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News Release

Quebec election date unfair and undemocratic — bad timing will likely result in low voter turnout

Voting system, inability of Quebeckers to decline their ballot likely reasons for 70 year low in turnout

Thursday, August 16, 2012

OTTAWA – Today Democracy Watch called for democratic changes to Quebec’s political system in response to the clear crisis of low voter turnout in the last provincial election.  The 2008 general election in Quebec saw a turnout of only 57%, the lowest in the province in 70 years.  Voters in Quebec do not have the right to decline their vote and Premier Jean Charest’s recent decision to hold the election on September 4th puts many voters in a difficult position.

“With a 70 year low in voter turnout Elections Quebec and the provincial government should have taken important steps toward increasing turnout in the next election, which will be held in less than a month.” Said Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.  “Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though they’re taking this problem seriously, instead of implementing a fixed election date Premier Charest picked a time for the election advantageous to him, even though it is when many people are on holiday, helping their children get ready for school, or moving for college or university.”

In addition to Quebec voters being given the right to decline their ballots and establishing a fixed-election date, the most important changes the Quebec parties can make to increase turnout are as follows:

• pass an honesty-in-politics law  that gives voters an easy, low-cost way to file complaints to an ethics commissioner, and gives the commissioner the power to penalize misleaders (and requires MNAs who switch parties in-between elections to resign and run in a by-election);
• change the voting system so that the percentage of MNAs each party receives more closely matches the popular vote percentages

These two changes would give voters a reason to vote because they would know that voting for a specific party would mean a guaranteed result in terms of percentage of MNAs elected and promises kept.

In addition, if the parties strengthened provincial ethics, political finance, lobbying, open government, and whistleblower protection laws, voters would have more reason to vote because they would be more assured of good government no matter which party won.

“More and more voters know from their experience of the past few decades of elections that they are not going to get what they vote for, and are likely to get dishonest, secretive, unethical, unrepresentative, and wasteful government no matter who they vote for, and as a result no one should be surprised to see voter turnout dropping lower and lower,” said Sommers.

These problems exist in all the provinces and territories across Canada.  All of these changes should be made by the federal and provincial and territorial governments, and for their municipalities, before either mandatory or Internet voting are tried (because both of those have likely serious negative effects).

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FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Tyler Sommers, Coordinator of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179
[email protected]

Democracy Watch’s Voter’s Rights Campaign

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Board member Duff Conacher which was published in the The Epoch Times and Canada.com on August 9, 2012

Liberal spokesperson Sarah Bain says “we simply do not comment on personnel” when asked questions about the Liberals re-hiring Adam Carroll, a former staff person who resigned earlier this year after he ran a Twitter account that disclosed details of Conservative Cabinet minister Vic Toews’ divorce proceedings.

This is a shocking statement that unfortunately shows the usual deep lack of understanding about the role and accountability of political staff.

Many political staff who are paid by the public take part in key policy discussions and decisions, and so the public has a clear right to know what they are doing exactly, and what powers they have, and their financial and other private interests. Without this information, the public cannot tell whether staffers are furthering their own, or their family’s or friend’s interests, with their decisions and actions.

All the parties use staffers to do their dirty work because there are no ethics or other accountability rules that apply to the staff of MPs and senators, and research and other party office staff (the Conflict of Interest Act only applies to the staff of Cabinet ministers).

As the parliamentary committee (Procedure and House Affairs) continues its review the MPs’ ethics code this fall, and as the Senate considers changes to its code, they must strongly recommend that this this huge loophole be closed by extending the codes to cover the staff of MPs and senators.

 

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Government Ethics Campaign

Set out below is a letter-to-the-editor by Democracy Watch Board member Duff Conacher which was published in the The Hill Times on August 6, 2012 and and 404 System Error on August 8, 2012

The headline for your article, and Tim Powers and John Capobianco, mischaracterize and ignore the key ethics issue with the fundraising event for Conservative Parliamentary Secretary to Canadian Heritage Paul Calandra (“Tory MP’s ‘piddly’ fundraiser donation conflict overblown, say lobbyists Capobianco, Powers,” The Hill Times, July 30, p. 1).

According to The Globe and Mail and your article, the fundraising event was held at the home of Kirupalini Kirupakaran, sister of WorldBand Media’s president Prabha Selvadurai. According to The Globe and Mail, Kirupakaran has pledged to the CRTC that she will invest up to $2-million in WorldBand Media should it win the competition for the talk radio station.

