The Dominion - paul martin

Martin Excused from RIO Report Card – For Now

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:38:22 +0000

The Sierra Club of Canada has recently released its twelfth annual "RIO Report Card". The report doles out grades for both the federal and provincial governments on how they have performed in terms of meeting international environmental commitments.

Overall, the results of the report card show that there has been good progress in urban areas, with an improving green infrastructure and a start of an industrial strategy for cities. However, marks went down for protecting parks, endangered species, and oceans.

Provincially, PEI received an A- for measures to address climate change, while Ontario was most improved after its government change. Alberta received the worst grades, with Fs in both the biodiversity and climate change topics. BC fared almost as poorly, with only its progress on the Great Bear Rainforest keeping it from receiving two Fs as well.

Normally, the report card is released in June in honour of the 1992 Earth Summit, but this year, the report was delayed until after the federal election. Because of this, the federal grade was split between the last six months of Chretien's term, and the first six months of Martin's. Because of the short time period, Martin's government was given an "incomplete" mark.

» Sierra Club: The Twelfth Annual Report on International Obligations (RIO) Report Card

Paul Martin, Ethics and Democracy

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 19:41:28 +0000

An Interview with Democracy Watch's Duff Conacher

Duff Conacher is the Coordinator of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based group that has advocated for “democratic reform, government accountability and corporate responsibility” for a decade.

This interview took place on January 28, 2004. A full transcript of the exchange is available here.

Duff Conacher: Martin has broken rules, lied, and surrounded himself with corporate lobbyists. Tooker Gomberg/Greenspiration.org

What can we learn from Paul Martin's past record on ethics and democratic reform?

That Martin has lied about maintaining high ethical standards, that he has broken ethics rules, and that he surrounds himself with corporate lobbyists, all of whom are representing corporations that have specific private interests that are not the public interest. And so he is tied directly to the private interests of several corporations in Canada.

Is there any reason to believe that he's going to do things differently now that he is Prime Minister?

He hasn't really promised to do anything different in the area of ethical behaviour except to pass a bill that Chrétien introduced last year that will--if it is passed--create a more independent--not fully independent, but more independent--ethics watchdog system to enforce federal ethics rules. All of the other promises that Martin has made are simply to empower Liberal MPs.

The reason he has tried to define the democratic deficit in Canada as only involving the powers of MPs, is because he knows that he can increase the powers of Liberal MPs, but that they will not use those powers. They will all toe the line, wanting to move up the hierarchy of the Liberal Party, and get into cabinet. They know that the only way you get to do that is if you're loyal to Martin.

You've said that Martin failed to deliver on similar promises addressing the Democratic deficit that were made back in 1993 by the Chrétien government. Is there anything different about the promises that he's making now?

No. He's making the same promises that were made in '93. One could say 'well, he wasn't Prime Minister from that time--1993 to 2003--and so it's not his fault that those promises weren't kept.' But he kept his mouth shut, and didn't say anything about those promises being broken in the eight and a half years that he sat around the Cabinet table.

If he was principled at all and believed that these things should be done, he would have spoken out. If these are improvements that Canadians support, it would have been helpful for Martin to say something at that time. He didn't say a word.

So that shows that he really lacks any principled basis to how he acts as a politician. And then he's gone on from that to say--in May of 2002--that he's always practiced full transparency in politics and that Canadians deserve full transparency. At that time, he was hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions that had been made by corporations to his leadership campaign, and refusing to disclose them.

So he lied. He hasn't always practiced full transparency. He was hiding donations and keeping them secret.

When there has been pressure put on him on ethical issues concerning the shipping company that he owned, and that he's now transferred--we don't know how cleanly and completely--but transferred somewhat to his sons... when those allegations first came up in the spring of 2003, who did Martin turn to? He turned to the ethics counsellor lapdog Howard Wilson, who is completely controlled by the Liberal cabinet, and asked Wilson to clear him of any conflicts to do with shipping. And Howard Wilson did it.

You have also talked about how Martin voted against 24 out of 27 private members' bills in Parliament. What is the significance of that?

