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I have to confess I do not know the names of the two Conservative MPs for Watford and Three Rivers regions. I am aware however they were depressingly shoe-horned into their seats by our de-facto unelected Prime Minister Dominic Cummings. An intelligent and basically decent ex-minister such as David Gauke simply could not be tolerated.

The country has now been awakened to the reality of what a considerable number of the electorate have put into power. We have an elected Prime Minister who simply could not survive without the Machiavellian guidance of a despicable character, who has taken upon himself how he might interpret the medical advice to avoid a most dangerous virus. It is only the little people who must follow the rules and not him!

A fairly recent newspaper article described Dominic Cummings as a Doctor Strangelove character. We should be deeply frightened and concerned about our supposed democracy, with the dangerous Strangelove at the helm.

Francis Durham

Shepherds Way, Rickmansworth

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Letter: We should be concerned about our supposed democracy - Watford Observer

Three paths towards supranational democracy?

When I wrote Climate Change and the Future of Democracy in 2018, I discussed three distinct paths toward the goal of democratizing global governance in response to the climate crisis. The first path would bypass national governments altogether and organize municipalities on a global scale. This method was advocated by Benjamin Barber in his book If Mayors Ruled the World and has been further developed since his death in 2017 by the Global Parliament of Mayors. The second path would be to create a federal union of established democracies that could grow over time. The idea of combining the worlds democracies into a single federal union was advocated by Clarence Streit in his 1939 book Union Now, and the evolution of the European Union since the 1990s has made this strategy appear more plausible than it did during Streits lifetime. The third and most ambitious path toward supranational democracy would be to democratize the United Nations. The most famous advocate of this idea was the physicist Albert Einstein.

In an open letter to the UN General Assembly in October of 1947, Einstein declared that, The moral authority of the UN would be considerably enhanced if the delegates were directly elected by the people. Were they responsible to an electorate, they would have much more freedom to follow their consciences. Thus we could hope for more statesmen and fewer diplomats. At the time, critics in both the United States and the Soviet Union condemned Einsteins proposal, but the idea of bringing democratic representation to the United Nations has continued to grow over the past seventy-five years, and it has since been promoted by the Campaign for a UN Parliamentary Assembly.

The moral authority of the UN would be considerably enhanced if the delegates were directly elected by the people. (Einstein)

Each of these three paths toward supranational democracy has distinct advantages and drawbacks. Uniting municipal governments in a global parliament offers the advantage of bypassing nationalism, but it risks leaving rural people behind, which might exacerbate the cultural divisions between the city and countryside that have fueled the rise of illiberal politics around the world.

A federal union of democratic governments has a strong appeal since democracies have a long history of peaceful relations with each other, but it is bedeviled by the question of how it can balance political cohesiveness with democratic integrity when one of its member states elects to leave that federal union, or when one or more governments remaining within the union ceases to be a legitimate democracy.

Finally, the idea reforming the UN so that it includes an elected world parliament offers the compelling advantage of being the most direct and inclusive path toward supranational democracy, offering the possibility of representation to people in both rural and urban settings, and to people living under all forms of government. On the downside, this model is beset by the inevitable problem of unelected national governments sending handpicked delegates to the parliament who would not effectively represent the citizens of those countries. For this reason, a UN Parliamentary Assembly must remain an advisory body and must not attempt to consider any form of binding legislation until all of its representatives are elected in free and fair multi-party elections which are open to international monitoring.

A UN Parliamentary Assembly as most plausible response

In Climate Change and the Future of Democracy, I expressed qualified support for all of these approaches, and pointed out that they are not mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, I argued then that a federal union of established democracies was the steadiest path forward. Over the past two years, however, two developments have made the more ambitious goal of establishing a UN Parliamentary Assembly emerge as the most plausible response to the challenges we now face.