At the fundraising event, five people the CRTC has listed as WorldBand investors made donations totaling $5,000, and a total of $22,000 was raised.

By playing a role in organizing the event, Selvadural and Kirupakaran essentially delivered $22,000 to a public office holder at or around the same time as WorldBand was lobbying (via the services of Hill and Knowlton) Canadian Heritage, and a government institution (the CRTC), about a decision that falls within that public office holder’s areas of responsibility.

This is the key ethics issue, but your headline, and the Conservative lobbyists you quote, instead downplay the issue by focusing on the fact that each donation made was only for $1,000 maximum.

As a Globe and Mail article about the event noted, but your article neglected to mention, the participation by a Parliamentary secretary in such an event potentially violates the rules set out in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own “Accountability Guide.” In Appendix B of that guide, it states re: fundraising and dealing with lobbyists that: “Ministers, ministers of state and Parliamentary secretaries must avoid conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict of interest and situations that have the potential to involve conflicts of interests.”

Beyond those rules, as your article mentions, the Federal Court of Appeal unanimously ruled in Democracy Watch’s case in March 2009 that a lobbyist who fundraises for a politician at the same time or around the same time as lobbying the politician clearly violates Rule 8 of the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct. The court ordered Commissioner of Lobbying Karen Shepherd to uphold that standard which she did by issuing an interpretation and enforcement bulletin for Rule 8 in November 2009. Yes, the commissioner’s bulletin has some problems, but it is clear enough for any lobbyist to understand that fundraising and lobbying that are connected are prohibited.

Selvadural and Kirupakaran may try to claim that they were not lobbying, Hill and Knowlton was, and that Kirupakaran as hostess of the event is not with WorldBand. One can only hope that doing fundraising and lobbying in these ways will not be viewed by Shepherd as a way of getting around the clear rules that prohibit both federal politicians, and federal lobbyists, from being involved in fundraising and lobbying efforts that are connected.

As for Calandra, he seems to think that returning the $5,000 donated clears away the ethics violations. He is forgetting that a person directly connected with the company lobbying his department held a fundraising event that raised an additional $17,000 for him.

According to The Globe and Mail, Prime Minister Harper’s office has already issued a statement that ignores the Accountability Guide prohibition on being in an “appearance of a conflict of interest” and stamps the fundraising event as being 100 per cent ethical solely because the CRTC application was not discussed at the event.

As for Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson—she has already issued a ruling (archive website) on a similar event held for Cabinet Minister Lisa Raitt in September 2009.

In that ruling, Dawson deployed her usual twisted logic and extremely weak enforcement standards to claim that because the event raised funds for Minister Raitt’s riding association, Minister Raitt did not personally benefit in any way, and therefore the gift that lobbyists who were lobbying her gave her by helping organizing the event was an acceptable gift.

Thankfully, Dawson’s incompetent ruling was not the last word and Shepherd issued a ruling that found lobbyists, Michael McSweeney and Will Stewart, had violated Rule 8 by helping organize the fundraising event for Raitt.

The ethics commissioner is reviewing whether Calandra may have contravened the Conflict of Interest Act for public office holders or the Conflict of Interest Code for MPs, but has not yet decided to launch a formal investigation. It is not known whether the commissioner of lobbying has received a complaint or is looking into the matter. Democracy Watch intends to file a complaint with the lobbying commissioner.

One can only hope that Dawson will ignore her deeply-flawed ruling in the Raitt case and find Calandra guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act, but although it is better to hope than to despair, no one should hold their breath hoping for a legally correct ruling given Dawson’s record which consists of only one ruling in five years where she has found a Cabinet minister in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act (that being her finding in March 2012 that Christian Paradis violated the act—a ruling where she was cornered completely by that situation and would have had to essentially repeal the act in order to rule that Paradis had done nothing wrong).

And one can only hope that Prime Minister Harper will sometime soon start upholding his Accountability Guide rules, given that he has ignored them so far in situations involving many of his Cabinet ministers and senior government officials.

But again, no one should hold their breath waiting for this as Harper has made it clear that he has no problem with practising dishonest, unethical, secretive and wasteful politics as usual, as long as he gets what he wants.

The best that can likely be hoped for is that Shepherd will do her job properly and find the company guilty of violating Rule 8 of the Lobbyists’ Code. Unfortunately, there is no penalty for this violation, although hopefully there will be soon if the recommendations in the recent House Access Committee report are actually implemented by the Conservatives.

For more details, go to Democracy Watch’s Government Ethics Campaign

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.