A rchive Date
[ 03-09-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Religion always plays politics
By TED BYFIELD
The Edmonton Sun
September 3, 2000
The Canadian system of government, arguably the most authoritarian and centrally-controlled in the democratic world, has one vulnerable point where the hazards of genuine democracy persist and sometimes prevail. That point is the nomination meeting.
A Canadian prime minister can exercise tight control over his cabinet. And, whatever his party, the first dismaying discovery of every freshman member of Parliament is his total subservience to the leader and the caucus power brokers. Essentially, he soon finds, he's expected to do as he's told. Before he ever gets elected, however, he must win the nomination, and this involves a process which, try as they may, the Ottawa bosses have grave difficulty controlling. That's because nomination meetings are usually free-for-alls. Whichever candidate can turn out the most friends and supporters wins.
This gives a distinct advantage to tightly-knit groups - religious, ethnic, social, whatever. They can turn out the numbers. Consequently whole busloads arrive to stand or sit around, often past midnight, to vote for their man or woman.
True enough, the head office can veto the winner. But when it does so, it makes obvious mockery of the claim to "democratic" party government. It therefore strives to avoid this distasteful expedient by making sure the man it wants gets in, and the man it doesn't want does not.
But this is never easy. True enough, the headquarters' nominee may have access to the party's membership list. But his rival may have access to the local church list, or the local Filipino Benevolent Society list which may have more names on it than the party one.
Now all this became painfully apparent this summer with the Canadian Alliance, leaving the liberal media in something of a quandary. Evangelical Christian groups, which often include a considerable contingent of conservative Catholics, have candidly announced they're backing pro-life candidates for Alliance nominations in several target constituencies - in particular Val Meredith's in suburban Vancouver, and Dr. Keith Martin's in suburban Victoria.
Broad-minded newspapers like the Victoria Times Colonist, the Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Star were not broad-minded enough to swallow this (as they saw it) religious intrusion into the political process, and deplored it as the sure doom of the Alliance.
But there was a problem. The Sikhs had been packing nomination meetings for years with nary a yip from these newspapers. Aren't the Sikhs a religion? Why was it acceptable to send a busload of Sikhs to a nomination meeting, but not a busload of Christians?
There was no response and for a reason. While it's OK to attack Christians, it's politically incorrect to attack Sikhs. So the point had to stand.
However, the media piled onto Peter Stock, national affairs director of the Family Action Coalition. What if members of, say, the Jewish community banded together to nominate a Jewish candidate, a reporter asked.
"It happens all the time and I fully support it," replied Stock. "It happens in Westmount (a part of Montreal). It happens in Vancouver. It happens in the Sikh community. We've always had religion influencing politics and we always will. Parliament is going to impose a morality of some sort on the country. It's just a question of whose."
Leader Stockwell Day has carefully distanced himself from all the nomination contests, except in Victoria where he went out of his way to pay tribute to Dr. Martin, a man he defeated for the leadership who had lashed out at Day as being hopelessly handicapped by Christian convictions.
The Times Colonist felt that Day should blow the whistle on the Christians. His refusal to do so represents a disappointing and fateful compromise by the Canadian Alliance, it said. After all, the Alliance had vowed not to be run from the top down.
How the refusal of the head office to intervene in the nomination process at the constituency level should somehow represent top-down party control would be difficult for many Victorians to grasp. But then they will also be aware that logic and reason have not of late been a strong point on the Times Colonist editorial page.
In the meantime, the news is out. Religion will now play a role in politics. Just as irreligion does.
Letters to the editor should be sent to sun.letters@ccinet.ab.ca
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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