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New rules ought not to be made by rulebreakers


Niagara Falls, Ontario
Saturday, March 1, 2014
by Joe Hueglin
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In sports no one would accept playing under new rules made by the team that had plead guilty to one infraction and was charged and in court over a second one. Neither would it be accepted that the neutral referee was being replaced in judging wrongdoing by an agent of the cheating team.
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Bill C-23, named by those it benefits as "The Fair Elections Act", proposes to alter the rules. Changes proposed were arrived at without consultation by those affected - in particular the Chief Electoral Officer and Opposition political parties and, in general, the Canadian voters. Without debate these fundamental changes have been accepted in principle at Second Reading. They will not be discussed and debated in public hearings but in Committee meetings "held primarily behind closed doors."

The saying of Vince Lombardi  that "Winning isn't the only thing; it's everything." has been the  Harper Government's guiding principle in past elections and it is manifest in the new rules being proposed. They control the majority of Members in the House of Commons, although they had less than 25% of eligible voter support in the 2011 General Election. And passage is assured because they now have a majority in the Senate, which is no longer there to provide “sober second thought” but rather to follow the direction of He who appointed them.

The Chief Electoral Officer has acted upon existing rules so that the adage of Grantland Rice ," - not that you won or lost; But how you played the Game." has been in force. Such will not be the case in the already imminent 2015 General Election.

The National Media is requested to consider, and unswervingly press for, that which alone will provide fairness into the next Federal General Election, i.e. that the election of the next Parliament should be conducted under existing Elections Canada regulations rather than those changes being forced upon Canada through Bill C-23 by the increasingly dictatorial Harper Government.
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