One of the promises that was made back in '93 in the Red Book was to allow more private members' bills to come to the House of Commons for full debate and voting, and to not have them stopped by a Liberal committee that's controlled by the Cabinet.

But again, if you look at his record, with 27 private members' bills that affected the finance department, Paul Martin voted against 24 of them. Again, it shows his record that he doesn't like private members' bills. That record also contradicts his pledge to have more free votes and his promise that most things will be free votes in the house of commons in the future.

But if you as a minister are rejecting all sorts of private members' bills put through, and participated in insuring that those bills were rejected by other Liberal MPs... it just doesn't add up to a principled record where he's shown that he actually believes that MPs should be able to freely vote.

So does this go back to the loyalty aspect you mentioned before-- are you saying that if Paul Martin consistently votes against private members' bills, then other MPs who want to move up in the party will see the writing on the wall and also vote against those bills?

Very much so. Between 1997 and 2000--between those two elections--the Liberals only had a six-seat majority. Not even six Liberals would stand up to the Prime Minister in that three and a half year period and say "we've broken all sorts of promises we made in '93, fundamental promises such as having an independent ethics watchdog, and we're going to cross the floor and force you to call an election unless you introduce bills that keep these promises and pass them."

Martin watched that. At the time, there were 155 Liberal MPs, and not even six of them would stand up to the Prime Minister. Why not? Because they were all hoping to get into Cabinet. So Martin knows that they'll line up behind him, and behind the other Cabinet ministers as things move forward. They know: if you stick your neck out, the Cabinet will chop it off, and you will not move up into the Cabinet hierarchy or even the committee hierarchy at all... unless you are loyal to what the Cabinet wants to do.

So it's safe for him to make a bunch of promises about empowering Liberal MPs, because he knows that Liberal MPs will not use those powers.

You have said that Martin's ethics and democratic deficit proposals are basically just vague rhetoric. There's a long list of things on the Prime Minister's web sites; can you characterize what Martin's plan of action is, and what that excludes?

[...]

If you add it all up, it doesn't even empower MPs that much. But empowering MPs does not empower citizens. For example, in free votes, even if a Liberal member did vote how they wanted on a particular bill, is that what we want? Or do we want them to vote how the people who voted them into power want?

So having an MP allowed to vote according to their whim on an issue does not in any way empower the voters that put that MP into office. What Martin should be doing, if he was serious, is requiring MPs to prove that the will of their constituents is in a certain direction--either for a bill or against a bill--and then to vote according to the will of the voters who put the MP in power.

So how would he do that?

Well, he would have to give them resources to do in-depth polling on each issue, and ensure that the polling is done in an ethical and sound way, so that the actual will of the voters in every riding could be determined. And then the MPs would be bound to vote the way that the people who put them in office want them to vote. He won't go that far. He doesn't want that much democracy in the House of Commons. He wants the Cabinet to be able to continue to control things and to essentially force the MPs to vote the way that Cabinet wants them to vote.

So you look at that, and then also in terms of lobbyists--he's been surrounded by corporate lobbyists through his whole campaign; they've been advising him, they've been donating millions of dollars to his campaign--you add it all up, and you see that Martin is corporate-driven, not citizen-driven.

He believes it's completely ethical to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations that lobby the federal government, and to have all of his advisors representing corporate interests--they were working for him on his leadership campaign while also working for these corporations.

Has there been much media coverage of these aspects of Paul Martin's proposed ethics reforms or his attempts to address the democratic deficit?

Oh yes. But they are process issues, and they are relatively abstract for most Canadians, unlike health care or the environment. These are not issues that Canadians demonstrate on Parliament Hill about.

But they should be. If anyone believes that they're going to get a health care system that upholds the public interest or environmental protection or consumer protection that upholds the public interest, or government spending that actually takes into account the social welfare of Canadians, or corporate regulations that protect consumers and ensure that corporations are serving the public interest as opposed to just trying to make the most money possible... If anyone believes that they're going to get any of those public interest measures through Parliament when Parliament is corporate-driven--driven by corporate donations, corporate lobbyists, when there are no ethics rules that are enforced--they're just being naive.

