Democracy Watch marks Fourth International Day of Democracy

Calls on political parties across Canada to make much-needed democratizing changes

Thursday, September 15, 2011

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 100 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 more information about the Day, click here; To see a summary list of the 100 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 144 years as a country Canada is still more undemocratic than some countries 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 2011 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 that Canada dropped from 11th to 19th out of the almost 100 countries evaluated since 2007. 

Increasing problems with government secrecy and weak enforcement of key ethics and government accountability laws, as well as the 2008 arbitrary election call and the 2008 and 2009 shutdowns of Parliament, have lowered Canada's federal government from the high-"Moderate" score of 80 in 2008 to the mid-Moderate rating of 75 in 2010.

Overall, the main problem with Canada's federal government is that while it has enacted almost all the laws needed for an effective government integrity system (and so receives a Strong overall score of 90 for its Legal Framework), loopholes and flaws in the laws, and weak enforcement, undermine the system (so that Canada received Weak overall score of 61 for its implementation of the laws).

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 100 undemocratic and accountability loopholes and flaws in its system (To see a summary list of the 100 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.

See for more details on Democracy Watch's website:

• about dishonesty in politics, Democracy Watch's Honesty in Politics Campaign;
• about secret donations, Democracy Watch's Money in Politics Campaign; 
• about government secrecy, Democracy Watch's Open Government Campaign;
• about loopholes and lack of enforcement of conflict of interest rules by the Ethics Commissioner, click here;
  
• about unethical lobbying and lack of enforcement by the Commissioner of Lobbying, click here;
• about whistleblower protection flaws and lack of enforcement by the Integrity Commissioner, click here;
  
• about arbitrary election calls, click here and Canada's flawed voting system, click here;
  
• about Cabinet patronage appointments, section 10 of Democracy Watch's 2010 Report Card on the Federal Conservatives' Accountability and Democratic Reform Record;
• about lack of Senate accountability, click here;
• about weak government accountability lapdog agencies, click here, and;
• about lack of judicial accountability, see section III-3 of Global Integrity's 2010 Integrity Indicators Scorecard for Canada.
  

[NOTE: See also Democracy Watch's 2010 Report Card on the Federal Conservatives' Accountability and Democratic Reform Record for details about the federal Conservatives' 39 broken promises in the loophole-filled, so-called "Federal Accountability Act" (FAA) and other measures which, along with the inaction of past Liberal and Conservative federal governments, have left 100 undemocratic and accountability loopholes and flaws in the federal government's accountability and decision-making systems (To see a summary of the 100 loopholes, click here)].

[NOTE: See also Democracy Watch's news release about the May 2010 report of the Oliphant Inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, to which the Conservative government has still not responded.]

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