Canadian Senators Make Big Corporate Cash

Did you know that Canadian Senators are allowed to sit on the boards of huge multinational corporations and serve in the Senate at the same time? It kind of makes you wonder who they’re really working for. At least Members of Parliament have to wait until they leave office to cash in on all the favours they’ve done for their corporate buddies. The revolving door between corporate Canada and the government is an insult to democracy. We here at Operation Maple think it’s just plain wrong, and we’d like to highlight some of the worst offenders.

The Senator Representing Oilsands Quest: Pamela Wallin (Conservative).

Former TV journalist Wallin has been a senator since 2009. She received $136,885 from Oilsands Quest— a Saskatchewan based oil exploration and development company— in 2010. Wallin got a whopping $442,083 in executive compensation from Oilsands Quest in 2009. As a side note, anybody else find it interesting that a woman who made her career working in journalism is now representing a political party hellbent on dismantling our nation’s only public broadcaster? She sure does look at home in that throne though, doesn’t she?

30 Seconds of Democracy

By Dr. John Conway, Professor, University of Regina

Now that Harper has a majority, we are on the cusp of Canadians again learning the naked truth about our political system. It is a truth learned many times before by past generations, and then forgotten by subsequent generations: Canada is not a democracy. Despite all the propaganda and prettification we endure during our officially sanctioned self-celebrations, Canada is very undemocratic and is getting more so under Harper.
The reality is that we live in a system that combines a parliamentary dictatorship with an aristocracy of wealth. The real rulers of Canada are the capitalist class, increasingly unbridled by democratic constraints. Granted they must govern through Parliament, and hence must persuade political parties and politicians to do their bidding. Parliament remains supreme and presents a constant threat to the authority of those who rule. That’s why each election poses a degree of uncertainty; hence voters who have given up are preferred. But Parliament still remains a constant danger because each election provides a window of popular possibility, the danger that the people might be swept up and effectively enjoy that one brief second of democracy they are allowed….casting a secret ballot.
Casting a secret ballot is the one act of participation Canadians are allowed. After that moment Parliament rules and who rules Parliament rules Canada. Levels of popular support become legally and constitutionally irrelevant. No theory of democracy seriously argues that democracy means that for one brief moment, the moment of casting a ballot, the citizen lives in a democracy and that is the singular essence of democracy.
Real, living democracy is the ability to effectively participate in civil society and continuous democratic debate. We don’t have that. We don’t have a free press. We don’t have the means to organize effectively against the powerful. We are quite powerless, but for those few popular organizations we can build to battle things out between elections with the hope – always there is that glimmer of hope – that the next time we cast ballots we will be able to change things.
The world is witnessing the Arab spring, a wholly unexpected spontaneous uprising. Perhaps the harshness of four years of right wing rule will bring a democratic spring to Canada. We can call it the Harper spring, as we bring him down and replace his regime with something closer to the will of the majority of Canadians. Something closer to a true democracy.

Real Killers of Democracy

Mike Duffy says the “stunt” by Bridgette DePape was “bad for democracy”. Know what’s bad for democracy?

This man! And all the other senators who killed two bills already passed by Parliament.

Bill-311 would have helped our environment; Bill-393 would have helped the dying through cheaper drugs.

The man behind all this? Our Prime Minister: A man held in contempt by the House for his disrespect of parliamentary house rules.

The one Canadian to go straight to the heart of things?

A 21 year old Senate page.