Excerptcize

That’s what Justin Beach is suggesting over at his blog. Justin is a great writer who also happens to run a fantastic Canadian Music News blog, North by East West; I don’t know where he finds the time (NxEW does have a great pan-Canadian team). Justin doesn’t just provide insight and analysis in his postings, he’s usually also contributing ideas on actual ways to enact change. Just the other day he was noting that that Canadians are clearly frustrated with the continual tactical leveraging from Prime Minister Harper, and states:

[...]this seriously begs for electoral reform and Parliamentary reform. The current system is totally and completely broken and there is no sign that there will be another majority Government of any stripe for the foreseeable future and it comes at the worst possible time.

We have serious problems to fix.

As I’ve noted before I also believe that Parliamentary reform is in order, both for the House and Senate. Electoral reform should be a natural partner to that as well. That prompted me to ask in comments “Are there any functional tools that Canadians can employ to attempt to undertake some electoral and Parliamentary reform? Can these things only originate from the House itself?” Today Justin has a post up that begins to answer that oh so important question, what can be done?

[...]the broken Parliament has been an ongoing issue for me and many others. It’s not just the proroguing of Parliament. That’s just the most recent symptom of an ongoing disease. The uniting of the right combined with the fragmenting of everyone else (and Liberal infighting) have allowed 30% of the population to run the country.

There has been talk in the past about ‘uniting the left’ but that’s easier said than done [...] what about the Liberals and the Greens?

[...]the Liberals have ‘the establishment’. They have infrastructure, money and names (and a party logo) that Canadians know [...]What the Liberals do not have is ideas.

[...]The Greens do not have ‘establishment’. Other than Elizabeth May people at large don’t know who they are [...] What they do have is street cred and ideas, lots of ideas. (see GreenParty.ca for examples.)

[...]In the last election the Liberals and the Greens did work together to a small extent. The Liberals did not run a candidate in Elizabeth May’s home riding and at one point and Elizabeth May at one point urged strategic voting to defeat the Conservatives. She also supported the idea of a Liberal/NDP coalition – so I think it’s safe to say that the door is open if Ignatieff has the courage to walk through it.

I like the idea on the merits, but am skeptical about the viability of this coming together; I suspect the Liberals will be inclined to stay in a holding pattern, railing against the Government when they can, holding off an election as long as possible and hope that circumstances such as bigger and continuing budgetary deficits eventually change electoral fortunes back to at least a Liberal Minority. I can appreciate where Liberals would take a stance like this from a strategic standpoint, but I do not respect it. Ideas being floated by people like Justin is at least a start on some change; we as a nation most certainly need it.

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