The path to true reform

Re: Here’s how to really reform Parliament, Andrew Coyne, May 2 The way to democratize Par- liament is to democratize Canada’s political system of government. Teetering, as we have been since Confederation, on the very brink of democracy, no lasting progress will have been made to correct the country’s “democracy deficit” and chart a new course toward the restoration of public trust without a truly democratic parliamentary separation into an independent legislative branch of government to make laws and an executive branch to enforce and carry out the laws.

The autocratic ( colonial) centralization of both executive and legislative powers in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), any prime minister’s office, has effectively hollowed out Parliament’s role, with the dictates of caucus solidarity suffocating the regional voices of individual MPs and party candidates by rigid party discipline, demanding sheeplike obedience.

To correct Canada’s “democracy deficit,” separation of the executive branch ( PMO) and the legislative branch ( Parliament) would achieve a functional system of muchneeded political checks and balances, allowing individual MPs and candidates to follow and vote their personal consciences, similar to the (warts and all) congressional system in the United States.

But that may be just a tad too “republican” for this democratically challenged “kingdom” of ours, where unelected senators get to have “second t houghts” about the expressed will of elected MPs. E. W. Bopp, Tsawwassen B. C.