The controversy around whether Canadian Forces sent prisoners of war to countries that torture only serves to highlight the systemic problems facing our national institutions.

I think it’s time to put Parliamentary Reform back on the Conservative agenda!

As Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells and others have pointed out very succinctly, there are some serious issues with the current system, including:

Inherent Conflicts in Selecting Cabinet Minister’s from the ranks of MPs

Does an MP work for their constituents, their party or their leader? Is it reasonable to expect a person to juggle good service to their constituents as an MP with good service as a Cabinet Minister? If you are the Minister responsible for something that gets delivered in your riding (cash, a project, or a contract), did you only do so because it was your riding? What about when it doesn’t get delivered to your riding? Should your constituents punish you?

Strict Party Discipline

MPs wanting to make their mark are held to strict party discipline to ever have a hope of getting into Cabinet. If they break rank too often, there is the lingering possibility the leader may not sign their nomination papers the next election.

It might be nice if more free votes were allowed, but niceness doesn’t address the systemic problems.

Concentration of Power in the PMO

With strict party discipline comes concentration of power in the PMO. The PMO is the strongest institution in any democratic state in the world (within its own borders). This is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous. Any Prime Minister should recognize that (a) they haven’t got all the answers, (b) the next Prime Minister might not be as great (honest, upstanding, ideologically correct) as they are, and (c) it is undemocratic. As such, this concentration of power is not ideal to the current PM (whomever they are). I’m sure if Chretien could see into the Conservative future, he would have thought twice about the increasing power of the PMO under his watch.

Powerless Committees

As last week revealed, committees are a joke. For crying out loud, committees should be more than who called who fat on Twitter.

Our Ridiculous Senate

Blame for the lack of progress made to date on Senate Reform rests squarely on the Liberal establishment in the Senate. It is my sincere hope that progress will be made once the Liberal majority there is finally eradicated. There is a plan to deal with it, and if all the participants put in place do their job, this should go well. If they do not follow through, they will only prove themselves more shameful than the Liberals.

The Bad Guys in the Mainstream Media

While the media is no doubt to blame for exacerbating the problem, they are not the cause. If an MP breaks ranks with their party, the media is usually the first to yell out insubordination! Yes, we choose representatives of parties, but we also choose individuals – individuals with different opinions and different ideas. It would be downright creepy if everyone in a party agreed on everything, failing the Robot Party of Canada, of course.

It is absolutely fair game for the media to call out an MP if their party promised X in an election campaign, and they voted against it. But if it wasn’t promised in an election campaign, that MP should be free to vote as they please, and it’s up to the electors in that MP’s riding, as to whether or not they approve. The issue itself may be newsworthy, but an MP’s position on it isn’t really comparable to World War III.

The following Bloc MPs (41% of the caucus), in order by how many votes they won by last election, will all be eligible for their gold-plated MP pension on June 28, 2010, after providing her majesty with 6 years of loyal service.

This assumes, of course, that they get re-elected this Fall.

• Maria Mourani (423 – 39.48%)
• Christian Ouellet (1,204 – 35.20%)
• Thierry St-Cyr (1,303 – 34.91%)
• Yvon Lévesque (2,573 – 39.65%)
• Robert Bouchard (3,057 – 41.31%)
• Raynald Blais (4,796 – 40.1%)
• Nicole Demers (4,895 – 37.79%)
• Robert Carrier (5,092 – 38.83%)
• André Bellavance (8,833 – 46.01%)
• France Bonsant (9,386 – 41.85%)
• Paule Brunelle (10,407 – 45.26%)
• Johanne Deschamps (10,813 – 47.08%)
• Robert Vincent (10,840 – 42.82%)
• Meili Faille (11,548 – 41.34%)
• Serge Ménard (11,824 – 45.52%)
• Marc Lemay (11,874 – 47.91%)
• Carole Lavallée (12,012 – 44.98%)
• Guy André (14,910 – 45.82%)
• Claude DeBellefeuille (16,046 – 50.06%)
• Yves Lessard (21,124 – 50.08%)

THREE REASONS THE BLOC SHOULDN’T SUPPORT IGNATIEFF

1. Let’s be honest, nobody told these people that they had to win FOUR elections to serve their SIX years. I don’t think anybody saw that coming!  This looming pension will make anyone think twice.
2. What message does it send to their supporters in la belle province? That they would rather have the Liberals under Ignatieff in charge? Who’s in second place in Quebec right now? The Liberals. Do you really want to prop up your main competitor?
3. The Bloc holds 48 out of 75 seats in Quebec (64%). Last election, they won 49. The most they ever won was 54 (in 2004 and 1993). It begs the question: How many seats could they gain?

Oooooh, we’re so scared of the NDP and their nasty, unreformed socialist ways here in B.C. So, we hold our noses and vote, time and again, for the BC Liberals.

I’m done.

Between the HST and jacking up the MSP Premiums, the carbon tax, outright lies during the election campaign, and the blatant disregard for the people of British Columbia during a crippling global recession, I’m finished voting for them.

Let me see … higher taxes, arrogance and deception … sounds an awful lot like Federal Liberals to me.

