A Monograph

Democracy and Shortsightedness

Paul Isaacs

November 2013

Introduction

 Most democracies hold elections in order to select representatives for legislatures. As a consequence the representatives rarely have a time horizon that stretches beyond the next election.

 However, many important considerations have time horizons of decades. Demographic changes have decadal consequences. The depletion of fossil fuels and other natural resources have consequences far into the future that require planning well in advance in order to allow adequate time for adaptation to occur. Food chains that are thousands of miles long create severe dependencies.

 Many of these longer term processes are both difficult to resolve and can have unpleasant consequences. They are, therefore, shunned by elected representatives who must be cognizant of the next set of elections.

 Therefore, a democracy needs to have a legislative means of addressing these long term processes outside of electoral politics.

The Senate

 Canadian senators are not elected and are, therefore, readily able to address issues that would likely have negative electoral outcomes.

 The Canadian senate can perform a critical democratic service by giving public voice and a legislative platform to identify, articulate and bring these long term processes and issues into the legislative arena.

 For example, each of the following has the potential for serious consequences and is untouchable in electoral politics:

~ Demographic shifts

~ The consequences of central bank credit creation

~ Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions

~ Fossil fuel depletion

~ GMO foods

~ Tar sands environmental consequences

~ Global population growth

 The senate, however, could easily give an accommodating and compromising democratic voice to these difficult issues. Democracy can and should and must have more than just elected voices.