Over the past decade since we started up Democracy Watch, we've been trying to convince many groups that work on social justice, environmental issues, health care issues that they should be spending part of their energy pushing for democratic reforms. I'm sad to say that while we've had groups join our coalitions, very few of them put in the time necessary. And they keep beating their head against the walls of an undemocratic, corporate-driven government, and losing repeatedly. And yet, they do nothing to change the system that is set up so that they will lose, so that the public interest will be ignored.

You mentioned that Martin's campaign team is made up of a lot of corporate lobbyists and that a lot of corporate types are in his inner circle. What effect does that have on his policies; are there any other groups that have similar kinds of access? Is there any way we can evaluate that, or is it largely behind closed doors?

It is largely behind closed doors. Martin is very strategically smart--somewhat; he's made some huge errors by having so much corporate money flow into his campaign. The Liberals, for their leadership campaign, had a spending limit of $4.5 million, and Martin raised over $12 million--I mean, just a grotesque amount, most of it from large corporations.

But he's strategically smart in that he will meet with everyone who is concerned about an issue, and I'm sure he's going to tell other ministers to do this as well. Then he can always say "well, I have met with everyone and listened to everyone's point of view before I made my decision." It becomes a bit more difficult to criticize his decision, because he has met with everybody.

In the past, ministers we've dealt with only met with industry--when making a decision on banking law, for example. It was pretty easy to criticize their decisions, because their decisions didn't do anything for consumers, and their record of who they had met with was all industry people.

What happens when you have these corporate lobbyists on the inside, as they have been on Martin's campaign, and with corporate money--all of these lobbyists are legally required by their contracts to advance and advocate the interests of their clients, which are large corporations. Martin, as a politician, is legally required to uphold the public interest.

When you tie the two together, the public interest will always suffer and be ignored, because the private interests have the inside line. If you gain access to a politician, you automatically gain influence over that politician. Especially when you're doing favours for that politician, which all of these corporate lobbyists have been doing. They've been volunteering on his campaign, helping him raise money.

You've mentioned that Martin put billions of taxpayer dollars--apparently--into some mysterious foundations. What do we know about these foundations?

Well, they're set up to do supposedly very specific things in terms of policies in different areas and funding research in different areas. The problem is, the goverment gave the money to the foundations before it even created the foundations. Some of them have still not really done anything with the money, because they've been trying to start up and get running. They're also not subject to the Access to Information Act, to ethics rules, to the Auditor General... $7 billion in total has been shifted to these foundations as endowments.

What they'll be doing is handing out grants based on the interest that they make on the endowed funds. But we have $7 billion of the public's money that has totally been taken out of the accountability systems that would insure that that money is well spent. And of course, the foundation boards are all patronage appointments made by Prime Minister Chr_tien.

So, as we've seen in many areas, when you have an institution set up and the board is patronage hacks who have ties to the ruling party, you don't get good actions, ethical actions, or actions in the public interest. They're hacks, tied to the Liberal Party and they're going to favour members of the Liberal Party in the decisions they make, who they hire, and all actions that they undertake.

The Auditor-General has called very strongly on Martin to bring these foundations back under the Auditor General's Act, the Access to Information Act, and all of the other ethics rules that apply to federal public officials.

We'll see what he does. It'll be another sign as to whether he's really interested in cleaning up waste in goverment, and making government more ethical and honest.

It recently came out--or at least it recently gained mainstream attention--that Canada Steamship Lines was able to exploit a loophole left open by the government to pay less than two per cent in corporate income taxes. What kind of ethical system needs to be in place before politicians will not be able to implement this kind of blatant exceptionalism in their own interests and in the interests of their friends?

In the US, politicians and members of the administration appointed by the President--they have to divest the interests that they have in any companies. In the US, Paul Martin would not have been able to be Finance Minister while still owning Canada Steamship Lines. That would not be allowed.

