Tuesday, September 15, 2009

OTTAWA - Democracy Watch today marked the second United Nations International Day of Democracy by calling on political parties across Canada to work together to close the 90 undemocratic and accountability loopholes and flaws that effectively allow people involved in governments across Canada to act dishonestly, unethically, secretively, unrepresentatively and wastefully without any penalty (To see a summary list of the 90 loopholes, click here).

"Canadian politicans and wealthy interest groups continually try to convince us that our democracy is already world-leading, but in fact after 142 years as a country Canada is still more undemocratic than countries most Canadians view as banana republics," said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.

"No Canadian government needs to wait for yet another scandal, or yet another commission or inquiry report, to close the well-known loopholes that allow people in politics to act dishonestly, unethically, secretively, unrepresentatively and wastefully," said Conacher.  "The longer Canadian governments wait to clean themselves up and to practise good government, the more voters they turn off."

The results of the assessment of Canada's federal government in 2008 by GlobalIntegrity.org, whose methodology for measuring government integrity and good governance practices has been called "best practice" by the World Bank and other international institutions, revealed the following about Canada's overall ranking and ranking in six categories:

• Canada's federal government just barely maintained its ranking of 10th overall of the more than 90 national governments that have been assessed since 2006 (none of which have received a "Very Strong" rating) -- with Bulgaria, Latvia, Poland and the U.S. comfortably at the "Strong" rating level, while Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania and Spain just barely made it into the "Strong" rating tier;
• Canada had its worst ranking in the Government Accountability category (Weak at 64% overall, especially in the sub-category of Judicial Accountability with a Very Weak Score of 31%);
• Canada had its second worst ranking in the Administration and Civil Service category (Moderate at 76% overall, with a Weak score of 61% in the sub-category of Civil Service Regulations);
• Canada had its third worst ruling in the Anti-Corruption and Rule of Law category (Moderate at 77% overall, with a Very Weak score of 58% in the sub-category of Law Enforcement)
• Canada had its best rankings in the categories of Civil Society, Public Information and Media (Strong at 87% overall, with a Very Strong mark of 92% for media freedom overall), Oversight and Regulation (Strong at 87% overall, especially in the sub-category of national government auditing with a Very Strong mark of 94%), and Elections (Strong at 86% overall) -- however, in all of these categories Canada had serious loopholes and flaws in its rules and enforcement record.
  

As GlobalIntegrity.org adds more assessments of more countries each year, unless federal political parties take action to close the loopholes and flaws, it is very likely that Canada will drop in the rankings even further.

Provincial, territorial and municipal governments across Canada may have closed some of the loopholes that still exist in Canada's federal government, but they have also left loopholes open that the federal government has closed.  As a result, every government in Canada has about 90 undemocratic and accountability loopholes and flaws in its system (To see a summary list of the 90 loopholes, click here).

"Canadian government decision-making and accountability systems are the scandal, and as long as they are loophole-filled and poorly enforced no one should be surprised when people in Canadian politics act in scandalous ways," said Conacher.

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