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Fixed date = rigged result

It’s a page straight out of the dysfunctional U.S. political playbook, and it is profoundly undemocratic, skewing election outcomes to favour the deep pockets of private backers, the plutocrats.

The U.S. Republican party branch plant that is the Conservative (Reform/Alliance) party has legislated that our federal government face the electorate according to “fixed election dates.”

The practice sounds benign, but “fixing” the election date is a big step toward rigging the result, not necessarily in favour of the governing party, but surely in favour of whoever can lavish the most lucre on it.

Backers of the fixed date argue that it democratizes our elections, for a prime minister no longer has the power to dissolve Parliament whenever he/she feels that his/her party has found the opportune moment to win.

This argument is phony.

First, no first minister can call an election. That decision lies with the governor-general federally.

But there’s another reason why the fixed date is undemocratic it can easily be abused. The evidence is before us now.

Because pro-rogue PM Harper knew that October 19 would be the election date, he could propose laws popular with his base – and fundraise in concert with such narrow governance – to amass the funds to leverage a deliberately elongated campaign.

Indeed, by extending the election campaign by more than a full month, Harper is banking on his party’s ability to saturate the airwaves for 11 weeks with attack ads demonizing his opponents. 

So instead of party leaders arguing positions, we get TV ad pissing matches, with the advantage often going to those who can buy the most airtime. TV ads do a better job of suggesting that so-and-so is an idiot than they do in advancing policy options, and that is damaging to the public interest.

The effect is to turn the election into a referendum on personalities as opposed to a debate on the long-term benefits or consequences of competing party programs.

But the effect of a fixed-date is not only to increase the role of Big Money in bankrolling a candidate or a campaign. It also influences policy, legislation and the positions of the official opposition before a campaign even begins.

Because everyone knows when the election will happen, all the parties begin to trim their legislation or opposition to attract the same donors, so that all can be in a position to buy the TV ads required to affect the election outcome.

This process ends in a tacit convergence on major policy questions – such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta’s tar sands, or, for that matter, on supporting (or not) Canada’s mission (whatever that is) in Syria.

These days, the opposition parties seem largely muted vis-à-vis the Harper pseudo-Republicans perhaps that has something to do with everyone’s gravitating to the same wells of financial support.

We should heed the American experience, whose politics are soaked in money. 

Democrats who backed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a tragedy costly in lives – likely looked at the election cycle and their funding needs and figured that a no vote on a slam dunk gambit would doom their re-elections.

In contrast, whatever criticism President Barack Obama may merit now, then-Senator Obama was courageous to have voted against the invasion. Certainly he was wiser, for by the time the 2004 presidential election came around it was clear to all that the Iraq “Mission Accomplished” was a debacle.

Obama’s no vote worked in his favour in the Democratic party presidential nomination primaries in 2008, but what helped him even more was his decision to raise funds from piggybanks, not pinstripes.

This fact made his campaign freer to oppose policies and freer to propose ideas than was the case for his chief competitor, then-Senator Hillary Clinton.

However, once Obama became the front-runner and practically a shoo-in, the Big Money flooded back in and the grassroots supporters melted away.

The lesson here is not that Canadian political parties need to be cannier in seeking donations, to look beyond corporate or union coffers, but rather that we have enjoyed – until lately – a fairer electoral system that produced governments whose concern was not centrally electioneering and fundraising but implementing voter-approved policies that had first weathered withering opposition.

Moreover, the idea that a first minister has an insuperable advantage from knowing when to request an election is ludicrous. 

In Ontario, only three years after his stunning victory in 1987, Liberal Premier David Peterson, sitting on a comfortable majority, got his wish for an early election in 1990. The result? He handed the keys to Queen’s Park to Bob Rae’s NDP.

Traditionally, Quebec governments have gone to the polls every three years, while most other Canadian governments seek re-election in a fourth year.

Why do we need fixed-date elections? To match America’s constitutional mandates, whose effects are, as we know, exorbitantly expensive.

If we add up the Harper initiatives – the fixed-date, the omnibus (American-style) packaging of legislation, the attempts to politicize the Supreme Court, the suppression of independent research information, the muzzling of scientists, the cuts to culture and social spending, the efforts to neutralize the Senate – the sum is a shift of power from people to corporate interests.

It is too late to do anything about the current, spuriously long election campaign – except perhaps to consciously elect a government more interested in respecting everyday Canadians than in passing (or just promising) legislation designed to get more dough out of well-heeled but democracy-distrusting donors.

It’s high time the Crown stopped agreeing to every request for prorogation or dissolution. Also, the Supreme Court should pass judgment on whether omnibus bills flout the watchdog function of Parliament.

George Elliott Clarke, OC, ONS, is E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. His latest book is Traverse (Exile, 2014), an autobiographical poem.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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