[Tory_canuck]

Canada should have a triple E senate(elected,effective, and equal).this will decrease the democratic deficit.Do you agree?

[Streaker]

The idea is politically untenable. Ontario (pop. 12 mil.) would have the same number of Senators as PEI (pop. 135 000). It's too much of a distortion of democratic principles.

And good luck getting Quebec to go along with this...

[Patrick_Ross]

The only reason this would be considered untenable is because it would allow the various regions to block legislation that would allow Ontario and Quebec to exploit them, and political conservatives in Ontario and Quebec (aka Liberal Party of Canada) is scared shitless about this possibility.
It is important to note, however, that there are essentially two proposals regarding a Triple E Senate. One allows for an equal number of elected senators per province. The other divides the country into regions, and allows each an equal number of senators.
Personally, I prefer the regional approach.

[Streaker]

A full Triple-E Senate (province by province) would effectively paralyse the federal government. Too many Senators representing too few people would result in small provinces continually blackmailing the rest of the nation. It's bad enough that Quebec already does this!

The regional approach to Triple-E makes more sense and may actually be doable someday.

[Patrick_Ross]

It looks like we could agree on the regional proposal.
However, not only is the Triple E senate doable right now, it's also necessary, and long over do.
A Triple E senate could have prevented crooked politicians such as, say, Pierre Trudeau from abusing the democratic defecit in this country in order to serve their own interests.

[Streaker]

Personally, the regional proposal is one which I could live with quite happily.

I'm still not so sure that this reform is doable right now, even though it's badly needed. There are nine provinces which could probably agree on a reformed Senate, and then there's Quebec, which in return for its support for a reformed Senate would demand a massive devolution of powers to the provinces (or at least to the provincial gov't of Quebec). The federal gov't won't go for that.

[Patrick_Ross]

It would depend on who is in power. The Liberal party is currently governing under the Trudeau/Chretien philosophy of governance, which says that the government must control everything that it can. The Conservatives (likely) and the Green Party (unlikely) would be much more in favor of devolving certain powers to the provinces.
In order to do this for Quebec, because of the way our government is organized under the constitution, the federal government would have to do the same for ALL the provinces.
But it's actually a fairly decent idea. Why, for example, do we have a Federal Agriculture ministry in Ottawa and a branch on each coast, instead of just branches on each coast? Why do we have a federal Agriculture ministry in Ottawa and one on the prairies as well? For that matter, why does Canada still have the Wheat Ppol despite its obselesence?
Canada could use a lot less bureaucracy.

[Streaker]

hmm... A lot of people still like the Wheat Board. Prairie farmers haven't reached a concensus as to whether it's obsolete or not.

I'd actually like to see more centralisation of things like environment and transportation. Maybe healthcare too. Perhaps the feds and the provinces could do an exchange of powers that could cut some of the wasteful overlap.

[Patrick_Ross]

Health care is actually one of the words candidates for further centralization -- it's too centralized as it is.
The government employs far more administrators and bureaucrats than the system needs, and this sucks up a lot of money and ultimately harms our front-line services.
...Transportation, however, could benefit from that kind of treatment, I think.

[WLDB]

Tory_canuck wrote:

Canada should have a triple E senate(elected,effective, and equal).this will decrease the democratic deficit.Do you agree?

If its representation by population sure. But that sounds like just another Parliament.

[Thematic-Device]

Streaker wrote:

The regional approach to Triple-E makes more sense and may actually be doable someday.

Only problem is when you have gerrymandering. For the seats in the US where it would be possible it's a common enough problem. One would just have to pay attention to your elected officials pretty closely.

[Patrick_Ross]

WLDB wrote:

If its representation by population sure. But that sounds like just another Parliament.

It's because of strict representation by population that a democratic defecit exists between the regions.
While representation by population is always an important element of a democracy, there needs to be a system of checks and balances. This is something that Canada currently lacks. While I would hate to see our system ever become a clone of the American system, I think they have a number of things present in their system that we could put to good use.

[Tman1]

I think we need a dictatorship to get things done. Who nominates me?

[Patrick_Ross]

I nominate Ed the Sock.

[Tman1]

Sorry, im the only nominee.