It is allowed in Canada. And not only that, but he had a venetian blind management agreement (as Joe Clark put it), where he was getting updates about the company while he was Finance Minister. And that's because we have a lapdog ethics counselor who would bend over backwards to insure that no Liberal is ever found guilty of breaking the ethics rule. So [Howard Wilson] approved all this, and didn't require Martin in any way to step aside from any decision-making process that affected his company. In the US, you have to cut your ties completely with your company.

We believe the [Federal] rules [in Canada] say that quite clearly, and we're challenging the Ethics Counselor in court, because he just ignores the rules when he makes decisions.

There is a rule in the Lobbyists Code, which applies to all organizations and people registered as lobbyists, that says that a lobbyist can't put a politician in a conflict of interest. The federal Ethics Counsillor has interpreted that rule, saying that in order to break that rule, they would have to interfere with the decision of a politician, and overpower the free will of the politician and force them to do something that they wouldn't do if they had a free will.

In other words [to place a politician in a conflict of interest], the lobbyist has to enslave the politician. That standard has never been articulated anywhere in the world, even in the most corrupt countries in the world. No one who is an ethics watchdog has ever said "oh, the only way a lobbyist could put a politician in a conflict of interest is to enslave them." But that's the standard that currently exists at the federal level, and that's the standard that we are challenging in court.

So things are so lax at the federal level that politicians can own companies and vote on things that affect those companies. That's how bad it is.

What about the case of Paul Martin's sons, who now own CSL--is it not a conflict of interest to vote on things or make decisions on things that affect the interests of immediate family members or "close personal friends" (as Martin has characterized several corporate CEOs)?

We believe it is.

And what kind of ethics rules would have to be in place in order for that to be the case?

That selling to your sons is not enough, and that you have to divest fully--outside the family. Now, when you say 'friends,' you can't prevent someone from having friends. But that's where we all have to be...

But can't you prevent them from voting on issues that affect their close personal friends?

Yes, you could have that as a rule. Usually those friends will be registered to lobby the federal government, and that's where you would be able to get at that situation. But that's where we all need to be much more vigilant and watching much more closely, and the media as well has to be investigating much more, and ensuring that when a decision is made, all of the factors that might have gone into the decision are exposed. This way, we can track whether there are any ethical violations; or if there aren't, at least we'll know the why of the decision, and all the details of it.

It's difficult, because there are so many obscure decisions that the federal government makes. But everyone should remember that the elite establishment in Canada is a a relatively small group of people. We may be a country of 30 million, but we have a relatively small elite establishment, and they do protect each other. And they have politicians that are friends.

What the politicians do is often affected by these friendships and relationships that go back decades. These people can get access to politicians and say "you know, if you just change this regulation--these few words--it would save us $10 million; can you do it?" And the politicians do it. Because it's very obscure and nobody is watching closely enough to discover these little tiny changes that are made all the time by government.

That's a very dangerous situation when you have a small elite establishment like we have in Canada.

So let's say that there's an MP--with the Liberals or even in oppositions--what if they, despite the status quo wanted to become more democratic. How would they go about doing that?

Well, Democracy Watch has won a new donations law, so that there are now limits on donations, and they're all forced to be more democratic. Although there's one big gap in those limits--and that's that unlimited secret donations are allowed, as long as you make them directly to the politician.

That loophole is supposed to be closed by ethics rules that will be passed when Bill C-34 (which I mentioned earlier) is passed. They have pledged to put in a rule that says that you won't be able to receive any economic gift of any kind without disclosing it, and that gifts above a certain level will create a conflict of interest for MPs and Senators.

So we're going to be pushing to make sure that loophole is closed, but right now, it's still open. But if an MP or Senator wants to be more democratic, don't take large donations from anyone, disclose them all, set up consultations with your citizens--though it's much too expensive to do in-depth consultations on all issues--set up a meaningful consultation process. Not just a one-off meeting where if you don't show up you won't get heard. Make it much more open, and ensure that everyone has an easily accessible way to make their voice heard on the issue, and that you want to hear them. Do a news conference in your riding and say "I want to hear your viewpoints."

