Subversion of the Will of the People?
Floor crossing. It has been bothering many people as of late. The recent Emerson affair has seemed to be breed ire among the Canadian people. Some will argue that what Emerson did was inexcusable; there was no grand principle involved. It was exceptionally deceiving, these people say. While I might agree with that premise, that could be for partisan Liberal reasons.
For objective purposes, let’s say the moment that all three floor crossing events of the recent past, Brison, Stronach, and Emerson, were of equivalent weight.
What the act of floor crossing allows is for a member of parliament to say, “Guess what, despite how the citizens of my riding voted, I am going to change parties.” Thus, the MP is going directly against the expressed will of the people. Technically, those no law prevented this action…but does that make it ok? Whether that MP barely won the seat (and is switching to the second place party, à la Stronach) or whether it was clear that the constituents voted against a particular party (i.e. Emerson), it frankly does not matter. While some might argue there are different degrees, I argue different degrees of what? Wrong is wrong. We can spend time arguing about which one is “wronger”, but we are demeaning ourselves and reducing our intellect to pre-school mentality. We should all aspire to do “the right” thing, instead of what is “less wrong”?
For those reasons, I am against the switching of Brison, Stronach, and Emerson, not because of their potential illegality, but because they contravened a far-reaching principle…the will of the people. By the way, I wonder what that word ‘democracy’ means; perhaps, it means the “will of the people”? By that logic, through their actions, Harper and Emerson (as well as Martin, Stronach, and Brison) conspired to subvert democracy!
Thus, floor-crossing needs to be banned, and if one wants to change political affiliations they should have to go back to their constituents first, or become an independent member until a by-election or election is held.
I remember, Peter McKay’s response to the Emerson crossing. He said, “What Stephen Harper did was not illegal”. Since when are we talking about legality? We are talking about something much more than that. In fact, we are talking about the foundation of our democracy. Without democracy, Canada as we know it does not exist. All of our parliamentarians need to be held to a higher standard. I am a proud Liberal; I have been a Liberal before birth. We need to be unashamed of criticizing the negative actions of our party; otherwise, we will never grow as a party, and we will never be seen as legitimate before the Canadian people. When Stronach crossed, I did not agree, and I endorsed the NDP floor-crossing bill. Of course, I benefited from her crossing, so I did have mixed emotions, but I still did not agree with the principle…I did not agree with how it affected our democracy.
This leads to a new debate of “do the ends ever justify the means?”. In order to save the government from falling, we accept should floor-crossing be allowed? Maybe in order to ensure regional representation, we can go against our fluently espoused values (i.e. Emerson, Fortier)? The ends never justify the means, and if we think so, then we are living in a sad state; the War on Iraq is a perfect example. I believe that there is always a principled solution that one can take, even though it might be longer and harder to do, it is still the ‘right’ thing to do.
When, Stronach crossed, Harper said, “This is the type of thing that creates cynicism in our country, and goes to show the culture of entitlement within the Liberal Party”? I wonder if he still stands by those statements now? By Harper’s own words, what he did as PM has created cynicism in our country, shortly after a campaigned on getting rid of this “culture of entitlement” and cynicism. I don’t know about you, but the last time I read the dictionary, perhaps that situation does not accurately describe the word, “hypocrisy”.
Therefore, I have to agree with the NDP that this is a parliamentary tradition that is not worth keeping. I fully support the proposed floor-crossing bill, and I encourage other Liberals to support it as well. For our country, for the preservation of a healthy democracy, it must be done.
Comments welcome
Uncle J
P.S. Quotes from Stephen Harper on Stronach’s defection that emphasize that Harper is NOT a hypocrite, and unprincipled:
“We don't go out of our way to romance MPs to get them to cross the floor. Liberals will do anything to win.
"We are trying to create a principled party where people act in a principled way, and obviously we're fairly cautious about encouraging party jumping, because that's the kind of thing that generates cynicism.
"And frankly, when someone jumps, once you're not sure you can trust them the next time, so I would always handle that with an extraordinary degree of caution."
[http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/02/06/emerson-jumps060206.html’]
