Western Producer staff
Too much democracy can be a dangerous thing, at least in a political party vying for power. Just ask Reform leader Preston Manning, who is trying to lead his political party to power in Ottawa, partly on a platform of being more democratic than the alternatives.
Reform says its MPs will respond to the wishes of their constituents, rather than to the rigid discipline of party politics.
Yet Manning, a student of the history of western populist movements, knows the principle of political freedom must have its limits. He says one of the lessons learned from the rise and fall of the Progressive movement in the 1920s is that some discipline is needed.
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Prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was able to divide the Progressive caucus in Parliament, eventually absorbing much of their passion and agenda into the Liberal Party.
“You can be so independent that you can’t act cohesively as a group in a parliamentary setting,” Manning said in an interview. “Be careful that your freer voting doesn’t pull you apart.”
He said it is up to individual Reform MPs to discipline themselves. “A freer voting system doesn’t mean a free-for-all,” he insisted. “What it means is that you are more faithful to your constituents but it doesn’t mean you can just do as you please.”
The gun control debate is an interesting test of that “discipline.” As a party, Reform opposes it.
Manning, for example, represents an urban Calgary riding. The only government-sponsored province-wide poll on the issue last winter reported that the majority of Albertans support federal proposals to have guns registered.
Yet he votes against the proposal, insisting that the real issue is the cost of registration. “There are some people who would favor Rock’s bill but my riding is so rock-ribbed conservative that as soon as you attach a price tag to it, usually that’s enough to settle it.”
Two other urban Alberta Reformers (Calgary’s Stephen Harper and Edmonton’s Ian McClelland) polled their constituents, found the majority in favor of the bill despite the cost, and will vote for it. The remaining 50 have decided to follow the party line or their own instincts, or to assume that the loud anti-registration lobbyists represent the majority.
Anti-gun control lobbyists, apparently, are not the kind of “special interest” voice that Reformers normally like to ignore.
Of course, Reform is not alone in this.
Last week, Saskatchewan and Alberta provincial politicians played to the anti-gun control lobby back home by showing a united front in Ottawa against the federal proposals.
Oddly, the only scientific polling either government has done showed a majority of their residents in favor of gun registration. Now, they say, opinion has shifted. They have not commissioned surveys to prove the point.
It means the hundreds of thousands of Prairie residents, perhaps even a majority, who support registration were not represented by their governments last week.
For these Prairie politicians, some special interests (gun owners) apparently are more equal than others.
