The Culture of Broken Promises

Canada has now been snapped into election season. In just a short few weeks Canadians will go to the polls to cast a vote for our new Prime Minister and Governing Party. For those of us in Canada who follow current events, we will be exposed to multiple-daily doses of information from politicians, each associated with a political party – campaigning for a vote.

This article is nothing more than my opinion relating to my perception about broken promises in politics. The intention of this article is weave a few criminal concepts into a discussion about political party platforms and the importance of honestly making best efforts to carry out the mandate campaigned to garner votes.

the culture of broken promises

As Canadians, we have become rather accustomed to promises made and promises broken by politicians.

A “promise” is effectively a declaration that the promisor assures that a particular thing will be done.  While empty promises are sadly a standard feature of everyday life, I am of the view that when a promise is made for the purpose of inspiring a person to exercise choice, keeping that promise is extraordinarily important. In politics, a promise made for the purpose of securing your vote should – absent extraordinary circumstances – be a promise kept.

Now, the purpose of this post is not to persuade you to vote a particular way. Rather, it is to address a concept that I have been thinking about for years: political election fraud.

what is fraud

The word “fraud” is important to this exercise.

According to section 380(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada, “every one who, by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether or not it is a false pretence within the meaning of this Act, defrauds the public or any person, whether ascertained or not, of any property, money or valuable security or any service”, is guilty of an offence.

I consider my “vote” to be a valuable security and service in the democratic process.

“False pretence” is also defined in the Criminal Code. Section 361(1) states: “A false pretence is a representation of a matter of fact either present or past, made by words or otherwise, that is known by the person who makes it to be false and that is made with fraudulent intent to induce the person to whom it is made to act on it”.

Political platforms during election season are words designed to capture – to induce – your vote.  If those words are intentionally empty, then what are they? Fraud? False pretence? Empty words? All of the above?

How many times have you cast a vote based on promises made by politicians and have been disappointed that the promise was broken? I suggest that broken promises have become such a standard feature in politics that they have become customary. In my opinion, it is time to part ways with empty election promises.  It is time to disassociate ourselves from the culture of broken promises that in my view, appears to be so ingrained into our political system that it has become a fact of life.

deviating from the platform

To be fair, our elected officials sometimes have a difficult job. A campaign promise might not work-out because it lacked support at the House of Commons. Perhaps a law that was campaigned on was not passed because it was declined in the Senate.  When our system of Government is operating properly, checks and balances can work to undermine campaign promises.

World events can also trigger adjustments to the behaviour of Government. For example, for at least the first few months of the pandemic, Covid-19 was minimally an unexpected urgency that required a responsible public health response. Please understand, while this Calgary criminal lawyer agrees with the public health action during the initial stages of the pandemic, I do not agree with the virtual 2-year shutdown of the Canadian economy. While many in the private sector struggled to pay the bills, keep food on the table and incurred substantial debt, many in the public sector were on a Covid holiday -- collecting a full paycheque and time towards a considerable pension – all while maintaining their regular holiday time.  In my community, several long-standing businesses shuttered permanently.  

I digress.

My point is, the pandemic is an example of an unexpected circumstance that of course could not be addressed during a political campaign. Deviating from platform in these circumstances is to be expected. 

In contrast, however, is former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2015 campaign.

THE BROKEN PROMISE OF ELECTORAL REFORM

In 2015 one of the Liberal campaign promises was to change the electoral system to proportional representation. Proportional representation means that seats in the House of Commons would be allocated according to the proportion of votes each party received.  This campaign promise was especially important to the West – particularly Alberta – a Province whose voice has consistently be ignored by Ontario and Quebec.  A special committee for Electoral Reform was created in 2016. That committed recommended that Canada replace the first-past-the-post electoral system (our current model) with proportional representation.  The committee also recommended that the issue by sent to a national referendum. In other words, let Canadians decide.

After a decade of Trudeau, we are all aware that this campaign promise was broken.  The Trudeau Liberals ignored the Special Committee recommendations, declined to go to the people and essentially did a pirouette with respect their campaign promise.  To my mind, it was clear to anybody with even the smallest political acumen that this was never a promise intended to be honoured; rather, it was a convincing campaign topic designed to capture votes.

