On the David Emerson Affair ...

(I have been in Vancouver on business all week, and just arrived back home tonight ...)

The righteous indignation of those clamouring for David Emerson's scalp is pretty discouraging to those of us who understand how the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy functions. Emerson can, and should, cross the floor and join another party - or sit independently - if he feels he needs to.

His mistake - and he did make one here - was in crossing the floor so soon after the General Election. Tradition and Custom in such matters dictates that such a reassignment of party affiliation takes place after at least a month or so, and in the context of some sort of general disagreement within the original (in this case, Liberal ...) caucus. There should be some form of public break with the original party prior to crossing the floor. And of course, by switching parties so readily after the election, he opens himself up to charges of opportunism; and deservedly so I might add, but there is no doubting that he has the right to switch his political allegiance. For you see my friends, in Canada we elect members. We do not, and were never intended, to be casting our votes purely on the basis of party affiliation.

At any rate, the great thing about our system is that he will be held to judgment in the next election, and if he chooses to run in a "safer" seat to avoid facing his current constituents, then it will be up to the Electors of the other riding to decide his fate.

I think many out here have forgotten that we live in a Representative Democracy, and not a Republican Democracy. John Stuart Mill wrote about this very issue, and of course the contrast was drawn between the two forms of modern democracy much earlier, by Edmund Burke.

Here are some snippets of Burkean common-sense as it relates to our form of Parliamentary Democracy:

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

"To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to consider. But authoritative instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest convictions of his judgment and conscience-these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution."

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest - that of the whole - where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not Member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament."

Feel free to replace Bristol with Vancouver-Kingsway ...

I don't like the CPC either, but this is a non-issue, or at most a breathtakingly bad example of poor-timing. To make it more than that, is just ridiculous.