OTTAWA – To celebrate International Democracy Day (Sept. 15), Democracy Watch launched its new website. Same great key information, but much easier for Canadians to find what they want and to join in with the more than 18,000 people and 120 organizations across Canada that support Democracy Watch’s successful, leading campaigns to clean up Canadian governments and businesses, and to make Canada the world’s leading democracy.

Viewers of the site can now send letters to key politicians across Canada with one click calling for key changes to require everyone in politics in Canada to be honest, ethical, open, representative and waste-preventing, and to require Canada’s big businesses and big banks to serve everyone fairly and well at fair prices, and to act responsibly.

Viewers can also Become a Democracy Watcher and help win these key changes in other ways — organize an event (including a CoffeeParty.ca event), lobby a politician to sign the Good Government Pledge, do research, and of course donate to help Democracy Watch’s winning campaigns keep on winning.

Democracy Watch has won a lot of key changes for Canadians in the past 19 years — more than 110 changes to federal and provincial laws that have required Canadian politicians and governments and big businesses to be more honest, open, ethical, representative, waste-preventing and responsible, and accountable. In fact, Democracy Watch has won more changes than any other Canadian citizen group since 1993.

Canadians know who is lobbying and donating to which politicians (and donations are limited and only individuals can donate) because of changes Democracy Watch and the coalitions it coordinates have won, and ethics rules for politicians, bureaucrats and lobbyists are stronger, and better enforced, than in the past because of Democracy Watch’s campaigns, and Canada’s banks are required to serve people better, and all big businesses required to act more responsibly, because of changes Democracy Watch’s campaigns have won.

But more changes are needed — the Lobbying Act, Canada Elections Act, Conflict of Interest Act and MP and senator ethics codes, Access to Information Act, Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and federal corporate responsibility laws are all being reviewed over the next several months by federal politicians. As it has for the past 19 years, Democracy Watch is leading the campaigns for key changes to strengthen all of these laws to make everyone in federal politics more democratic and accountable, and all big businesses more responsible and accountable.

Democracy Watch’s eight campaigns are aimed at making Canada the world’s leading democracy by stopping election fraud, government waste, patronage and cronyism in Cabinet appointments, gouging by big businesses, secret, unethical deals that help big businesses and hurt everyone else, secret lobbying, secret donations and excessive government secrecy, and creating effective systems to protect whistleblowers who report government and big business wrongdoing.