An Interview with Democracy Watch's Duff Conacher

by Dru Oja Jay

Duff Conacher is the Coordinator of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based group that has advocated for "democratic reform, government accountability and corporate responsibility" for a decade.

What can we learn from Paul Martin's past record on ethics and democratic reform?

by Dru Oja Jay

Martin Calls Civil Unions "Acceptable"

Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:50:03 +0000

As Paul Martin gets closer to becoming Prime Minister, concerns about the fate of the same-sex marriage bill due come before parliament shortly increase.

Martin recently spoke about the same-sex marriage issue saying that civil unions would be acceptable, as distinct from marriage as prescribed in the Ontario Supreme Court ruling from earlier this summer. Toronto statistics show that between June 10 and July 15 same-sex marriage licences made up 12% of the licences issued, but with public opinion moving closer to 50-50 many MPs are shifting away from supporting the bill. Websites devoted to tracking how MPs are currently lined up to vote show 146 in favour and 155 against. This has prompted advocacy groups to launch lobbying efforts to ensure the passage of the bill. Failure of the bill would not change the law established by the courts in Ontario and BC freeing gays and lesbians to marry, but the political message would be unfavourable.

--NOEL BALDWIN

How the Liberal Party Works

Sat, 23 Aug 2003 20:36:40 +0000

We hold elections, but do our political parties practice democracy?

Is this what Canadian democracy looks like?

In November 2003, Paul Martin will--barring unimaginable circumstances--be chosen as Canada's next Prime Minister. Legally and politically, this choice is not made by the Canadian public at large, but rather by a private club known as the Liberal Party of Canada. Even given that the Liberal Party has over 500,000 members (according to recent reports, a larger membership than any political party in Canadian history), most Canadians will not have a say in this decision. Indeed, it is already too late for anyone who wanted to vote in the party's leadership election -- to vote, members had to join by last June. And if you had the foresight to join the party four months before the election, you also have to pay a membership fee, and be prepared for a potentially long journey on voting day in order to cast a ballot.

Why is everyone so sure that Paul Martin will win the leadership? Allan Rock and Brian Tobin, considered contenders early on, were so sure of a Martin victory that they dropped out months ago. But few would argue that Martin's policy positions are responsible for his apparent lock on the position of party leader; even today, very few people know what his positions are on many issues.

By most accounts, the real source of Martin's dominance lies in his control over the internal governance of the Liberal party, as well as his spectacular fundraising (Martin has raised over $6 million to date for his leadership bid). Over the last two years, a well organized campaign has put loyal Martin supporters in charge of most riding associations. Once in control, Martin and his supporters could effectively decide who got to join the party, and when. In many ridings, leadership candidates were only given five membership forms at a time, while Martin supporters were free to bypass this limit. These restrictions were later loosened, but only after Rock, Tobin and others had dropped out of the leadership race (or refrained from joining in the first place).

Further reading:

One Citizen, One Vote: Towards Proportional Representation: An interview with Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada, by Susan Thompson

In view of the struggles for control of riding associations, it would seem that policy debate has played a minor, or even insignificant, role in the Liberal leadership race. But if the future Prime Minister is not chosen based on policy positions, but rather on the ability to gain control of riding associations, and given the apparent entrenchment of the Liberals, does Canadian democracy consist merely in voting for or against the Liberal Party?

According to Dr. William Cross, the Director of the Canadian Democratic Audit and a professor of Political Science at Mount Allison University, Martin didn't do anything wrong, but simply played by the rules as they exist.

The same rules (or lack thereof) exist for other political parties in Canada as well. Though other parties have not recently experienced the intense and public squabbles over the control of riding associations, their leadership is largely decided by who can sign up the largest number of new members. This in turn is largely determined by who is the most organized and best funded. Few were surprised, then, to see Jack Layton (who had the most funding and signed up thousands of new members) chosen as the leader of the NDP, and Peter Mackay chosen to lead the Progressive Conservatives. Of course, neither MacKay nor Layton were handed the job of Prime Minister upon their election.

