Why is Canada still a constitutional monarchy?

[KrazyHorse]

Why should PEIers have the same amount of power as Ontarians and Quebecers?
Aren't you all for equality?
You think it's unfair for rich people to have their votes count more. Now we're applying it to provinces: Are provinces with huge populations always going to dominate the smaller ones?

You're applying a false logic here. Why should provinces be represented equally and not, say, ridings?

In 1 of the branches of government, the Senate, every province should be represented equally. This protects against abuses from the majority (almost always Quebec/Ontario), while it doesn't give "more" power than Ontario/Quebec has to the smaller people. The Senate cannot MAKE the laws, they would simply demand changes in cases where the greed of Ontario/Quebec would severely harm a minority province(s) (take the NEP as the prime example here)

All it does is take power away from people living in larger provinces and give it to people living in smaller provinces. It's already bad enough that PEI and Nfld have manage to hijack the grandfathering rules so that they have one seat for every 30 000 citizens. Now you want to give two provinces that contain a minuscule percentage of Canada's population (1%) a giant amount of political power in the Senate (20%). Where's the justice?

It works perfectly fine in the states, far better than our current system is working, although you guys might not think so since everything is just peachy when you're in the majority and get to push the smaller guys around

Poor Alberta. You only have the amount of political power that your population deserves? Good.

[David James]

Whoa guys! You've turned a debate on the monarchy in Canada into a completely different political debate. Congratulations guys!

Reading through all this I noticed more than a couple of interesting points. Asher is clearly a Canadian Alliance supporter and I agree with pretty well everything he has said. Except where it concerns the monarchy. Would it surprise you to learn Asher that most Alliance supports probably also support the monarchy?

The King Byng affair is an interesting one, but unfortunately we're missing one last crucial piece of info to understand what happened. In the election the Tories under Meighan won more seats than the Liberals under King, with the Progressives winning the bulk of the rest. So we had a situation where no party had a majority. But the incumbent party was that of the Liberals and they made a deal with the Progressives to keep on governing, so King stayed on as PM. But, as is the wont of Liberals everywhere, they soon got into trouble with allegations of corruption sprouting all over the shop, ending in the sacking of a Minister and his prompt elevation to the Senate (Liberals just don't change, do they? The Senate, Denmark, all the same thing). So the Progressives (who were a Western-based protest party intent on cleaning up the system (sound familiar?)) withdrew their support. Normally this would have caused the collapse of the government and a dissolution of Parliament. But Lord Byng reasoned that because the Conservatives had actually won more seats and got more votes in the previous election they should be afforded the opportunity to form a government - arguably what should have happened in the first place had King not refused to resign. Anyway, the Progressives refused to be involved in any more alliances and so the Conservative government fell within a week, leading to a new election. Canadians responded by electing the corrupt Liberals and their leader, King, with a majority. Plus ca change... My point is that Byng, as far as I can tell, did the right thing in his use of Royal Perogative.

Now for the GST. Sure, I don't like it but it is a "better" tax than what it replaced, the manufacturers' sales tax. It also doesn't have the same disincentive effects that income taxes do. All in all, I'd prefer to see income taxes reduced rather than the GST because the gains from reducing income taxes will always exceed the gains from reducing the GST.

That's it for now...

[Asher]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
You're applying a false logic here. Why should provinces be represented equally and not, say, ridings?

So my logic is completely false, then.
So how come we have laws specifying, say, 6 senators to Alberta already?
If my logic is false, you admit that the current Senate logic is also false.

All it does is take power away from people living in larger provinces and give it to people living in smaller provinces. It's already bad enough that PEI and Nfld have manage to hijack the grandfathering rules so that they have one seat for every 30 000 citizens. Now you want to give two provinces that contain a minuscule percentage of Canada's population (1%) a giant amount of political power in the Senate (20%). Where's the justice?

Because the way it is right now the rest of the country could literally rape those small provinces and there's nothing anyone could do about it.

Giving the senate equal power is fine because the SENATE DOES NOT MAKE LAWS. The laws are made still by the cabinet, which are elected by population, but the Senate would have the power to knock down any such law that would be quite harmful to a specific region in the country.

What's wrong with that?

Poor Alberta. You only have the amount of political power that your population deserves? Good.

That's such a sick attitude that it seems most of Canada shares.

And you honestly wonder why Alberta complains about it?

It's amazing that you can't seem to see this from another angle. Everything is happy-go-lucky for you guys when you're sitting in provinces that matter.

