Territorial politics offers hope for Parliamentary Reform

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Nov 28, 2003

And now for something completely different. No really. It is.

This week elections were held in the Northwest Territories. For the uninitiated - and I can imagine that is an awful lot- it's that big cold place somewhere above those three other big cold places: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Still confused? Those are the big empty spaces you sleep through when flying to Toronto from Vancouver. With me now?

If the prospect of territorial democracy doesn't absolutely grab you, hold on before you move on to seeking out today's television listings (it's all re-runs right now anyway). Believe it or no, those barren hinterlands to the north may be practicing one of the most progressive, innovative forms of democracy in the country.

When 'territorialites' (I just can't think of an appropriate name for them) headed to the polls, they marked their X's not for any political party but for the individual they believe will best represent the needs of a constituency. Novel, huh? That is to say, political parties as we know them in the rest of the nation do not play the same role in territorial politics. There is quite literally no need to seek the endorsement of an organized political entity in order to get elected.

So who wins?

Everyone, actually. The territorial legislature is filled with a group of individuals whose allegiance is strictly to their constituents, not to party ideology. Lest you worry that a whole group of privates shall be ineffective without the leadership of a general and maybe a couple of colonels, fear not. The territory will still be led by a Premier and Cabinet to form the executive branch of government. The difference lies in how that executive is chosen.

Once the legislature is stuffed with its independently selected candidates, the new MLA's elect a Premier and Cabinet from within their own ranks. True, they have only nineteen MLA's from which to choose but in the Northwest Territories that makes up a sizable chunk of the population!

In a time when Canadian electoral watchers and planners are doing a whole lot of collective navel gazing about the sorry state of parliamentary affairs, the system in play up north has a lot of benefits to consider.

First of all, elected representatives are always free to vote their conscience or as they see their constituents wishing. In our traditional parliamentary system, a member's first loyalty is to the party: what the leader says goes. Certainly a member is always legally able to vote the way he or she chooses but the reality is that voting against the party often results in expulsion, making re-election next to impossible.