Ideology and party politics: inefficent and obsolete.

The Conservatives have learned that the party that casts the widest net will catch the most voter-fish. Good for them, but is it good for Canada? I don’t mean: "Are the Conservatives good for Canada?" I mean: "Are a bunch of centrist parties, all touting the same thing, good for Canada?" Party politics, in an odd way, has become obsolete, while at the same time remaining a monolith on the Canadian democratic scene.

The problem with party politics is that voters are forced to choose from a slate of not necessarily compatible policies. Among ideologues there is a tendency to assume that if you believe in one policy, you’ll believe in a list of others under the same banner. But people are more complex than that.

I offer myself up as an example: though I may get slapped for this somewhere along the line by someone who takes partisanism and ideology too seriously, the issue of abortion is a good way to demonstrate my point. I believe that abortion should be a legal choice for a woman, and that if she should choose to have one, it should be paid for like any other medical practice under the Canada Health Act. If asked for my advice or opinion by a female friend on whether or not she should have one, I would, I am confident, always answer: no, don’t have an abortion.

So, somehow, I’m both pro-choice AND pro-life. For some reason, instead of eliciting support from both sides, this opinion usually leads both the right-wing religious crazies and the left-wing feminist crazies to condemn.

Thankfully, I have not had to deal with this particular situation in my own life. A friend once confided in me that if she ever got pregnant she would “kill that little parasite so fast.” Funny thing, she got pregnant not soon after, and had the kid. Let the choice be there, but educate people (men and women, who, hopefully, are making this decision as a couple, though the circumstances leading to such a choice often involve, I think, a lack of a prospective father) on the options available.

This is not meant to be a post about abortion. But you see how a seemingly black/white issue is far more complex. This is why governments fall: we sway back and forth between one package and another, tolerating cuts to social programs in order to benefit from tax cuts for a time, then paying more taxes and enjoying an active government for another. The problem is that instead of pursuing ideology in a coherent plan for the nation, governments focus their energies on staying in power, while the opposition, instead of providing useful criticism and balance, attack the government out of a need to get power for themselves.

How might we have a more effective government that wouldn’t be run based on power-plays and partisan slates? I have postulated a theory once before over at MediaScout that was perhaps a little more extreme, in that it precluded any current MP from seeking office. That theory resulted in holier-than-though invective from political science graduate students claiming that party politics were the basis of democracy. Here’s an idea: let graduate students run the country: they clearly know everything! Seriously though, a full-scale purging of the political ranks is neither likely, nor the best idea. But a nation-wide, grass-roots collective of independents, beholden together only by the promise that they would put the issues of their community first, could work.

This may sound like a de-centralization movement that might cause even Gilles Duceppe pause—if Canada can be divided, can Québec as well? It’s not. National parties are important and useful in setting federal policies that define us as a nation. Otherwise, what are we but a group of 308 town-ish sized blobs? A federal MP’s job is to make the country work as a whole. The candidates’ allegiances to their party first, however, and to their constituents—Canadians!—second is what is causing all the trouble.

I am happy with many of the policies my incumbent MP supports in Ottawa, with the exception of at least one, a pretty big one at that: he wants to take my riding out of Canada. I don’t like moving to begin with, and though Gilles Duceppe would have me emigrate from Canada with the advantage of not having to pack my bags, this is one resident of Laurier-Ste. Marie who does not give full-support to the man.

It is impossible to make everyone happy. Canadians want certain things from their MPs, but in the current system, you have to take the bad with the good. In the hotly-contested Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, Liberal Tony Ianno is in tough in the face of backlash against his party, and the hard-charging NDP first lady, Olivia Chow. But the issues go deeper than that, locally. Residents support Ianno because he is a member of their community, and they want HIM to be their representative in Ottawa. They might not trust the Liberals, but they trust Chow even less: her party has been putting up signs, without permission, in front of the houses of elderly immigrants who don’t speak English well enough to protest. While it might be advantageous to have the wife of a party leader as your MP, many locals are making the choice between Tony and Olivia, rather than between Liberals and NDP.

So it is already happening, to an extent. The problem is that, as good a guy as Tony Ianno might be, he has no choice on how he votes in Parliament. He can’t represent his constituents on an issue-by-issue basis (neither, for that matter, can Olivia Chow, or, the cannon-fodder Conservative candidate, Sam Goldstein). One solution to this problem would be to allow free votes on more bills. That wouldn’t change partisan pressures, and would bring up the complicated matter of confidence. Take out the parties, though, and all the votes become free. Add in Stephen Harper’s proposal of fixed election dates (there is something the Conservative Party and I agree on), and you’ve solved the problem of confidence. As it is now, committees work together on drafting proposals, and on drafting the laws later. An elected Senate adds to the democracy (though also, to be fair, to the bureaucracy of elections). Who gets to be Prime Minister? Let the Commons decide in a convention-style vote that requires the support of 50% of the House. It would only take a day or two. His or her role would be more like that of head of state, as opposed to head of government—and we could ditch the Governor General, too!

All this may sound far-fetched and simplistic, but such individualism is happening elsewhere in our culture. And what did Calvin’s dad say about Thoreau? “Simplify, simplify.”