National Affairs
So much for improving democracy
Claire Hoy

If there is one thing that constantly gets up the collective noses of the voters, it's politicians who beg for

your vote based on a certain premise and then, once elected, fail to keep their promise.

It's been more than a dozen years, for example, since then Liberal leader Jean Chretien solemnly promised - over and over again - that if you made him prime minister he'd cancel Brian Mulroney's hated GST.

Well, you voted for him. Several times. And he didn't cancel the GST.

Then there was current Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty staging a photo-op by formally signing a declaration that, if elected, he would not raise taxes. So what's the first thing he did once he suckered the public into voting for him? You guess it. He brought in that extremely burdensome health tax.

And so it goes.

Even voters who couldn't stand former Ontario premier Mike Harris - and there weren't as many as the media and other party leaders now claim, since Harris did win two consecutive majorities - concede that the one thing he did was to do what he said he would do.

But there aren't many politicians who actually end up respecting their election promises, a reality which has contributed significantly to the widespread lack of public trust in politicians - and, I'd argue, helped keep voter turnouts down. It gets worse.

It's bad enough to have a politician promise a certain course of action only to change courses once he (or she) gets into office. But it's at least equally annoying - and dishonest - for politicians to first get themselves elected and then, after the ballots are safely counted, make a major announcement about their intentions to do something they failed to mention before they got your vote.

Toronto's newly-re-elected Mayor David Miller, for example, just a couple of weeks after getting back into office, now says that he is considering using the new municipal taxing powers (which themselves were given to the cities by McGuinty without much debate and with no previous notice) to impose a parking lot surcharge in downtown Toronto.

The point here isn't whether you think it's a good idea or a bad idea - for the record, I think it's stupid and irresponsible because it would certainly scare away even more tourists than Miller and his NDP stalwarts already have with their car-punitive policies.

It's just that if Miller wanted to do this - and he must have been thinking about it, given that the election is just barely past - he should have said so during the campaign. Having not done so, he has not legitimate moral authority to do that now.

But that's a minor imposition on democracy, alas, compared to what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done in the past week.

Yes, you guessed it. We're talking here of Harper's decision to declare Quebecois - whatever or whomever they may be - a "nation" within a united Canada.

Applauded by most Liberals and the NDP - and even supported by Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe - read chief separatist - which should tell you everything you want to know - Harper has been widely praised in most of the media for his clever ploy to undercut a motion by Duceppe which would have taken this "nation" nonsense one step further.

And while in the give and take of parliamentary debating, Harper may indeed have one-upped Duceppe, he may have forever changed the nature of Canada - which, last time we checked, IS a nation - and not for the better.

And - more to the point here - it's not something that Harper told Canadians he planned to do during the last election. Indeed, he has steadfastly fought against the separatist notion - as have the other federal parties - that Quebec and/or Quebecois constitutes a nation in any legitimate sense of the word.

In short, we've been had once again by the politicalacademic media elite. Those who support this dopey concept claim that a)-it will make Quebeckers feel more wanted and b)- it's only symbolic and doesn't mean much anyway.

Oh really? Wait until the unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court judges start imposing their awesome powers to interpret - or, as they've often done, simply invent - meaning to a parliamentary motion elevating Quebec's status to nationhood.

And what, exactly, is a "Quebecois" anyway? What about anglo-Quebecers, or Jewish-Quebecers, or Lebanese-Quebecers, etc. not to mention franco-Ontarians, franco-Manitobans, et al. Do they qualify? Or is nationhood being bestowed only upon a narrowly defined, race-based group of Quebecers? Who knows? The courts, alas, will ultimately tell us.

And whether you think it's a good idea or a bad idea doesn't matter. The politicians didn't bother to ask and it's now too late to do anything about it. So much for all those promises about improving democracy. Hah!