Thursday, December 22, 2005

OTTAWA - Today, with less than five weeks left in the federal election campaign, Democracy Watch set out the key election challenge for all federal political parties -- if they want power from voters, they will have to pledge to share their power by increasing their accountability systemically, comprehensively, and effectively.

So far the Conservatives, with a platform containing 56 pledges to strengthen government accountability in 12 key areas, as well as democratic reforms to the Senate and nomination races, are far ahead of the other four parties that have measurable support of Canadians in election surveys.

The NDP re-released their ethics and accountability plan first introduced in October, expanding it from seven to 20 measures, while the Liberals, Bloc and Greens have yet to make any solid promises in the area of government accountability and democratic reforms.

“The parties have all been making promises about what they will do if they win power, but only the Conservatives have given voters a reason to believe they won’t abuse power by promising to pass a comprehensive, multi-measure law to increase the federal government’s accountability as the first thing they will do if elected,” said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.

Essentially, to clean-up the federal government and make it effectively accountable, all loopholes must be removed in the spending, access-to-information, political donations, ethics, lobbying, whistleblower protection, election and hiring/appointment laws, and all these laws must cover every government and government-funded institution, with high fines and firing as the penalty for all violations,.

Unfortunately, even the Conservatives’ 56 pledges leave some key gaps, as follows (in some cases, as noted below, the NDP has pledged to close the gap):

• pass an “honesty in politics” law with high fines for liars (including requiring MPs who switch parties between elections to resign and run in a by-election, as the NDP proposes);
• expand the powers of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Information Commissioner and Auditor General so that they can fine and publicly name violators of the codes, rules and laws they enforce (the Conservatives only pledge to give the Ethics Commissioner the power to levy fines);
• to prevent secret donations from corrupting federal government politicians and officials, as proposed by the federal Department of Finance place federal politicians, their staff, Cabinet appointees and any government employees with decision-making power on the anti-corruption watch list of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (Fintrac);
• as the NDP has proposed, require lobbyists to disclose how much they spend on each lobbying campaign and  their past work with any Canadian or foreign government, political party or candidate, and clearly ban lobbyists from working with any government, political party or candidate, and;
• introduce and pass a “meaningful public consultation” law to ensure Canadians have a strong and direct say in government policy-making (as in Sweden).