WHY CAN'T CANADIANS HAVE SWISS DEMOCRACY?

Re. Swiss vote to ban minarets
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/politics/Swiss-Voters-Approve-Ban-on-Minarets-78086882.html

Is it not outrageous that Canadians are not afforded the same democratic instrument as Switizerland? Citizen initiatives that can be put to a vote and the will of the people imposed on the traitorous political class? No wonder the elite does not want to see direct democracy in Canada. They know that their game plan for the country would be challenged and rejected.

Why is that only at the local level that plebiscites and referenda are routinely held? Why am I asked if I would approve an expenditure for a new ice arena or park development but I am denied the right to vote on how many zillions of people will be allowed to settle in my country? Are the people only to be trusted to govern themselves locally? How many decades more do we have to bear the burden of this elitist British model of government, born in an era when the propertied class shut the great masses of citizens out of the political process?

Every time we ask that parliament represent our interests, some self-serving politician trots out an ancient Burkean dictum about a member of parliament not owing us his opinions but rather "his good judgment". Well, we have seen what this "good judgment" has resulted in. The loss of our country. The trade-off between more direct democracy and representative "democracy" is not the cliched option of "rule by the incompetent many" vs. "rule of the corrupt few". Instead, representative democracy has come to mean "rule by the corrupt and incompetent few". I for one, do not need to be "represented". I can seek out my own information and come to my own conclusions about state policy, thank you very much. I don't need to delegate my independent thinking to a careerist or opportunist sitting in the House of Commons. These people may have an independent thought now and then, but they never act on it, behaving instead like trained seals who pop up like gophers when a vote is called in the House. Once in a blue moon, as with the recent vote regarding the gun registry, some brave souls will break ranks with their party and vote according to their own counsel. But 99% of the time they vote en bloc. They don't represent us, but their party machine. It is time the great majority of Canadians stood up to have their vote recorded, which would be a "no" not just to their "representatives" in parliament, but to the whole elitist system of "representative" democracy.

Tim Murray
November 29/09