Seriously, when the Liberals campaigned on Electoral Reform in 2015, what did they expect? They must have known that proportional representation would have undermined the ability of that Government (and arguably other Governments) to permanently hold power.  While I understand the importance of holding political power, that should not be the goal of a political party.  Our elected officials should govern only to serve the best interests of all Canadians; not simply governing to keep a job, bolster a pension, hold power, advance their own self-interest or to represent one part of the Country to the detriment of other parts of the Country.  

To my mind, the 2015 electoral reform campaign promise by the Trudeau Liberals is arguably an example of a campaign falsehood. I say it was a falsehood because there was no meaningful attempt to keep the promise.

While taking questions on January 9^th, 2015, after resigning as Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau said: "If I have one regret, particularly as we approach this election … I do wish that we'd been able to change the way we elect our governments in this country so that people could choose a second choice or a third choice on the same ballot”. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-electoral-reform-biggest-regret-1.7426407

I don’t believe him. The reason I don’t believe is not because he failed in his quest for electoral reform, it is because he didn’t meaningfully try to achieve it.  The Liberals could not very well change the way Canadians elect governments when they did not meaningfully attempt to change the way Canadians elect governments.

That lack of effort leads me to opine that Mr. Trudeau arguably misled Canadians and that he did so for the purpose garnering votes in 2015.  When he spoke to the CBC in January, I don’t accept that he did so with much candour. Perhaps I am wrong -- you be the judge.

Whether wrong about his candour or not, the first-past-the-post system probably contributed to Trudeau and the Liberals holding power beyond their first election cycle, which conceivably led to a minority Government alliance with the NDP – ultimately resulting in Canada being seriously influenced by a group who routinely struggles to hold party status.

The question is, was Justin Trudeau being candid with voters about electoral reform or was he simply executing a policy pump-and-dump to secure votes?

The token effort to advance electoral reform was so pathetic that in my view it was a promise never intended to be kept. This is an example of a policy deception that had the effect of putting the voting interests of Canadians at risk. Arguably, when Canadians went to the ballet boxes in 2015 and cast a vote for electoral reform, they were fooled.

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

A four-year mandate is not a long time. In my view, political parties should be forced to outline a clear political platform and should be required to make reasonable best efforts to implement that platform. If after best efforts are made, a policy fails, that’s one thing; however, if a policy is campaigned on and never meaningfully tried, that’s an entirely different problem. In my opinion, our politicians should only be able to deviate from their campaign platform if there are unusual or exigent circumstances that require them to deviate. After all, when Canadians elect somebody to lead the Country, the minimum expectation is that the party will implement (or at least meaningfully attempt to implement) that which they campaigned on. If a party campaigns on nothing, and wins, that’s fair – because I suppose voters expected nothing. However, when a party campaigns and wins on something, that something is important because that’s what voters bargained for.

2025 might be one of Canada’s most important elections.  I suggest that we all vote carefully – only after fully digesting each parties’ platform. We should also cast our vote with a view to holding politicians to their campaign promises. We should be cautious casting votes simply because politicians promise to give something away when they can’t explain how the cost of the give-away is in the best interest of the Country as a whole.

Some will argue that we have elections every four years and as such, we can hold politicians accountable for their missteps after this relatively short time. While that may be true, there is no time like the present. Our Country is on the precipice of disaster.

While I do not intend to cover all issues, the math is certain: our economy has stagnated to the point that in the last 10 years our GDP per person has crumbled. We are on the verge of recession (or worse). 

For a Country with this much land, coupled with an abundance of the world’s most valuable resources (coastline, oil, lithium, uranium and potash) our Capital growth is nothing short of pathetic. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Canada is not only by leaps and bounds the worst performing G7 Country, it is the second worst performing GDP economy of about 40 developed nations.

CONCLUSION

If the goal over the last 10 years was to improve the quality of life for the middle-class, this data suggests that this has been an abysmal failure.

My point is, now is the time to get our vote right because we don’t have time to get it wrong. As Canadians, we need to rethink our tolerance for politicians who are prepared to pass off a rusted old Jalopy as a Porsche just for the purpose of getting us to buy in. It is time to end the culture of broken promises in politics.  After all, whether we agree with a party platform or not, if the winner intentionally disregards its platform strategy, then what did we vote for? 

These are my thoughts, not yours.

David Chow

Calgary Criminal Defence Lawyer