“The Republican form of Government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature.”
~ Herbert Spencer
Imagine that when a man or woman presents themselves as a candidate to lead this nation you get to vote for them directly.
Imagine that the people who want to represent your riding are responsible only to you, not to some “leader”.
Imagine that though they may all be members of parties, party politics in the house of the people’s assembly is kept to a minimum because the leader of the nation and the elected representatives serve for fixed terms that cannot be terminated because of minority standings.
Imagine that we will know the exact election date every four years.
Imagine that our head of government will not be able to “whip” elected representatives of his party in line votes because they obtain their mandate directly from the voters as the head of government does.
Imagine that Canada’s “first past the post” system is relegated to the dustbin.
Imagine that if we directly elect a head of government from one party while another’s elected representatives constitute the plurality or majority of the house of the people’s assembly they actually have to get along because there will be no election for four years and if they don’t honor the public trust and produce fiduciary governance they will be turfed.
Imagine that our elected head of government can select a cabinet, the executive, choosing from the nation’s best and brightest.
Imagine that the committees of the house of the people’s assembly, the legislature, are given real budgets for research, investigation and legislation with power equal to the executive.
Imagine that our Senators are elected.
Imagine if both levels are forced to get along for the greater good.
Imagine that both levels make our laws together.
Imagine that our head of state is not a pomp and circumstance painted figurehead but the person we actually vote for.
Imagine that our judiciary has equal power to the executive and legislative powers to hear the people’s grievances and is not locked into merely judging the people but judging the law as well.
Imagine if the organizing principle of our political system is not the imperative of obtaining and keeping power but of protecting individual consequence and conscience as set out in our Charter.
Imagine if our head of government takes an oath to protect our most precious and inalienable rights and not swears loyalty to a foreign sovereign.
Imagine the power of the sovereignty of our suffrage.
Imagine every citizen of Canada as a king and queen yet no one wears a crown.
Imagine the final realization of the vision of Lafontaine and Baldwin of true “responsible government”.
Now imagine that it is no dream. It is the Canadian Republic.
Canadians have for too long been conditioned to abdicate their individual imperatives and the sovereignty of their suffrage to institutions. It’s a top down process. When citizens are raised from childhood on bended knee , they can never arouse in themselves the spirit, or confidence to take control of their own lives. Buck-passing becomes a way of life. This nation’s national political will has become as petrified as the trees in Russian gulags.
Our offices of state created from Canada’s beginnings walls of secrecy in council rooms apart that have proved endemic to the development of a true liberal pluralistic democracy fuelled by an engaged citizenry of independent thought and action. And the past twenty years in particular have seen our highest elected officials fully exploit the protection of those walls of secrecy. It has resulted in one scholar has called a “controlled democracy”.
The Oxford Dictionary defines Republicanism as “…the belief that the supreme power of a country should be vested in the electoral power of the people…”
What a concept. Supreme power vested in the people.
Now that’s something worth having an election about.