Cross argues that "a more democratic system would be to allow all interested and eligible voters to vote for who will be the next Prime Minister." This would involve eliminating the barriers to wide involvement in the leadership election of (at least) the governing party. Instead of an election where only those who have joined before a deadline, paid a fee, and travelled to the (often distant) voting location, Cross advocates what is essentially a US-style primary: all eligible voters would be able to vote for a candidate for Prime Minister.

As it stands, participation rates in leadership selection are very low. Surveys have found that even among supporters of a party, less than 5% participate. Cross cites the election in which Ralph Klein was chosen as the leader of the provincial Conservatives in Alberta as the closest thing to an open leadership contest that has occured in Canada. Voters had to be a member of the provincial party, but they could join at the voting location for a minimal $5 fee. Close to 17% of party supporters turned out for the election, and when the contest went to a second ballot, the number of participants increased.

Asked about the possibility of other parties or groups hijacking a leadership election by mobilizing members to skew the vote a certain way, Cross simply says that there is little evidence of that occuring. On the other hand, the Liberal party spends enough time obsessing about "special interests" hijacking candidate nominations in particular ridings (restrictions placed on distribution of membership forms were justified in this light by the Martin camp) that it's worth asking if the leadership selection process should be more open, not less.

The US-style primary has its own faults, however. South of the border, it is commonly referred to as the "money primary", a reference to the fact that--with very few exceptions--the candidate who raises the most money wins. This, however, would seem to be a question of campaign finance regulation and balanced media coverage. The broader point, according to Cross, is that candidates are forced to appeal to more than a tiny fraction of the electorate. Despite its flaws, the popular election of party leaders (or minimally, Prime Ministers) would at least be successful in moving the focus of leadership campaigns from party power struggles to reaching out to the public at large.

But to Cross, what some have called the "democratic deficit" occurs at a more fundamental level. Elections are considered private events of the Liberal Party, a legal status that means that there is almost no regulation of the process. Spending limits on leadership campaigns, for example, are set and (nominally) enforced by the party. But the enforcement hardly ever comes. It is extremely unlikely, for example, that the Liberal party will deny the leadership to a candidate who goes over internally-set spending limits, and there is no legal recourse--the only option is to appeal to the same riding associations that Martin currently controls. Indeed, it was only with recent legislation on campaign financing (Bill C-24) that leadership candidates are required to fully disclose the sources of funding for intra-party campaigns.

The other democratic short-circuit caused by the private status of political parties is a major concentration of political power in the Prime Minister's office, where, according to Cross, "party members have as much or as little influence on policy as the Prime Minister wants them to have."

One of the less vague planks of Paul Martin's leadership campaign has been to address the "democratic deficit" by giving Members of Parliament more freedom to advance their own views in the House of Commons, and to roll back Chrétien's intensive party discipline in favour of fewer "whipped votes".

Cross says that such measures do little to address the real issues: "that solves the democratic deficit for about 150 Liberal backbench members of Parliament. It's not clear to me that it does anything for the rest of us, because I have no idea what my Liberal candidate thinks about a whole array of policy issues when he or she runs under the Liberal banner, because they don't tell us. They tell us what the Liberal party view is. When they go to Ottawa, you're going to let them vote however they want, but what check does the voter have on that?"

Very little, it would seem. The selection of candidates in federal elections regularly happens with 300 or 400 party members voting, in ridings with over 60,000 voters. Since candidate nomination is often based on mobilization (i.e. which candidate can bus more members to the voting location) rather than policy, candidates have little or no mandate beyond that of the party line.

