the blog quebecois

Catching up from last week: I really did think the Liberals would fall last Tuesday. I was sure that Kilgour would vote against and I was somewhat sure that Cadman would, too. In spite of rumors that he'd prop the government up, I thought that he would have found Martin's naked chicanery repellent.

Guess I was wrong. Everyone does have his price.

As much as I admire John Robson (though not his rather garish website), I have to disagree with this (no permalinks, so scroll down to Fri. May 20):

First, Chuck Cadman voted in keeping with his populist principles. I don't agree with them, but his behaviour in this crisis is exactly what you'd expect him to do based on what he'd always said he believed. And that's a good thing.

The Reform Party's (from which Cadman got his start in politics) fetish for polling constituents on Commons votes is understandable to a degree: Certainly on social policy or on matters of domestic import, it's important to establish what the rough consensus in one's riding is, and be guided by it.

At the same time, there is a reason we send people to Parliament instead of just conducting opinion polls. If I've got a busted faucet spraying water all over the kitchen, I don't convene a neighbourhood council to debate about what's to be done: I hire an expert to fix it, and quick. This is not to imply that Members of Parliament are experts in anything other than politics -- but we pay them to sit in committee and listen to experts (real or purported) and use their best judgement to sort out the competing claims.

Edmund Burke put it more eloquently:

Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Where the Reform model of populism turns problematic, at least by my lights, is when it impinges on the country's constitutional machinery. Your vote on Tuesday was not on that absurd dog's breakfast of a budget, nor whether your fellow Surrey North voters would be inconvenienced by an election.

No, Sir: You swore an oath not only to your constituents; You swore also to uphold the honor of Parliament. When the Government uses every procedural trick it can find, including ignoring clear votes of non-confidence; When it blatantly -- with possibly illegal enticements -- courts Opposition members; When the Government is irretrievably corrupt; then it is your duty to bring it down.

You abdicated that responsibility. You blew it, Chuck, and it doesn't matter what Irwin Cotler promised you, either under-or-over the table, because it'll never materialize.