After three decades in elected and backroom politics, veteran Sask-atchewan New Democrat Ed Tchor-zewski is leaving Ottawa worried that the existing political system is losing touch with the citizens it is supposed to serve.
He cites the federal response to the prairie farm income crisis as a prime example of the problem.
And he has some proposals for a radical shake-up of the political
system.
He believes Parliament requires a form of proportional representation that will allow the House of Commons to better reflect how people vote.
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He believes government should send senior bureaucrats into the countryside more often to see how people are really living, what the problems are and how those affected think they could be fixed.
“I’m a great defender of the civil service, but I do think they are isolated and since they are so influential now, they really should have a better feel for the country,” said Tch-orzewski, who returns to Saskat-chewan in November after a term as chief of staff to NDP leader Alexa McDonough.
During his time in Ottawa, he helped steer the federal party toward a more middle-of-the-road, Saskatchewan-like policy stance.
The former Saskatchewan deputy premier said in an interview that he sees the slow federal response to the farm crisis as a symptom of the problem with the existing political system.
“I don’t think this crisis has a human face for the folks in Ottawa who are designing the response,” Tch-orzewski said.
“In the provinces, where government is smaller and the voters are closer, you are surrounded by the problem every day. Here, I don’t think they really understand.”
He doesn’t even blame the governing Liberals, who mainly hear the views of Quebec and Ontario because that is where they are strongest.
The bureaucrats who advise them also mainly live in Ottawa or Eastern Canada. They read reports about conditions elsewhere, he said, but reports and numbers do not have the power of direct contact with affected people.
“You can be sure if this income problem was happening in Ontario where they have 101 seats, there would have been action within a couple of weeks.”
Tchorzewski said the result is that a large group of prairie voters do not feel their votes count and they lose faith in the system.
“Once you quit believing in institutions you often lose them.”
Many Canadians have come to distrust Parliament because minority parties often form majority governments and then largely ignore the opposition. He said declining voting rates alarm him.
“In this last election, turnout in Saskatchewan was 62 percent. That’s shocking in a province that always had the highest turnouts.”
All that has led Tchorzewski to offer ideas on how the system should change. After close to a quarter century in the Saskatchewan legislature before moving to the party job in Ottawa, he figures the system he thrived in is breaking down.
He has become convinced that the first-past-the-post electoral system should be tempered with some measure of proportional representation.
It means there would be many more minority governments. The Liberals, with less than 40 percent of the vote last time, would not hold a majority of seats in the House of Commons.
And in Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Party leader Elwin Hermanson might well be heading to government, since he won the most votes Sept. 16 but came second in seats.
“So be it,” shrugged Tchorzewski. “But I think minority governments can work quite well. It certainly makes the governing party pay more attention to the opposition and to ideas other than their own.”
