MPs need to be given their freedom

Editor: Congratulations to Bernie Smith of Parksville and his Hahn’s Macaw (Chico) for exposing the real rot in our electoral system to be the loss of elected MPs’ accountability to the people who elected them to be their representatives in Parliament.

When this country was founded, 150 years ago, we inherited the British form of representative democracy where MPs represented the people who elected them.

This essential relationship still exists in Britain today; however, it disappeared in Canada shortly after 1968 when when our prime minister’s father, (Pierre Elliot Trudeau) succeeded Lester Pearson as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

One of his first acts as leader of the party was to force a change in the party constitution to stipulate that no person could stand for election as a member of the party unless the nomination by the local party executive had been approved by the party leader.

From that moment on, Liberal MPs could no longer resist party policies that would be harmful to the people that elected them, because to do so would risk their political careers should the party leader refuse to endorse their nomination at the next election.

In effect, they ceased to be representatives of the people in their ridings and became mere parrots for the party.

The value of this extra-parliamentary measure to stifle dissent within the Liberal party was quickly observed by other major parties in Canada and party constitutions were quickly amended to snuff out real representative democracy in Canada.

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau really wishes to improve the electoral system and restore a small measure of democracy to Canada, he could introduce a bill in the house of Commons that would prevent national party executives or provincial party executives from vetoing nominations for election made by local riding executives of the party.

Power to the people.

William Taylor, Westbank