Wanted: One selfless champion of democracyJames Travers, Toronto Star: All that matters now in this capital is what works. Political parties that once thought hard and said a lot about public policies are reduced to anointing leaders and hustling voters. Spending is so opaque that following the dollars is a long day's journey to nowhere. Appointed strategists, spin doctors and sycophants are more influential than cabinet ministers. Between elections, Canadian prime ministers exercise their authority with an audacity that would astound US presidents...
Along the way, parties and Parliament were neutered while a non-partisan bureaucracy, along with key agencies -- most notably the RCMP -- were politicized. Taxpayers and voters were pushed to the periphery, pawns to be managed, not citizens to be represented...
Changing the players and forcing them to play in daylight won't make a lasting difference as long as the game is rigged. Situational as they are, the rules now ensure the Prime Minister is the only possible winner... Prime ministers, once safely installed, have most of the powers commoners spent hundreds of years stripping from monarchs. Surrounded by whispering courtiers and fawning supplicants, they rule beyond Parliament's reach and oversight. Incrementally, they have turned servant into master and democracy on its head...
The way out is the way back. Piece by piece, democracy must be rebuilt. It begins with political parties re-establishing their rightful place in the policy process by providing a gathering place for people who care about the country and have strong, even strident ideas on how to make it better. It continues by giving back to Parliament what is Parliament's -- the responsibility and resources necessary to follow the dollars from promise into pockets, to know what ministers are doing and to hold the Prime Minister accountable...
Parties have to take policy as seriously as politics. Committees must be less partisan and more professional. Bureaucrats need to rediscover the voice they once used to speak truth to power. Watchdogs must be unchained to sniff out wrongdoing and bark when it's found.
None of this will happen until someone more saint than politician makes it the prime minister's business to roll back the office's extraordinary authority. Barring that, followers that leaders have been pushing around for so long will have to declare that enough is more than enough. In the absence of one or the other, democracy will continue its slide into sham-ocracy.
