Previous  1  2  3  4  5  Next

And establish what? A class-based system based solely on wealth?
It's somewhat comforting to know Lord Bumhole III could be so broke-ass he eats dogfood. Or Lord Black is cooling his ass in jail.
The ability to elect your very own tyrant?
And have Homeland Security trample over your liberties instead of the Redcoats?

Sticking to my original proposal. Elect the GG by popular vote, strike the Monarch off the records and give nobody any new powers.
Nothing changes....

   

I believe the historical practice was that Royalty were always considered closer to god, sanctioned by the church, etc.

   

Perhaps I'm just missing something, but aren't you Canadian? Dude, we are the Redcoats.



Actually, quite a lot changes. The GG occupies a largely ceremonial position at this point. If we elect the GG, suddenly she has legitimacy to actually use her constitutional powers whenever she see's fit. She basically becomes our president, the decision maker, only called by a different name.

Our system works only because the Queen (or GG) can only get away with using her powers to resolve a constitutional crisis. If the GG had the legitimate mandate that an election would give her, we'd see her using her powers left and right. She has all sorts of vestigial authority: she can even deploy troops!

What I am getting at is that changing the current system requires a complete constitutional overhaul. Not only is it nearly impossible to get the provinces to agree on anything as it is, it's also an extremely expensive process... adn for what? To fix something that already works. It's ridiculous. We have bigger fish to fry.

   

Electing the GG does make him or her a sort of 'Ceremonial President' and allows the public to participate.
But what precedent is there to "use powers left and right" as you claim? There's no power to initiate anything, nor to refuse anything slapped on the GG's plate, nor to do anything different from all the GG's beforehand. If one ever tries, he or she is directly accountable to the public, instead of being beholden to the PM.

And being Canadian, that's exactly the point of the Redcoat comment. We all live next door to a Revolution that merely redefined the class structure and localized potential tyranny, so whatever new process we decide on better learn from that rather than copy it to a tee as most Cdn anti-Monarchists seem to desire!

   

I'd rather have localized tyranny than far away tyranny, so at least if we do elect a tyrant, it'd be our fault.

   

What's the point of a monarchy? We already have a way our country is run in Canada and it has worked out fine for us. In Britain a Monarchy removal is even on there minds as well because the royal family takes in a lot of tax paying money, land and all they are is the government mascots or celebs. Most government buisness is done by the Prime Minister of Britain already and the Royal Family almost does nothing.

People want to go get rid of a monarchy because it's pointless, the whole kings and queens none sense is a old tradition that was improved upon. It would be idiot to take something that was improved to go back to some old tradition.

A monarchy is Canada's history and will always be apart of our history. Even when monarchy is no more apart of how Canada does things it will still be apart of our history and that is where I like it being. In history and not apart of the present.

   

Makes them easier to guillotine if you don't have to go overseas to find them!

   

There is no precedent because the office of GG currently has no democratic legitimacy, as the GG is appointed. That is what keeps the office of GG ceremonial and keeps it from exercising most of its constitutional powers. If the GG were elected, suddenly the position gains democratic legitimacy, hence the powers of the Head of State which it legally holds can be legitimately exercised, as the people will have given the GG an electoral mandate.

I'm not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing, but one way or another it changes things quite a bit.

Also, even if we found a way to keep the office a ceremonial one, what's the point of spending millions of dollars every few years to elect someone to an office where they do nothing but cut ribbons, runner stamp passed bills and read a speach once a year? Seems senseless.

   

That is precisely what the Monarchists are saying.

   

Makes infinitely more sense than spending millions on an office no one gets to vote for.
Are you opposed to spending money on elections?
Do you think the GG would have done anything differently when Harper approached her if she was elected?

You saw the immediate response to my post. "At least it would be OUR tyrant". Not "this is how we can avoid creating a tyrant".
That little NDP logo by your avatar should mean you're not one of those brainwashed into accepting "the least".

   

MacDonaill is right about the democratic legitimacy. By electing the GG, he/she would have the legitimacy to use his/her powers. Right now, the GG has to do what the PM says because it's the PM that has the legitimacy.

Imagine an elected GG during the crisis. Since she is in politics, she would have opinions. If she had liberal opinions, she could have refusred the prorogation and ask for the coalition to form a government, against the PM will.

That's just an example.

   

Yeah, a really bad one.
Most other people don't know how our system works either.

   

How come it's a bad one ?
You have to take democratic legitimity into account.

   

How about we quit catering to the whiners by pointlessly thinking up silly ways to fuck up a perfectly reasonable system of government?

   

Umm...you misunderstood my post. Once again it has to do with democratic legitimacy, like Mac has argued. I'd much rather have the choice to vote for a tyrant or a non-tyrant, instead of having a tyrant in a foreign nation being forced upon me, and like Chumley stated, cannot truly face the consequences of his or her actions (be it impeachment, or the guillotine).

You want to avoid creating a tyrant? Democratic legitimacy starts that. I don't care what you think, having a Queen/GG as a head of state is nothing more than a tyrant with a friendly face. Thankfully, the power of the GG is puny at best, but this is not how the country was formed. Historically, the Prime Minister was the figurehead and the GG had the power.

   

Previous  1  2  3  4  5  Next