COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GOVERNMENT SLAVES
“CANADIAN PM JUSTIN
TRUDEAU BREAKS PROMISE TO REFORM VOTING SYSTEM”
I am extremely disappointed in Justin Trudeau over this.
I wrote him, as a member of Parliament, about two years ago,
advocating that if he ran for leadership of his party, he make an issue of vote
reform and that it would be one of the most important things he could do.
Ordered-preference ballots are much more democratic than the
current, simplistic first-past-the-post ones, the ones now used in Canada and in
the United States.
Such ballots give voters a much greater sense of having had some
effect with their vote, and they would encourage greater voter participation.
Well, he did make the promise and made it rather strongly in
his campaign, not just with a little sound-bite or two. And I took it, along
with one or two other promises, as a key measurement of his future performance.
Always with elected politicians, you get a bundle of goods,
so to speak, some, or many, of which you do not want, and so you select one or
two as the important ones for you.
And here he is, backing out of what I regard as his most
important promise.
I understand that he cannot get the various political
parties to agree on reform, and he rightly does not want a plebiscite on the
matter, plebiscites on complex matters such as this being almost guaranteed to
fail. Many simply might not understand what it is they were being asked.
But that is the role of leadership, to implement what you
truly know is a better, far better, system and let people learn about it by
experience. If they prove unhappy with it, it can always be undone in future. Trudeau
has a comfortable majority in Parliament, so there is no barrier to his acting,
other than his own hesitations or reservations.
Justin also recently made what appears a seriously bad move
in foreign affairs by removing the classy, intelligent Stéphane Dion (PhD from
the Sorbonne) and replacing him as Foreign Minister with a pierogi-eating,
speaks-Ukrainian-at-home, Russian-resenter named Chrystia Freeland.
It is not at all clear what his intention was in doing this,
but, for some reason, he thinks that this will appeal to Trump. Why else do it at
this time?
He could be right, but, if so, it wouldn't speak well of
Trump. Trump’s complete set of views and intentions remain unknown, although he
campaigned on some mighty important matters with which we can only hope he will
follow through - a much better, more cooperative, and respectful relationship
with Russia being a key one.
This provides just one more example of the difficulties
humanity has in governing itself, a matter which becomes far more critical to
everyone with Trump simply because his office and his country influence
everyone, not just 35 million Canadians. Will Trump make good on ending the murderous
Neocon Wars? Will he set a new standard for American foreign affairs? Or will
he get bogged down in a narrow agenda of interest only to American Patriot
types, a group not known for large views?