According to most evidence, Canadian voters overwhelmingly base their choice on the party's leader and platform, rather than individual candidates. As if to confirm this, Prime Minister Chrétien has directly appointed candidates, bypassing the vaguely democratic selection process altogether. In a few instances, "special interest groups" have attempted to use the nomination process to push particular issues, but have been shut out by the Prime Minister's Office. In many instances, "Liberals for Life", a pro-life faction of the Liberal party, attempted to gain nominations, but were shut out by the Prime Minister's Office, which directly appointed its own candidates. When Chrétien chose to directly nominate Art Eggleton in the riding of York Centre, passing over the usual process, veteran city councillor Peter Li Preti sued the Liberal Party to hold the usual nomination process. Because of the Party's effective legal status as a private club, however, he was unsuccessful (though Eggleton was later shuffled out of Cabinet after it was shown that he had given his ex-girlfriend a $36,000 military contract).

Cross argues that this process also needs to be opened up to all eligible and interested voters. If candidate nomination races were infused with ideas or particular policy stands, "you would end up with candidates selected on their own policy programs--these would have to be pretty much in tune with the party, but they wouldn't have to be 100% similar to the Prime Minister's views, and they would then have some legitimacy to challenge the Prime Minister and stake out different positions, and the PMO would have to operate in a very different way than it does now."

Given all of the inward turns the power structure of the Liberal Party has taken, and accepting the Party does not currently appear to be at risk of losing its majority, it is not clear how Canadians can meaningfully participate in the governing of their country. We can vote for the Liberal Party, or against it, but beyond that, things get murky. Anyone who tries to run for nomination as a candidate risks being labelled a "special interest" and being replaced. An appeal to an MP makes little difference, as they have little mandate, and are held in line by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

According to surveys conducted for the Democratic Audit, young people are giving political parties a wide berth. Instead, they believe, special interest groups are the most effective way to be represented politically. Furthermore, those in political parties have an average age of 59, are two thirds male, and tended to join when they were younger. For Cross, this raises a deeper issue: "do you want child care policy, or education policy to be made by these people?"

It also seems that the young people surveyed by Cross' colleagues are in some sense right. Participating in policy decisions in a governing party is difficult indeed, as one must convince the party, and then convince the PMO all over again, whereas interest groups can target the PMO directly.

The coincidence of power concentrated in the PMO and declining faith in political parties as a way to get things done raises the spectre of what Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul calls corporatism. Governments, Saul argues in frequent exhortations to political participation, are the "most powerful force possessed by the individual... [it is] the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good."

When government is run by "interests" and not citizens, says Saul, the public good is swept aside in favour of who can direct the most pressure at politicians. And this is not facilitated by a choice, but rather by a general disenchantment with the system. In The Unconscious Civilization, Saul writes: "Virtually every politician portrayed in film or on television over the last decade has been venal, corrupt, opportunistic, cynical, if not worse. Whether these dramatized images are accurate or exaggerated matters little. The corporatist system wins either way: directly through corruption and indirectly through the damage done to the citizen's respect for the representative system."

Currently, 6 out of every 10 dollars of Liberal campaign financing comes from corporations. Bill C-24, the recent, sweeping campaign finance reform legislation, will ban corporate and union donations to election campaigns and severely limit their donations to leadership campaigns. Such legislation, however, does little to address the fundamental imbalances in the power structure as it currently exists.

Unfortunately, this same structure provides few starting points for individual Canadian citizens who wish to put their "most powerful force" to work, or simply keep it from becoming someone else's most powerful force. At present, a desire to participate in politics is synonymous with frustration for anyone who doesn't have friends in the PMO or the same interests as well-funded lobbyists.

We hold elections, but do our political parties practice democracy?

In November 2003, Paul Martin will--barring unimaginable circumstances--be chosen as Canada's next Prime Minister. Legally and politically, this choice is not made by the Canadian public at large, but rather by a private club known as the Liberal Party of Canada. Even given that the Liberal Party has over 500,000 members (according to recent reports, a larger membership than any political party in Canadian history), most Canadians will not have a say in this decision. Indeed, it is already too late for anyone who wanted to vote in the party's leadership election -- to vote, members had to join by last June. And if you had the foresight to join the party four months before the election, you also have to pay a membership fee, and be prepared for a potentially long journey on voting day in order to cast a ballot.
- by Dru Oja Jay -