Law of Democracy
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Intelligent Life on Parliament Hill
In an interesting recent blog post, Brent Rathgeber, an independent MP, discusses the Supreme Court’s decision in Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013 SCC 72, and Parliament’s eventual response to it. Mr. Rathgeber’s post deserves attention for a number of reasons. Beyond its immediate subject, which is of course interesting in itself, it is relevant to the debate about Continue reading
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Damn Your Party?
In my post last week assessing the merits of Bill C-559 (a.k.a. the “Reform Act“), I pointed out that it risked creating or embittering conflicts between the caucuses and members of political parties. In particular, I wrote that [i]t is at least conceivable that a leader would lose the support of the caucus while retaining Continue reading
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The Ways of Change
I wrote last week about Bill C-559, the “Reform Act,” which if enacted would transfer some power from party leaders to MPs and caucuses in the House of Commons. Yesterday, I addressed the question whether the changes it would operate would be good for our democracy, and concluded that this is very doubtful. In this Continue reading
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Where to Stand
I wrote last week about Bill C-559, the proposed “Reform Act” that would, if enacted by Parliament, shift some power from party leaders to parliamentary caucuses and maybe individual MPs. It would do so by making it impossible for a leader to deny a candidate chosen by a local party association the ability to run Continue reading
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To Be Something
Speaking of our lawmakers, Pierre Trudeau (in)famously remarked that “when they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members, they are just nobodies.” Not that the honourable members fared any better on Parliament Hill ― over there they were, as he apparently also said, just “trained seals,” performing whatever tricks their party Continue reading
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Undue Spiritual Influence
One of the most fascinating cases ever decided by the Supreme Court of Canada is one that you have never heard about ― or at any rate hadn’t heard about until two weeks ago, if you read Yves Boisvert’s account of it in La Presse. The case is Brassard v. Langevin, (1876-77) 1 S.C.R. 145 ― Continue reading
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Not Private Parties
The development and use of massive voter databases and sophisticated “micro-targeting” techniques by political parties are raising concerns about the privacy rights of the people targeted by these efforts. When I wrote about the use of these techniques by the Obama campaign in the last presidential election in the United States, I suggested that “the Continue reading
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Then and Now
Much has been said and written in the last few years, both in Canada and in the United States, about the role of money in politics and also about the importance of electoral procedures in enfranchising ― or disenfranchising ― citizens. But this is not a new problem, as a description of the English electoral Continue reading
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Voice after Exit, European Edition
I wrote last year about a court challenge by two Canadian citizens living in the United States to a provision of the Canada Elections Act, S.C. 2000 c. 9 (CEA), which prohibits Canadians who have resided abroad for more than five consecutive years (except members of the Canadian forces, civil servants, diplomats, and employees of international organization) from Continue reading
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L’Occasion de se taire
J’ai écrit, l’an dernier, que le Directeur Général des Élections du Québec envisage[ait] … de poursuivre Yves Michaud pour avoir fait publier dans le Devoir une publicité appelant les électeurs à défaire certains députés, de tous les principaux partis. Il leur en veut d’avoir voté, il y a douze ans, en faveur d’une motion de Continue reading
Double Aspect 