First, the process of backsliding in longstanding democracies has continued to accelerate, thus suggesting that any federal union of democracies would face an even more vexing choice between political cohesion and democratic integrity than that which confronts the European Union today. Second, the economic and political crisis engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the importance of agile and compassionate global governance to the forefront. This crisis, like the myriad ecological and public health crises that will emerge as a result of climate change in the near future, is global in nature and it requires a congruent response. If the UN is to meet this ongoing crisis and the others that lay just around the corner, it must become far more democratic, transparent, and responsive than it is today. The establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly is the necessary first step in that direction.

Unless we bring the responsiveness, adaptability, and accountability of democracy to the global regulation of trade and industry, we will not be able to deal with climate change and the myriad disasters and disruptions that it is bound to engender. If each democracy attempts to weather the coming storm in the service of its own national interest, none of them will survive, at least not in the form that we might honestly describe as a democracy. Such democratic principles as due process, privacy, freedom of the press, and free and fair elections have already been eroded in the twenty-first century, and they are not likely to survive in a world where extreme weather events, droughts, famines, and mass migrations are addressed by an anarchical society of sovereign nation states, each angling for its own advantage in a zero-sum game. Conversely,if wecan extend these vital principles of democracy beyond the nation-state, we will increase our own chances for survival through rational, accountable, and flexible cooperation.

Extending the principles of democracy beyond the nation-state will increase our chances of survival

The most difficult question regarding global democracy is not whether we should have it, but how we could possibly achieve it. The initiative in this case will not come from governments but from private citizens joining forces across national borders. The abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century and the political enfranchisement of women in the twentieth century both furnish excellent examples of how movements by individual citizens can lead to fundamental social, economic, and political change on a global scale. In his 2012essayThe State of the Speciesthe celebrated authorCharles Mann describes the scale of tremendous behavioral changes that have taken place in the past two centuries, includingthe statistical decline in violence documented by Harvard psychologistSteven Pinker,the near total eradication of slavery, and the growing enfranchisement of women across the world. Mann attributes these dramatic changes to the behavioral plasticity of human beings, a defining feature ofHomo sapiensbig brain.Citing more quotidian examples, Mann observes that this plasticity means that humans can change their habits; almost as a matter of course, people change careers, quit smoking or take up vegetarianism, convert to new religions, and migrate to distant lands where they must learn strange languages. While it is far from inevitable that we will change our collective behavior soon enough to avoid catastrophic climate change, Mann submits that it is at least a possibility.

Pointing to the vast human potential that has been liberated by social progress of thepast two centuries, Mann observes that, removing the shackles from women and slaves has begun to unleash the suppressed talents of two-thirds of the human race. Drastically reducing violence has prevented the waste of countless lives and staggering amounts of resources. He then poses the rhetorical question of whether we wouldnt use those talents and those resources to draw back before the abyss? Of course, the jury is still out on whether the past successes in human progress that Mann discusses portend future success in addressing the unprecedented challenge of climate change. However, Manns point about liberating the suppressed talents of two thirds of the human race suggests that supranational democracy is the political system is most likely to meet that challenge. The facts on the ground indicate that the protection of individual rights and access to education for women can pay dramatic dividends in fighting climate change. In his 2017 bookDrawdownthe environmentalistPaul Hawken reports that educating girls and women is the most powerful lever available for breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, while mitigating emissions by curbing population growth. Hawken also cites research that ranks campaign to educate girls, such as those led by Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, as among the most cost-competitive options for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, requiring an approximate investment of just ten dollars per ton of carbon dioxide.

The slow and arduousexpansion of democracy and individual rights in the United States only began in earnestafter the catastrophe of the Civil War.In the years following of that conflagration, the American poetWalt Whitman penned an essay calledDemocratic Vistasin which he identified the creation of a universal community that honored each individual as the ultimate goal of democracy. This was a powerful ethos that ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however various and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. Whitman identified this audacious goal as the old, yet ever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her fond philosophers and poets. Though Whitman viewed the horizontal expansion of democracy as encompassing the whole human race, he viewed the powers of any democratic government as limited by a necessary respect for the autonomy and responsibility of the individual. As Whitman saw it, the mission of government was to train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.

