Canada’s Westminster-style government could be in for some monumental changes with a strengthened Parliament | Democracy, elections and voting

Canada Proposal Sees Strengthened Parliament

Democratic and Parliamentary Reform are being much discussed in the days and weeks since the extraordinary prorogation of parliament for a second time in just over a year by the present Government in Ottawa. If it was thought that Canadians do not care about these issues, the rallies, use of social media such as the Facebook site Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, news media commentary in newspapers, on radio and television, and in academic circles have suggested otherwise.

Parliamentarians, too, have awakened to the need for restoration of the principles of parliamentary democracy and responsible government. Notably the powers of the prime minister of the day – which some have come to see as prerogatives, as if the head of government was also the de facto head of state – have come into question. A motion was brought forward to limit the power to prorogue. The fact that we in Canada elect Members of Parliament, not prime ministers, political parties, or political movements is being renewed. The parliamentary principle grounded in the ideas of the 18th century parliamentarian and writer Edmund Burke that your representative should be slave to neither constituent or party or any other sort of men, including leaders, in the exercise of their judgment on your behalf, is being discovered by parliamentarians and by ordinary Canadians who previously had dismissed politics as all about populism or party.