For some weeks now my internet feeds have been full of squawk about the situation in my riding federal of Spadina Fort York. This situation says so much about the present disfunction of our society and political systems that it is worth doing some more blogging. My association with a political party, the NDP, has ended and so I now feel a lot freer to discuss these matters.
Basically, if the people now on the NDP Spadina Fort York executive are going to talk like they are, and carry on like they have, regarding the Vuong issue, then I do not want to be associated with it. Their official social media has thankfully gone silent. So much for my personal disclosures.
No, I am not just adding further to the bad noise. I have had some negative responses to some comments I have made in various venues. If you are capable of at all of understanding what is said to you, you will understand that I am pointing out the way to prevent such situations.
Whether anyone likes it or not, Voung won the liberal nomination and he won the election. He is the MP for this riding and he could sit as an independent until the next election if he so chooses. Anyone who has been an independent MP says it is a very difficult position.
The hysterical screech demanding he resign is getting us nowhere. Most of it is coming from the NDP, which makes the party look very bad. People associated with the Liberals and other parties at least have the sense to stay silent about it.
While the facts of Mr. Vuong’s career show him to be a self promoting jerk, I do have a certain kind of sympathy for him. He is the son of refugees into this country; literally “boat people”. He has this first generation drive to succeed in Canadian society.
The trouble is he has gotten carried away with it. He has lost any sense of proportion or propriety. Now this is going to bite him hard.
As for this legal action against him, this is an example of what is wrong with the legal system in Canada. Anybody can accuse anyone of any kind of nonsense, and the target is compromised endlessly, even when the charge is dropped, as most charges are. This is why, unless there is a very good reason not to, criminal charges should be kept confidential.
Where the Vuong matter gets really ugly is when the “woke” radical feminists start trying to impose their ideas of legality on everyone. Women accusing men of sexual interference should be believed no matter what and no matter how trivial or ridiculous. The rights of the accused do not exist and neither does common sense for these people.
Beyond this, the Vuong situation has people demanding all sorts of poorly thought out political reforms. Those talking about a system of recall of representatives should take a look at how that works wherever it is in force. Usually it becomes a tool of people who did not like the result of the last election and want to reverse it.
Inevitably, the tireless proponents of Proportional Representation are telling us that their pet idea will solve this type of problem. It will not. There is not much information on how the problem of klinkers in the legislature is dealt with in countries with PR governments, but it seems that just like with us, they are there until they quit or until the next election.
This is a feature of any kind of representational system. That is why I advocate a different system. In a system of deliberative democracy, a delegate to a higher council is immediately accountable to the body which appointed he or she.
If the delegate is unsatisfactory in any way, the council can select another for the next round. An elected representative goes off to the legislature and follows the party line for a term of office, and then is up for election again. A delegate, however, is selected, goes, reports back, and is then done or goes out again with new instructions.
That is how things get done in a real democracy. There are not many real democracies. There is no national state that is run that way. Some are trying to experiment with elements of deliberative democracy incorporated into their systems, against great opposition.
As the ancient Greeks who invented democracy noted, a representative system is not a model for a democracy, but for an oligarchy. In Canada we live in an oligarchy, not a democracy. We can vote on the candidates which the different political parties put before us.
We have at best a very indirect and partial voice in how things are run. Whoever we elect to ‘represent’ us will conform to the party which put he or she up for nomination, or can become for the remainder of his/her term an “independent”; basically a pariah. Sometimes we can get a reasonably good representative who can deliver useful resources to our district, and can intercede with power on our behalf.
This system will often go wrong. In Spadina Fort York, we are going to be stuck for awhile without an effective MP. That is the nature of the system we are in and will be in until a major change becomes possible.