Democratic institutions need to evolve beyond the scope of national borders

The relationship between a butterfly and its chrysalis offers a biological analogy that could shed some light on this relationship between the ideals of democracy and the sheltering institutions of the nation state. In the closing words of hisGettysburg Address, Lincoln alluded to the broader significance of the struggle to preserve the Union for the fate of democracy across the world. In Lincolns reasoning, the function of the Union was not only to protect the rights of its citizens but also to provide a shelter for democratic movement that transcended national borders. Like a chrysalis defending the slow transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly, the Union provided an irreplaceable shelter in which the culture and legal institutions of the United States could mature into a new kind of democracy: a new birth of freedom that would be unprecedented in size and scope. The analogy of the chrysalis and the butterfly, like so many analogies drawn from nature, entails both creation and destruction. For the butterfly to take flight, it must tear open the shelter of the chrysalis and leave it behind. What had been a shelter would become a sarcophagus if this process did not take place. The nation state, which has sheltered democracy for centuries, will become its sarcophagus if democratic institutions are not allowed to grow and evolve beyond the narrow scope of national borders.

The question that the human race faces in the twenty first century is not whether we should or should not have global governance. The global governance that we already have insures the nearly frictionless flow of goods and services around the planet by maintaining and expanding a transport and communications infrastructure that dwarfs anything seen in all of human history. The real question is whether we can make the global governance that we already have fairer, more democratic, and more effective in protecting the lives and wellbeing of the living and the yet to be born.

Continued here:
Albert Einstein was right: we must democratize the UN - Democracy Without Borders

North Carolina has a long history of voter suppression. Recent attempts to implement a voter-registration law were decisively struck down in 2016 by a federal appeals court, which said its provisions deliberately target African-Americans with almost surgical precision in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls. Another example in 2016 was the redistricting plan that was struck down by a [federal] district court, ruling the plan constituted illegal racial gerrymandering by populating two districts disproportionately with African-American voters. Currently, counties accounting for half of North Carolina registered voters have cut back on hours and decreased the number of polling places.

In order to protect our democracy, we must address these issues and go even further to allocate $4 billion in federal funding for states and mandate the implementation of reforms nationwide like early voting, postage-paid vote-by-mail and online and same-day voter registration.

Woody EisenbergAsheville

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Letter: Protect democracy with voting reforms - Mountain Xpress

Some of the 98 rookie MPs elected in the last election say theyre missing out on the cut-and-thrust of Ottawas parliamentary experience as Canadas federal lawmakers, and a Conservative MP says if theres an early election this could become the forgotten Parliament, the one during the global pandemic.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic on March 11, Parliament has only sat for about six weeks since the last federal election on Oct. 21, 2019. The House was suspended on March 13.

The rookie MPs interviewed for this article acknowledge the importance of suspending Parliament during the pandemic, but also say theyre missing out on a big part of being federal legislators, including not attending House committees, the daily Question Period, official functions, diplomatic functions, meeting in-person with staff, other MPs, lobbyists, and building key relationships in-person in Ottawa.

Doing democracy by Zoom meetings is just not the same as being there in the House of Commons, said rookie Conservative MP Michael Kram (Regina-Wascana, Sask.), who unseated former Liberal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale in the last election. Certainly the new opportunities to learn are not there as much for the new MPs but thats something we all have to deal with.

Rookie Liberal MP Han Dong (Don Valley North, Ont.) said he misses his regular parliamentary duties in Ottawa but under the circumstances theres no option but to work remotely.

I do miss Ottawa, I miss sitting in the Parliament, said Mr. Dong. It is what it is, the nature of things. We just have to cope with it.

In 2019, 98 rookie MPs 43 Conservatives, 24 Liberals, 22 Bloc Qubcois, eight NDP, and one Greenwere elected to the House. Since the October federal election, Parliament had sat for only six weeks until it was suspended on March 13. The House resumed last month for virtual sittings and a quorum of MPs from all parties has attended weekly Special COVID-19 Pandemic Committee meetings three days a week in the House Chamber since last month. But its unknown when the full contingency of all 338 MPs will return to Ottawa again. There are 157 Liberals, 121 Conservatives, 32 Bloc Qubcois, 24 NDP, three Green MPs, and one Independent MP.

