When the political party matters!
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Yesterday I suggested that people need to look at the candidates in their ridings, and that they couldn’t just presume based on the party that a candidate would be good on technology law. There will be some candidates that would clearly be an asset to the future discussion on copyright, and some that will be detrimental.
What if all the candidates in your riding have no personal views about copyright or technology at all? In this case, which may be a majority of ridings, a different dynamic can come into play.
Whether the Liberals or Conservatives form the government, a copyright bill will likely be tabled. Both of these parties believe that copyright reform is needed, and seem to believe that the direction suggested by the 1996 WIPO treaties is the right way to go. While the Liberal Bill C-60 wasn’t as bad as the Conservative Bill C-61, they both suggested a similar backward-facing direction.
A committee will be struck to study whatever bill is tabled. It is in committees where the real work of parliament happens. While it is the government of the day that tables bills, it is the committees that shape the consultation and what amendments will be proposed to the bill. Given copyright is one of those areas that few parliamentarians have any knowledge of or interest in, the rest of parliament will likely simply rubber-stamp the work of the committee.
The current rules of the House provide for 12 members on each standing committee. Party representation on committees is roughly proportional to the party standings in the House. With 308 members in the house, that means that for every approximately 26 members in the house a party gets a member on a committee.
In the last parliament the NDP had 30 members, which only allowed them a single member in most committees. In order to get a second member into a committee, the NDP would need to have 52 members in their caucus. We know that Charlie Angus will be in any committee studying Copyright. If we want to have someone like Michael Byers also in that committee it means that not only would Michael Byers need to win his seat, but that 21 other NDP candidates who are not incumbents must also win their seats.
This will be a breakthrough for the NDP to have this many seats, and with the current campaign it is very hard to predict what is going to happen.
My worry for this campaign is the same as for nearly every campaign that I have watched over the years. At the last moment far too many people vote based on fear (so-called strategic voting to keep out someone they hate the most) rather than voting for what they actually believe in. Vote splitting is a side-effect of the antiquated First Past the Post electoral system, with Canada being one of only 4 countries still using this system (Canada, USA, UK, India).
If you don’t want to split the vote, think beyond this single election and vote for a candidate representing a party that wants to abolish vote splitting in Canada. Since the Conservatives and Liberals claim the current system is perfectly fine, a vote for them is not “strategic”.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
Los Angeles Times – , September , 2008
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October 6th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
We also need those who don’t care tell that they don’t care: come to the election and spoil your ballot so that your “don’t care” is counted too.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
I wouldn’t say that having only 2 political parties is necessarily a good thing. In the US, the Republican party is awful, but the Libertarian party is actually well thought out. The Libertarians and the Democrats need to flush out the Conservatives that screwed over America. Granted, vote splitting does tend to be bad, but people often vote for someone as “anti-someone else”, whereas in the 3 party system, the people voting actually have to look at the other two candidates and look at what they voted.
Because the Libertarian Party is so small, Republicans only vote Republican because they are imbred idiots, and Democrats vote Democrate because they are afraid of the imbreds screwing over America again. With a 3rd party, the 3rd person can still keep intelligent debate topics going, which the US has sadly lacked…
October 7th, 2008 at 3:50 am
A drive around the city in which I live (it’s not very big) shows there is overwhelming support for the Conservatives. It’s hard to miss. There are only a handful of signs here and there for the Liberals as well as the Green Party, and I’ve only seen one single sign for the NDP. I’m not 100% sure who I should be voting for anymore, or if it is even going to matter in the end. I’m pretty sure the Conservatives are NOT the best choice for Canadians, particularly those interested in not only copyright law in the digital age, but other things such as consumer rights, privacy, net neutrality and the environment. Of especial concern is the fact that the Conservatives seem far more interested in pandering to both corporate and American interests (the war in Iraq for instance) than acting in the best interests of the Canadian people. The wife and I are not very happy with the way the future is looking to turn out at all.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:37 am
^^ Where do you live?
Cheers!
October 7th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Please vote. Do not presume that just because a party is a well financed party and is able to get a lot of lawn signs that this automatically translated into votes. In fact, which party is able to get their supporters to actually show up at the polls is often the party that will win.
If the Conservatives believe they are going to win and get lazy, then this gives room for a different candidate to win. The same in the reverse — if supporters of other parties already believe they have lost, then that becomes self-fulfilling.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
^^ We voted, but it looks like the signs around town were indeed indicative of how the vote would turn out. Oh well, I suppose it could have been worse. The Conservatives could have gotten the majority. I watched the final debate between Obama and McCain when it came on TV recently. I’m not a big fan of America, especially it’s politics, but nevertheless did find the debate interesting (and nothing better was on lol). It wasn’t hard to see that voting for McCain is like saying you want Bush for another term. The guy look and sounds like he is some kind of clone. I pray people in the US will vote smarter this time around because the world needs more of Bush like I need a hole in the head. Being influentially close neighbors, this is actually important for Canada too, especially with Stephen Harper’s continued reign on Parliament Hill.