next federal election has to be fought on the issue of democracy in Canada — or the lack of it — before it’s too late.

“We are on a slippery slope to the loss of our democracy,” says May, mincing no words as she looks back on how 2013 unfolded in Parliament and what’s ahead for the new year.

Power is now so concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office and its unelected staff members, says May, that Canadian democracy already resembles “a dictatorship punctuated by elections.”

And the Green Party leader is worried that things will only get worse after the next election, no matter who wins, unless this becomes a ballot-box issue in the 2015 campaign.

What future prime minister is likely to arrive in office and start worrying that he or she has too much power, she asks.

May was sounding these warnings throughout the fall on what she called her “democracy tour” across Canada. Though her tour didn’t attract much national media attention, she is convinced that people are open, even eager, to discuss what’s ailing the political system.

The Canadians she has met along her tour are particularly curious about the whole business of iron-fisted discipline over their Members of Parliament, says May.

“My biggest surprise is the number of Canadians that keep asking: ‘Well why do MPs do what they’re told to do? Why don’t they stand up?’ ” May says.

“Those of us who live and work in Ottawa think everybody knows. People don’t know. It gets asked everywhere.”

Unfortunately for May, there hasn’t been a lot of evidence to date that Canadians are willing to make democracy an election issue.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government prorogued Parliament twice and was embroiled in serious contempt-of-Commons issues between 2008 and 2011.

Eminent political scientist Peter Russell even made a YouTube video during the 2011 election campaign, warning voters not to reward the Conservatives’ disregard for democracy.

“If the Harper Conservatives were to win a majority in the House of Commons, it would be an indication that parliamentary crime pays,” said Russell, an emeritus University of Toronto academic and a respected constitutional expert, who’s not known for overstatement.

And Conservatives went on to win a majority government, leading many political observers to conclude that democratic problems just aren’t a big deal for the voters.

May isn’t dissuaded, however. She says she gets her biggest applause on the road when she reminds citizens of how much has been sacrificed so that Canadians can live in a democratic country.

“People have died for us to live in a democracy and we are letting democracy slip through our fingers,” she’ll say. Or: “If this was a war, we’d sign up to save our country.”

May calls 2013 a dispiriting year for her, personally, though it ended on a couple of high notes: she lured former NDP MP Bruce Hyer to sit as a Green, doubling her caucus, and the Hill Times newspaper, after polling her colleagues, named her the “Hardest Working MP.”

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