Mr. Speaker, several years ago Fair Vote Canada coined the phrase “democratic deficit” to describe the sad state of Canada's parliamentary and electoral systems.
During his year in exile, the Prime Minister took over this phrase, without attribution, and declared that he was the man to set things right.
So what is his record so far? What about an elected Senate, for example? Well, in December the Prime Minister announced that he will never appoint Alberta's two elected senators and will not permit elections in any province.
What about fixed election dates to the Commons? Not under this Prime Minister. He is planning to advance the date of electoral boundaries changes in order to call an election long before his government has served a four year term.
If there were time, we could dwell upon the Liberal Party's internal democratic deficit in the nomination races in some of those redistributed ridings, but that would keep us from the final topic.
The crowning achievement of the Prime Minister's democratic agenda; that is the three line whip. Under this daring new proposal, MPs will now be allowed to vote freely on anything the Prime Minister decides to designate as a free vote, but not on anything else.
How this differs from how Jean Chrétien did things beats me.