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From: acton@ubc-ean.CDN (Donald Acton)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: re: referendums
Message-ID: <834@ubc-ean.CDN>
Date: Tue, 23-Oct-84 11:36:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-ean.834
Posted: Tue Oct 23 11:36:03 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Oct-84 22:02:26 EDT
Organization: UBC EAN, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 38


   I  agree with Jim Robinson that it is about time that we had some more
control about the everday laws that govern us and that initiatives are one 
way of doing this.  I can see the point that if this is carried to the
extreme we will be voting on the same issues every few years.  However, I am 
not sure that that is what actually happens. If I am not mistaken the citizens
of the Unitied States have the right of initiative and we certainly don't see
them voting on the same question every year, or if they do the the news media
down there doesn't point this out. I don't recall Proposition 13 being 
challenged in California nor can I recall any instances where initiatives 
placing moritoriums on nuclear reactor construction were overturned or voted
on during subsequent election periods. Surely in Canada a similar system 
could be established. One might want to place some limits on the types of 
issues that may be decided by initiative (for example you might not be able
to vote on anything concerning criminal law) but surely we can competently 
decide on the day to day things in our lives since politicains don't seem 
to be able to do this. 

An aside about Donald Marshall.

Past letters to this forum have indicated that if Canada had capital 
punishment then Donald Marshall would have been executed for a crime he
didn't commit. The majority of people in favour of capital punishment 
support it for capitial murder (the killing of police and prison guards).
Donald Marshall was charged with non-capital murder so he could not have 
been sentenced to death. If accounts of the event I have read and seen on 
TV are correct then Marshall didn't exactly help his own cause.
Apparently Marshall and Seale (the person Marshall was accused of murdering)
were involved in mugging someone when the mugging victim stabbed and killed
Seale. When the conviction was reversed the court indicated that:
     1) Marshall lied to his lawyers
     2) concealed the fact that he was robbing someone during the murder
     3) perjured himself

So it seems to me that Mr Marshall wasn't exactly helping his own cause 
during the trial in 1971 and he was hardly an innocent victim. This
also was not the first time he had mugged or rolled somebody.

    Donald Acton
    acton@ubc-ean