Liberal Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.), who is also parliamentary secretary to Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez (Honor-Mercier, Que.), told The Hill Timesrecently that he does not personally expect the House to return with all MPs until early next year.

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux told The Hill Times that he doesnt personally expect the Parliament to return before the end of this year. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

I cant see that happening this year, personally. Thats a personal opinion, just based on what I see happening in the environment around me, Mr. Lamoureux told The Hill Times.

I think it would probably be better to have a discussion of this nature in July, when we would have a better sense of [the situation], Mr. Lamoureux said.

During regular in-person Commons sittings, MPs attend House proceedings and take part in debates on a variety of government and private members legislative issues. The opposition MPs come to Ottawa to hold the government to account in the daily 45-minute Question Period and scrutinize legislative issues in one of the more than 20 House committees. Every Wednesday morning, when the House is in session, all parliamentary caucuses hold weekly regional and national meetings to discuss parliamentary strategy and MPs share feedback and information on what their constituents are telling them back home about their partys policies. In between their official duties, MPs also mingle with their colleagues in the parliamentary hallways, during lunch time, and often socialize after hours whether it be at popular political pubs around town, restaurants, or at official parliamentary functions and receptions in political Ottawa.

In their constituencies, MPs meet with their constituents as much as possible to discuss individual and collective community issues and try to help. In normal times, they also welcome their constituents to walk into their constituency offices, even without appointments to meet with their staff for help on any issue. As well, MPs like to attend community events and the larger the gathering the better as it gives them more exposure and name recognition.

But these days MPs and their staffers are interacting with the constituents only online or by phone. All in-person meetings have been cancelled.

In the 2019 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus (Papineau, Que.) Liberals were reduced to a minority from a majority, which also means an election could theoretically happen anytime as the Liberals need the support of at least one opposition party on every legislation.

Considering the ongoing speculation about a possible fall election, if the next election happens before the House returns for full in-person sittings, new MPs could theoretically have had only six weeks in Ottawa.

Two-term Conservative MP Michael Cooper says if the next election is called before Parliament returns for its full regular sitting, the current Parliament will be the forgotten Parliament. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

Two-term Conservative MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, Alta.) said that if the next election happened prior to the House returning back to the full sittings, the current Parliament could be the forgotten Parliament.

Simply put, there have been very few sitting weeks that the House has been back with all 338 MPs present, a little more than a month, said Mr. Cooper. So essentially, this Parliament has barely gotten off the ground and if theres an early election, it could go down as the forgotten Parliament.

Mr. Cooper said that the full in-person sittings allow all MPs the experience of engaging in the cut and thrust of politics by debating and asking questions in the Question Period.

Certainly having the opportunity to engage in debate to give speeches to hone the skills better that you develop in the House of Commons, in terms of parliamentary debate and the back and forth, said Mr. Cooper in a phone interview with The Hill Times.

Mr. Cooper said parliamentarians who have quality skills to ask pertinent questions and to analyze legislation in committees are absolutely essential to hold the government to account. He said he understands the reasons why Parliament is not sitting and added that virtual sittings are better than no sittings at all.

Thats vital to Canadian democracy that we have a functioning House of Commons that is sitting regularly in person, he said. And weve seen over the last several weeks, Parliaments sitting virtually that is better than not sitting at all, but its no substitute for the real thing, to speak in-person and sitting in Ottawa in the Chamber.

Moreover, he said being in Ottawa offers MPs an opportunity to get to know each other across party lines and to build relationships that play a key role in making progress in the legislative process in the House and in committees.

Frankly, the opportunity to get to know colleagues, not just within your own caucus, but in all different political parties. And thats one of the things that is really lacking in terms of virtual sittings, said Mr. Cooper.