Try having a completely different political ideology while the prime minister ignores your needs, constantly meddles with your politics, launches attacks on your province nationally, spreads FUD about your province nationally, all the while the citizens of Quebec and Ontario tell you to quit whining, because THE MAJORITY HAS SPOKEN.

[Asher]

Originally posted by David James
Reading through all this I noticed more than a couple of interesting points. Asher is clearly a Canadian Alliance supporter and I agree with pretty well everything he has said. Except where it concerns the monarchy. Would it surprise you to learn Asher that most Alliance supports probably also support the monarchy?

I'm not a Canadian Alliance supporter.
Day was a whackjob, Harper is less of a whackjob but still a whackjob at heart.

There is not a single political party in Canada that I think is worthy of taking office right now.

If I honestly had to choose a party to be in charge right now though, it'd sadly have to be the PCs.

I'm still waiting for a serious, united right wing party with a clear platform.

And I'm not sure what the Alliance supports. They're all over the place, the party is a joke.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Canadian media has a Liberal bias.

You mean the notorious commie newspapers like: The Sun newspaper chain, the Ottawa Citizen (led by the famous NDPer Neil Reynolds) or The Globe and Mail. And CTV is famous for its left-wing bias. Or how about the Southam newspaper chain? We all know that the Calgary Herald is a bastion for union rights. After all the Batons are famous for being NDPers. And in BC there's BCTV with a business program hosted by Gordon Campbell's brother. And let's not forget Alberta Report.

The National Post was defintely a left-wing rag under Conrad Black.

I'll accept that CBC has a liberal bias as does the Toronto Star, and the Post under Izzie, but the majority of Canadian media is right wing.

What does Liberal media have to do with the NDP? I never said there was a socialist bias.

Nor am I saying that there are no conservative voices in the media. That would be absurd. Unfortunately there seems to be a dominance of Liberal bias. That is how I explain the fact that the greatest misdeeds of the Grits get light treatment while items about conservatives that aren't even news get blown out of proportion and beaten till the horse is dead; literally in a political sense.

Tell me again just what exactly an aid losing Clark's luggage has to do with Clark's ability as leader of his party?

In the US there is a much better balance of political views in the media. That, and the Republicans put the Tories to shame in the field of political blood sport as played out in the media. Unfortunately, that leads to both sides taking innappropriate hits. However, it also leads to a much better balance in the sharing of power. Canada is well on it's way to being a political Mexico of the North. Dominated by one party that has subverted the powers of political offices and the means of obtaining them.

[KrazyHorse]

Asher

a) The Senate is useless. We all know that. If you replace it with an effective Senate, then voters across the country have the right to ensure that it is a fair Senate, and not a tyranny of the minority.

b) There's nothing protecting an individual riding from having it get raped by the rest of the country.

c) The Senate could easily tie its support of some laws to the passage of others (i.e. PEI will vote for the latest change to the penal code, but only if the federal government increases subsidies to them by 1 000$ a head). The government will go along with it because it won't hurt the entire country that much (there being so few residents in PEI), but Ontario couldn't possibly get the same amount for its citizens. Pork barrelling would abound in the smaller provinces, due to their overrepresentation. Political power needs to be distributed equally to all citizens, as it is under the current unicameral parliamentary legislature. Just because a province is far out of step with the politics of the rest of the country and can't get what it wants doesn't mean that the rights of its citizens have been violated.

d) Everything is happy-go-lucky for those of us who believe in the principle of one man, one vote. Any attempt to circumvent this principle by making an Albertan vote count more than a Quebec vote does will be met with my stern disapproval.

[Asher]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
a) The Senate is useless. We all know that. If you replace it with an effective Senate, then voters across the country have the right to ensure that it is a fair Senate, and not a tyranny of the minority.

So suddenly giving every province an equal say is tyranny of the minority. Gee, that's unusual.

Maybe the Senate will use their tyranny to magically make laws which they can't do, then magically pass those laws forcing Ontario to give all of its money to, say, PEI. Oh my God, this could be UGLY. Nothing would ever work out.

It doesn't work for the US. I mean, look at it. Strongest economy, doesn't have states whining about separation, is a world superpower. But Canada's system is better, you're right. Canada is in tip-top shape as it is, and the last thing we need is a tyranny of those bastards from PEI.

b) There's nothing protecting an individual riding from having it get raped by the rest of the country.

