National Affairs
No grand and glorious principle
Claire Hoy

It's been almost a year since the voters in the Torontoarea riding of Mississauga-Streetsville decided, again, that they wanted a Liberal in Ottawa. MP Wajid Khan, a Muslim, car dealer, and former Pakistani Air Force pilot, was their man.

In April, Khan was on stage with former Liberal immigration minister Joe Volpe, openly supporting Volpe's pathetic bid for the Liberal leadership ultimately captured by Stephane Dion.

In July, after Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis quit as Volpe's campaign manager over Volpe's unconditional support for Israel in its' conflict with Lebanon, Khan became Volpe's Ontario leadership campaign chairman.

In August, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Khan as his special adviser on South Asia and the Middle East, a move hailed by Harper's parliamentary secretary Jason Kenney as an example of the prime minister "thinking outside the box in the context of a minority Parliament on an issue where there should be a national consensus rather than just narrow partisanship prevailing."

Khan himself dismissed claims that Harper was using him to build bridges to the Muslim community, upset over the prime minister's unequivocal support of Israel, saying he gave Harper "a lot of credit ... Canada must be able to utilize, I believe, all of its resources, even if it means putting aside partisanship, in order to get the best longterm results."

Liberals, of course, weren't buying this 'non-partisan" stuff, and within days Khan announced he wouldn't be attending Liberal caucus meetings and would step down as the party's associate defence critic.

Even so, he said his new role was "outside of partisan politics" and he remained a dedicated Liberal and supporter of Volpe's leadership ambitions.

Earlier this month, of course, Khan ended his "non-partisan" charade, bolting the Liberals to become a Conservative MP, thereby giving the Tories a terrific opportunity to win a heavily-Muslim Toronto-area riding in the next election, something the party has had little success in doing.

The Liberals, as you'd expect, cried foul, apparently forgetting that before the last election, the Liberals had lured two Conservative MPs - Belinda Stronach and Scott Brison - to their party and rewarded them with cabinet posts.

At least Harper didn't put Khan in cabinet, although if Khan wins his riding next time out - which he likely will - you can count on his elevation then.

So what's the point of all this?

Khan is certainly not the first elected politician to change sides - and won't be the last - but that still doesn't make it right.

Lots of people rob banks too, but that doesn't mean it's okay.

This writer has been covering politics on all levels for more than 40 years, and has probably witnessed at least two dozen defections from one party to another.

They all have two things in common: they're based on raw, political ambition rather than some grand and glorious principle; and they rob their local voters of their democratic right to be represented by the party of their choice.

And that, dear hearts, is the rub.

In the last federal election, the voters of Mississauga- Streetsville dutifully trudged off to the polls and decided, in their best collective wisdom, that Khan, the Liberal, was their man.

People vote for many reasons, but one of the primary reasons in our system - where we don't actually vote directly for our prime minister - is to vote for the party which you want to see running the government.

Regular readers will know that had I been a voter in Mississauga-Streetsville, the Liberal candidate would not have been my choice. However, once the votes were counted, I would have accepted the reality that my federal representative was a Liberal. And, as in all levels of government, he was elected not just to represent those who voted for him, but to represent everyone in his riding.

Sounds pretty basic, eh?

Yet, by defecting from one party to another, Khan - in the same way that previous defectors have - has robbed the people of his riding of their democratic rights to be represented by a Liberal. He has stolen their vote.

He didn't ask them for permission. Nor did they give it.

He just took it upon himself to give them the electoral finger.

I think this is wrong and there is a simple solution: if you want to change parties you should, by law, be forced to resign and then run in a by-election. If the voters reelected you, fair enough. If they don't, you're toast.

But it's not going to happen. Why? Because all parties, nomatter what they say about their support for democracy, want to retain the opportunity to buy and sell each other.

And they wonder why people don't trust politicians. Hah!