Saturday, March 13, 2010

How can Parliament work if the Liberals don't show up?

The Iceman made an interesting comment over at the Phantoms place that got me thinking thoughts.

Iceman: "Half a million Canadians voted for one of the abstainers. Half a million Canadians who went to the polls to vote for a representative, and that representative was absent on the most important legislative vote of the year."....


Half a million! Wow, that is one hell of a lot of Liberal voters not represented by their chosen MP, but what about the rest of the people? The ones that did not vote Liberal. Are they not entitled to at least have their MP show up at work.

Time for some weak math: 29 (absent Liberals) x 100,000 (My guestimate of the average population per riding ) = nearly 3 Million People!

3 Million constituents were not represented when their MP's vote was not recorded on a budget that the Liberals themselves thought was bad but didn't even attempt to introduce an amendment to improve it. They couldn't be bothered. They couldn't be bothered with trying to improve things and they couldn't be bothered to even show up at work. Some alternative that is.

Sure they will stand in front of the cameras and claim that they are trying to get things done, represent the people, and make Parliament work, but really, how can Parliament work if the Liberals don't even bother to show up.


More games, but not giving 3 million people the representation they deserve is really not a game is it.

14 comments:

The_Iceman said...

Half a million Liberal voters in 29 ridings, 1.05 million voters for all parties in those 29. I suppose your estimates include people who didn't vote?

I was trying to speak directly to the half million people who voted Liberal, elected a Liberal MP, and were not represented on the most important legislative day of the year.

Ardvark said...

Yes, everyone in the riding. I looked a a couple of ridings and the 100K number for population seemed about right.

Anonymous said...

I guess "Prorogue" means nothing...

VW said...

I'd guess that around the end of April, we're going to see a bunch of stories about growing dissatisfaction in Liberal caucus ranks. If the upcoming "thinker's conference" fails to galvanize morale (which is quite likely), then you're going to see more than a few calls for a leadership review.

Anonymous said...

The Liberals holding a "thinkers" conference. Boy, there's an oxymoron if I ever saw one.

wilson said...

Liberals don't want to actually work,
they go to the House to smear private citizens,
where they are totally UNACCOUNTABLE for what they say....because of Parliamentary immunity.

Anonymous said...

Accountability is something the "other guy" needs to do.

Ardvark said...

C_WTF There is a difference between not being able to work because of circumstances such as when Parliament was prorogued and nothing was going on in Parliament and not going to work because you don't want to when something IS going on.

The Liberals are CHOOSING not to go to work when they should be there. Which is sort of ironic considering they told us hundreds of times that Canadians want them to be at work.

If you cannot see the difference try the following on your boss next week. Tell 'em that you will not be showing up to work on Monday because the office was closed on Sunday. Let us know how that goes.

maryT said...

At 1.95/vote, what a waste of taxpayers money. Time to get rid of that subsidy.

CanadianSense said...

Video is up, enjoy. Will need to edit some empty seats next time in QP.

CanadianSense said...

Stephen Taylor noted the 150 boys night out may have been from the Gov't website.

Maybe they can include a straw man votes who will show for work during supply bills.

Anonymous said...

It's time to set a Pro-rata Salary system based on a pre-set number of days to earn the money.
Also,since the NDP dictators demand that everyone vote the same way for each Voting issue,then Just have Layton get paid whi8le the others vote by-proxy and don't have to show up.
This saves millions and will change the Retirement dates because that too can be a "Credit" system like in the schools where Funding is geared to attendence.
Clerks can keep records and give to a central Accounting department to do a Running-Total.

It's OUR money,not THEIRS .

maryT said...

Layton was on cbc this a.m, talking about how PMSH has no respect for parliament re appointing a Judge to review documents re the terrorists captured. He never mentioned the disrespect for parliament of the 29 liberals who refused to show up to vote on the budget.
Iggy says turning this over to the Judge is just giving him permission to say what documents can be withheld from MPs.
Does anyone believe that Hedy, Jennings, Dewar and others could keep what they would see secret, other than those involving liberals.

Patrick Ross said...

It's the modern art of gutless politics, and the modern Liberal Party has become a master of it.