We're talking senate. SENATE. SENATE. What does this have to do with ridings?

c) The Senate could easily tie its support of some laws to the passage of others (i.e. PEI will vote for the latest change to the penal code, but only if the federal government increases subsidies to them by 1 000$ a head). The government will go along with it because it won't hurt the entire country that much (there being so few residents in PEI), but Ontario couldn't possibly get the same amount for its citizens. Pork barrelling would abound in the smaller provinces, due to their overrepresentation. Political power needs to be distributed equally to all citizens, as it is under the current unicameral parliamentary legislature. Just because a province is far out of step with the politics of the rest of the country and can't get what it wants doesn't mean that the rights of its citizens have been violated.

Alright, well how about this scenerio:
The current system passes a law which rapes Alberta of its resource revenue, for which it was entirely dependent on in its time, and gives it to the rest of the country instead.
Oops, wait, that already happened, didn't it?
Wasn't that a huge disaster too?
And you know what? An equal-representation Senate could have stopped that.

d) Everything is happy-go-lucky for those of us who believe in the principle of one man, one vote. Any attempt to circumvent this principle by making an Albertan vote count more than a Quebec vote does will be met with my stern disapproval.

Again, you fail to understand the concept of a true democracy: Rule of the majority, while respecting the rights of the minority.

This one man, one vote principle would be absolutely fine, in theory, as long as you don't have ******* PMs like Chretien which ignore regions of the country politically simply because he sees it as impossible to get votes from them. Something's not right in that system. What do you propose we do to remedy it?

Also keep in mind this is only for one third of the system. The House of Commons and Executive Branches are unchanged, we'd simply be adding the Senate as an equalizer and protector of minority rights.

[David James]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

Poor Alberta. You only have the amount of political power that your population deserves? Good.

Umm, actually, Alberta, BC and Ontario don't have as much political power as their populations warrant - in that order. The benchmark is Quebec - Quebec is guaranteed 75 seats and the ratio of its population to 75 is *supposed* to be used as the reference point for every other province. Quebec has 96,000 citizens per MP, Ontario has 111,000, BC has 114,000 and Alberta has 115,000 citizens per MP. Meanwhile, the Atlantic and the Prairies get in with 71,000 and 75,000 per MP.

The Senate is just plain messed up, with New Brunswick having more representation (10) that Alberta or BC (6 each). Meanwhile, tiny PEI gets 4 Senators but Ontario only gets 6 times as many at 24 despite a population that is 110 times greater. The US system of equal senate representation simply won't work in a country with such wide variation in provincial population. Unless Ontario and Quebec are divvied up into 3 or 4 provinces each that is, and PEI merged with one of the others Failing that, some sort of formula whereby each province gets a minimum guaranteed number of Senate seats (say 4) plus 1 for each additional half million inhabitants above 1 million. So Alberta, with 3 million gets 4+4=8, PEI gets 4, Ontario (11 million) gets 4+20=24, Quebec (7 million) gets 4+12=16. This sort of scheme at least strikes a reasonable compromise (quibble with the numbers if you like). Plus if they were elected by rep-by-pop or direct, they'd be democratic too.

I am really going to bed now. Really.

[Asher]

Umm, actually, Alberta, BC and Ontario don't have as much political power as their populations warrant - in that order. The benchmark is Quebec - Quebec is guaranteed 75 seats and the ratio of its population to 75 is *supposed* to be used as the reference point for every other province. Quebec has 96,000 citizens per MP, Ontario has 111,000, BC has 114,000 and Alberta has 115,000 citizens per MP. Meanwhile, the Atlantic and the Prairies get in with 71,000 and 75,000 per MP.

No wonder KrazyHorse was hesitant to give me numbers when he claimed Alberta was overrepresented.

You are right about the population differences being a problem. PEI and all them really throw off the whole system.

Maybe we could group some of the smaller ones together? Don't they have the same interests anyway?

[notyoueither]

Re: Asher

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
[1] Political power needs to be distributed equally to all citizens,

[2] as it is under the current unicameral parliamentary legislature. Just because a province is far out of step with the politics of the rest of the country and can't get what it wants doesn't mean that the rights of its citizens have been violated.

1. Yes. Exactly! I couldn't agree more.

2. Strict rep by pop means that those in minority have no power! The interests of regions get trampled by the agendas of large population centres. It happens within Alberta too, if that makes you feel better. Only here we over represent rural areas to provide a check against the dictatorial potential of the Edmonton-Calgary axis. A provincial senate would be a better bet, but it does not exist at this time.

