Order of Power

Photo By S.W.Dengler - Licensed under CC BY-SA

In our democratic system here in Canada, we have three main branches. Judiciary, legislative, and executive. The judiciary is of course, the courts; the legislative is the Parliament, and the executive is the government.

It is well known that the Parliament is the paramount of the democratic system. The Parliament represents the people, and the people have the power to decide what to do with this country. Technically, any motion that the Parliament adopts, such as, let's say, an instruction to be followed by the executive (the Government), should be followed.

On paper, the Parliament should be the highest authority, and the executive should not be able to reject an order from the assembly.

Yet, it seems that Harper's vision of the order of power in a democracy is somewhat skewed. After a motion adopted by all three opposition parties, to obtain access under the Information act to a number of memos and documents concerning the transfer of Afghan detainees to the local authorities, the Government refused to comply with the will of the House, invoking "national security".

This Government needs to be accountable, and in a system like ours, what is there left if our Parliament doesn't even have power? Stephen Harper already proved he could bypass democracy by proroguing Parliament and sending MPs home when he sees fit; the first time during a political crisis where his government was going to be pushed out by a coalition of the Liberals and the NDP (with the support of the Bloc), and the second one because he felt the growing pressure of many issues, such as the Afghan detainee transfers.

Not only did the King decided to close the debate without consulting anyone, but he now decided that these documents that everybody wants to see, the Parliament isn't going to decide if they should or should not see them. A retired judge from the Supreme Court will. A third party, a nobody in this debate will come in, and tell the people "No, you can't have that."

"No, you're not allowed to know."

It it simple, we decided to send our MPs at the Hill. We decided to send them there to work. We did not give Harper a majority government. The PM has to learn he needs to compose with a minority government, and he needs to start acting like he's governing one; by compromise and by conciliation.

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time
- Abraham Lincoln