Trudeau wants open government, but only on his terms.

Justin Trudeau’s so-called “Open Government” plan seems like a rather hastily arranged and presented idea.  Facing bad opinion poll numbers showing his Liberals in third place behind the NDP and Conservatives, Trudeau suddenly seems to have had a deathbed conversion to democratic reform and civil liberties.  This includes reforming how the House of Commons is elected, a non-partisan Senate, and gender parity in the federal cabinet.  The problem with some of these ideas however is that they aren’t very democratic.  In announcing the plan, Justin Trudeau sounded more like he was talking down to citizens, much the same way Stephen Harper does, in a preachy way that sounded like; “We know what’s best for you, we have to make the decisions for you because you’re too poor and uneducated to do it yourself.”  It is completely condescending, patronizing, paternalistic, and shows as much contempt for the hard work and intelligence of Canadians as Harper and his wrecking crew have shown.

I completely support electoral reform.  Proportional representation, ranked bloc vote ballots, and multi-member districts are a great step in the right direction.  The system we currently have is old, simplistic, and ends up leaving out the choices of many citizens.  That is the only part of Trudeau’s plan that makes any sense.

The Liberal plan for a non-partisan Senate is laughable because it won’t actually address the problems with the institution, the biggest one being its very existence.  It will still be unelected and therefore unaccountable to citizens.  Yes, it will be less partisan and perhaps more representative of ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual diversity, but it will still be the same old Senate, likely composed of those with money, land, and social status.  The reform plan does nothing to solve the serious problems of alleged misuse of expense accounts, residency, all things that are an insult to the citizens these people allegedly serve as legislators.  I recently had a tense three day Facebook argument with a colleague who is a strong defender of the Senate.  Never once could this individual explain the institutions complete lack of accountability.  I was continually presented with the argument that the Senate is needed in order to represent those who are under-represented in the House of Commons due to the barriers people in certain segments of society face to getting elected.  This argument is very weak to me.  Yes, there are Senators who represent minority groups and do it well, but there are some minorities in the Senate that should not be represented.  Old political party staffers, fundraisers, and candidates who were defeated in elections are not among the minorities worth representing.  Neither are old television news presenters who did not always do a good job being objective in their work.  Do individuals who allegedly committed sexual assault deserve to be in the Senate?  Do people who represent the most elite, old-money, and establishment families deserve representation?  All of these minorities are there now, and they are found among both Conservatives and Liberals.  The truth is that the Liberals will never get rid of the Senate because they have too much to lose in doing so.  Decades of power and influence are awfully hard to give up.  Their non-partisan Senators will be non-partisan in name only.  The only solution for the Senate, which is an anachronistic, antiquated, museum piece of a legislative body, riddled with elitism and corruption, is to close it down and end the embarrassment and insult it has brought to the majority of Canadian citizens.

Trudeau’s other plan is to have an equal number of men and women in the cabinet.  This poses a problem.  What if there aren’t enough suitable people of either gender to make an equal selection possible?  What unfortunately could happen is that MP’s who do not have suitable skills to be cabinet ministers could end up getting the jobs simply in order to fulfill a rule.  Bad enough cabinet ministers have been selected by successive governments over the decades without a gender parity rule, and most of those bad cabinet ministers were men!

Canadians deserve better than this.  They do not deserve a Liberal government that claims to support democracy, but while in opposition sided with the current Conservative government and supported the so-called anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51, which is the greatest peacetime attempt to curtail civil liberties and freedoms in the history of our country.  Justin Trudeau cannot justify why he did this, other than for political expediency which completely backfired.  Changing a few things with the Senate will not do anything either to resolve its completely undemocratic composition.  Trudeau’s idea of open government is really only open government on his terms.