Obviously I can’t vote for the NDP, but I will not be voting BC Liberal either.

Ever.

I can hear it now from my BC Liberal holdouts, “But Paul, you can’t split the vote and get the NDP elected.”

Too bloody bad. I’m done.

It used to be a decision between socialism or the free market. Now it’s a decision between socialism or arrogance and deception.

I hope that a new party emerges to prevent an NDP victory (or, at the very least, the NDP gets their wits about them and reforms themselves before they get elected and drive this province into the toilet … again).

But I no longer believe we are better off with the current alternative.

We all know that Stephen Harper only appoints hard-nosed, staunch Conservative cronies and bagmen like, uh, Gary Doer.

Wha?

Gary Doer, the former NDP Premier of Manitoba, as Canada’s most important and most influential diplomat?

Oh, the headaches the Liberals and their media elite buddies must have today!

Could it be … maybe, just maybe … that Harper appointed those nine Senators because he could trust them to make the reforms necessary to make the institution of the Senate worth saving, and not because of some control-freak, frothy-mouthed, wild-eyed moment of partisan thrashing and thrusting?

Well, certainly not if you believe the Liberals and their media pals.

Reflections on the Senate Appointments

Harper has appointed Doug Finley and Don Plett to the Senate. Having met both men on a few occasions, I congratulate the Prime Minister on excellent choices. Both are very intelligent, hard-working, love their country, and, as the media has kindly pointed out, they are firmly on Harper’s side.

This whole exercise (appointing Senators in order to reform the Senate) wouldn’t be necessary if politics worked logically – let’s face it, it’s a pathetic eyesore of an institution in a great democracy like Canada.

However, the Liberals have a vested interest in it, and the NDP and Bloc just want to see it ditched, not reformed.

The Question Now

Who will be the new Party President?

More importantly, who will run the next campaign, and take the reins where Finley has left off?

The media obviously doesn’t care about this, but I am quite interested.

Jacques Demers

Is anyone else disgusted by the drivel appearing on some of the news sites putting down Jacques Demers for his illiteracy?

If these people had any idea of the back story of this amazing man, they might be inclined to reflect on how pathetic their own life story is, despite their literacy, in comparison (or, maybe they’ll just go back to watching American Idol).

The quietest massive policy shift in British Columbia (and Ontario) is underway.

The Harmonized Sales Tax seeks to make tax collecting more efficient by combining the policies for the Federal GST with that of the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) in target jurisdictions. The unfortunate side-effect the B.C. Government has already admitted to is that sales taxes for consumers will go up.

Here are a few other things that they won’t want to talk about:

It’s A Regressive Tax

The obvious one is that, unlike income taxes, sales taxes are “regressive”. That is, the poorer you are, the more costly this tax is to you as a percentage of your income vs. richer Canadians. The reason is that poorer people spend a higher proportion of their income on consuming the very things that the HST will be charged on (richer Canadians have more money to put toward things that do not have a standard sales tax structure: investments, travel abroad, rents and mortgages, education, etc.).

There are good arguments for flat taxes (everyone gets taxed evenly), and good arguments for progressive taxes (the richer pay a higher percentage of their income), but I have yet to hear a good argument for “regressive” taxation. This said, the BC Liberals seem to love them. The highly regressive Medical Services Plan Premium was effectively doubled for most middle-class British Columbians under Gordon Campbell back in 2002; the closer these middle-class British Columbians were to being classified as “poor”, the higher the rate (as a percentage of income).

Bad For Business

Businesses that had to only charge GST previously become less competitive now. There are numerous examples out there, but I’ll offer one more that I am quite familiar with: e-Commerce Services.

This industry only had to charge GST since the very beginning. All this will change next July.

They already compete with GST-free Alberta, not to mention other countries, like National Sales Tax-free America. But this latest move will make B.C. and Ontario-based e-Commerce Services companies even more uncompetitive.

To date, HST has been a non-issue, as Atlantic Canada is hardly a hotbed of e-Commerce. With their long history of HST, setting up a company there would have been a foolish undertaking.

With British Columbia and Ontario joining the HST mix, you can expect to see an exodus of e-Commerce firms, and they will all be heading to Alberta. I have heard this first hand from quite a number of my own competitors in both B.C. and Alberta (of course, nobody will go “on the record”).

An End To Progressive Tax Policy

The BC NDP has pointed out that the provincial government will lose the ability to use the PST to promote green (or any other) policies.

An Election Lie

The BC Liberals were on record as saying that they were not going to implement HST. This message was very clearly laid out prior to, and during the election campaign. Obviously they lied.

This is a few weeks old, but Maxime Bernier has done a great job, yet again, explaining a basic Conservative principle (free trade vs. protectionism) in a simple and convincing way that everybody should understand.

Next week I’m off to Ottawa for campaign training.

As acting campaign manager for a candidate (and a good friend of mine) who lost the last election by 68 votes, I’m going to be looking for an edge to help put him over the top.

Are you going too? Let me know.

This video was shot at the Manning Centre Conference some time ago, but was just posted to YouTube on Monday.  As usual, one of Canada’s most prominent journalists, Andrew Coyne, tells it as he sees it.

It speaks for itself.