You may not agree with someone on an issue but you might actually quite like [him or her], as a person, because you talk to them, youve dealt with them, youve worked with them. And you dont have that same sort of interaction in a virtual capacity.Its certainly important in terms of being able to work with your caucus. But also, in terms of being able to find common ground on issues. Sometimes those relationships can make all the difference in terms of moving an issue forward successfully, such as in different ways, but, you know, its something like a private members bill, for example.

Rookie MPs told The Hill Times that they do miss the in-person parliamentary experience of attending regular House proceedings, committee meetings, weekly national caucus meetings, and informal interactions with colleagues in between House duties and after work.

In Ottawa, going to in-person sessions, there is the ability to talk in the lobbies with your colleagues, said NDP MP Laurel Collins (Victoria, B.C.). For me, Im on the Environment Committee, and the only committees that are sitting right now are committees that are directly related to the COVID response. And so everything on the Environment Committee has been postponed until we can start back up again. And so definitely, I miss being able to bring my constituents and Canadians concerns around the environment to that space.

As well, Ms. Collins said being in Ottawa, rookie MPs can have access to their mentors in-person and build a network of friendships. Working remotely, she said, new MPs can still reach out to veteran MPs, but the in-person meetings are easier as everyone is on Parliament Hill.

I miss kind of the informal interactions with MPs across party lines, said Ms. Collins. And so you just have to put in a little more effort to reach out to, you know, I had a conversation a couple weeks ago with one of the MPs from the Liberals who had heard one of my questions on a technical briefing call. And so we were able to have a conversation. It just takes a little more effort than if you would just see them in the lobby or see them on the Hill.

Prior to COVID-19, an overwhelming majority of the constituency work was about immigration. But now MPs say theyre mostly dealing with government-related COVID-19 spending programs. Close to seven and a half million people have applied for emergency financial aid under the governments spending programs.

My office has been inundated with requests for support; either people who are wanting help navigating the programs are being put out by the federal government, the support benefits; and a lot of people who are falling through the cracks of those programs, said Ms. Collins.

Mr. Dong who represents a GTA riding said that COVID-19 is still the leading subject in his constituents questions. However a significant number of those questions still have immigration component related to wait times, eligibility requirements, whether government financial assistance during the pandemic would affect someones ability to sponsor, and international students qualification for immigration, among others, he said.

Whether its processing time, whether its eligibility, theyre all triggered by whats going on with COVID-19, said Mr. Dong.

All MPs interviewed said that theyre using online resources such as Facebook Live, Zoom, or regular telephone conference calls to reach out to their constituents. All said they are holding regular virtual town halls to meet with their constituents. My office has been quite busy, said Mr. Dong.[We use] virtual platforms to connect with our constituents and local businesses.

The Hill Times

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'Doing democracy by Zoom just not the same as being there in the House': rookie MPs missing out on parliamentary experience - The Hill Times

One of the hallmarks of democracy is its emphasis on the health of the citizenry. When a democratic nations health status begins to decline precipitously, as Americas did around 1990, it is often a sign that the vitality of the democracy itself is waning.

Faltering indicators in maternal and child health, obesity and diabetes, more recently paired up in the 21st century with a lack of general preparation to deal with epidemics.

In ancient people-oriented governments, top leaders were often chosen for their health science credentials. An example was Moses in ancient Israel, who wrote the book of Leviticus, the nations first public health code. Other examples include Imhotep in ancient Egypt, and Shennong in ancient China.

Our own country sported a credentialed medical scientist turned political leader in Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father who signed the Declaration of Independence and became the nations first Surgeon General.

Today, Taiwans Vice President Chen Chien-jen is a government official in the mold of past democratic leaders. Colleagues say he is a scholar who does not care about partisan politics, a sort of Taiwanese version of our own Dr. Anthony Fauci.

As a trained public health epidemiologist specializing in viruses, Chien-jen has been at the center of successful preparations to deal with the coronavirus there.

Perhaps its time we elected national and state leaders who have a strong background in health and in science. Doing so might prevent the kind of fix we are in now.

Robert Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross

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Letter: Health is tied to a healthy democracy - Salt Lake Tribune