You are right that reform of the Senate to give rough equality to the 3 or 4 regions, if not all 10 provinces would have some down side. However, I believe the interests of the nation would be better served.

Honestly, there are some reasonable people in Alberta and BC who wonder why we soldier on. If we went our own way, we would be much better off materially. We would not have to worry about edicts from central Canada destorying industries. etc, etc.

I do not advocate giving up on Canada. However, I am also realist enough to realize that some crisis of interests is probably going to arise. When and if it does, forget Quebec. The movement for independence in Alberta and or BC will make the PQ look like a British tea society.

[DanS]

All I know about the bias of Canadian media is that the Naked News broadcasts from Toronto.

[Asher]

Re: Re: Asher

Originally posted by notyoueither
Honestly, there are some reasonable people in Alberta and BC who wonder why we soldier on. If we went our own way, we would be much better off materially. We would not have to worry about edicts from central Canada destorying industries. etc, etc.

I do not advocate giving up on Canada. However, I am also realist enough to realize that some crisis of interests is probably going to arise. When and if it does, forget Quebec. The movement for independence in Alberta and or BC will make the PQ look like a British tea society.

I couldn't agree more.

All it'll take is an NEP v2.0 and that'd be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Asher

So suddenly giving every province an equal say is tyranny of the minority. Gee, that's unusual

You're just deliberately being an idiot here. Every province getting an equal say is a tyranny of the minority because the provinces don't have equal populations. The combination of PEI, Nfld, NS, NB, Sask and Man (total pop 4.4 million) would have more combined power than Ont, Qc, Alta and BC (total pop 25.6 million).

We're talking senate. SENATE. SENATE. What does this have to do with ridings?

Everything. Why shouldn't the people living in the bottom 50 miles of the country have equal representation? Those of us who don't live there could easily enslave them, right?

Alright, well how about this scenerio:
Blah, blah, blah

Same thing as above. You can't protect yourself from the government passing bad laws, since nobody here is omniscient.

Again, you fail to understand the concept of a true democracy: Rule of the majority, while respecting the rights of the minority

That's why we have a constitution. Provinces don't have rights, Asher. Only individuals do. You and David would fit in well together.

This one man, one vote principle would be absolutely fine, in theory, as long as you don't have ******* PMs like Chretien which ignore regions of the country politically simply because he sees it as impossible to get votes from them. Something's not right in that system. What do you propose we do to remedy it?

Nothing. You guys **** yourselves. Why should I protect you? You've got as much of a say in who represents you as I do.

[KrazyHorse]

Re: Re: Asher

Originally posted by notyoueither


1. Yes. Exactly! I couldn't agree more.

2. Strict rep by pop means that those in minority have no power! The interests of regions get trampled by the agendas of large population centres. It happens within Alberta too, if that makes you feel better. Only here we over represent rural areas to provide a check against the dictatorial potential of the Edmonton-Calgary axis. A provincial senate would be a better bet, but it does not exist at this time

Why should rural areas be overrepresented? You're choosing an arbitrary system of representation. I vote NDP, so I don't have a voice in government. DOes this mean I should get more representation, being an oppressed minority?

[Asher]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
You're just deliberately being an idiot here. Every province getting an equal say is a tyranny of the minority because the provinces don't have equal populations. The combination of PEI, Nfld, NS, NB, Sask and Man (total pop 4.4 million) would have more combined power than Ont, Qc, Alta and BC (total pop 25.6 million).

Yes, some of the smaller regions with similar interests would need to be grouped.

Everything. Why shouldn't the people living in the bottom 50 miles of the country have equal representation? Those of us who don't live there could easily enslave them, right?

Why should the majority of the population, which live a thousand miles away, have absolute control over the interests of a minority with completely different views?

Rule of the majority is only fair if they respect the rights of minorities, which has not happened on several occasions in Canada's history.

Same thing as above. You can't protect yourself from the government passing bad laws, since nobody here is omniscient.

Sorry, but you'd have to be an absolute ****** not to see the problems that the NEP would cause. Alberta was crying bloody murder before it was even passed. Lo and behold, who was right?

That's why we have a constitution. Provinces don't have rights, Asher. Only individuals do. You and David would fit in well together.

Nothing. You guys **** yourselves. Why should I protect you? You've got as much of a say in who represents you as I do.

Grrrrrrrrr.
Just you wait a few decades, then you'll be wishing you guys didn't keep alienating the West because most of the population lives in the center. Mark my words...