I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me how “positively evil” our Prime Minister is for daring to prorogue Parliament. (I’ve also lost count of the number of them who’ve told me that I’m also “evil for defending him”. Thanks for that: don’t we all need to be told we’re evil regularly?)
While there’s no question in my mind but that proroguing Parliament so that the Senate could be reorganized — committee chairs and the like — once the open appointments are made (for there is no other way other than a voluntary stepping-down on the part of the prior Chairs to achieve that when the balance of parties changes), and that there is no justification for an extended delay simply because the Olympic Games are being staged, the challenge that lies ahead of us is far deeper.
It is, to put it bluntly, the wholesale reconstruction of our Parliamentary institutions, to reflect the needs of the twenty-first century.
Recognizing What Matters
While a true conservative is always cautious about making change, and avoids gratuitous change, the true conservative also is willing to step up and recognize when change is required. Such a moment is long overdue in Canada.
The regional structure of the Canadian Senate is far out of line with the country as it exists in 2010, reflecting, as it does, the Canada of 1867. At the time of Confederation, the balance of the Canadian economy and population lived in the East. Today the West has risen in population and economic power. What’s more important is that the “regions” of 1867 no longer make sense: this is not a numbers game alone. Anyone who knows the West knows that it is not a monolith. Anyone who knows Ontario and Québec know that they likewise are not monolithic. Anyone who knows the Maritimes knows that, no matter how much cooperation the Maritime provinces have, they remain distinct places with divergent interests and approaches. (Newfoundland and Labrador, of course, was able to negotiate a separate set of terms as a part of setting nationhood aside in favour of Confederation.)
Then, too, the model of the Senate in the old, pre-reform British House of Lords — which lost its ability to block the House of Commons as long ago as 1911, and lost most of its hereditary Peers under Tony Blair — is clearly passé. Many Canadians have recognized these deficiencies with the call for an “equal, effective and elected” Senate. But this answer — this change — too, is wrong for Canada, at least in isolation.
Does the Government also fall if it fails to hold the confidence of the Senate? Has it fallen if an elected Senate obstructs the House? Triple-E proponents have no answers. Should the Cabinet be drawn from both elected Senators and elected Members of the House? There is no clear answer. The issues compound the more one thinks of them, assuming, of course, that equality of provinces is the essential fix in the first place.
The House, too, is suffering. Like it or not, it’s far too easy to whip a Party into voting with the Government. Responsible Government — very much a Canadian invention! — dies in the face of this. It is inevitable that Cabinet Ministers, losing the need to respond to the back benchers in their own Party, in turn lose power to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Are you tired of Question Period solely as a shouting match? Television in the House merely exacerbated the trend; the decline of the essentiality of debate to sway the House was already in place. Without healthy debate — and the changing of minds that it ought to bring — there are no checks on power. Politics is reduced to a simple “this leader or that”, which quickly becomes polarized into “they’re evil and shouldn’t exist”. (Is that not precisely where we are? — where part of the population permanently assumes “the other side” has no right to legitimately be in Government?)
Let us not forget the third part of our system, which is formally known as Queen-in-Parliament. While there is still residual respect for Queen Elizabeth herself, a majority of Canadians have far less respect for the institution of the Crown — and many beyond that that believe in the monarchical principle sincerely question why the next King of Canada should be one shared with Great Britain, or drawn from the House of Mountbatten-Windsor. Yet, without a legitimate Monarch, how does our Constitutional Monarchy continue? Turning the Governor-General into what Michaëlle Jean wrongly claimed it to be — as much as Queen — is not the answer. Who would accept the appointment of a Prime Minister’s pet lapdog? Who, in turn, as Prime Minister in what is de facto an Executive Government model (ah, the legacy of the Trudeau PMO) meekly subordinate themselves to an elected Head of State, especially if that Head of State was the candidate of his or her Opposition?
Parliamentary Government — the whole Queen-in-Parliament of our system — is what is broken. This prorogation has merely highlighted just how broken it is. The whole thing must be repaired, not just tinkered with.
Fixing the System
We need to head — while we still have a nation (for the price tag of failure is that we will lose the country) — toward a Re-Confederation, which may well cost us one or more provinces but which will update our national institutions (and that, in turn, includes the division of powers with the provinces, municipalities and associated First Nations).
To get to that point, we need to discuss the experiences of others, and learn from them. Should we be unicameral (as all the provinces are) or bicameral (as we are today)? New Zealand offers some insight into a national government without a second Parliamentary chamber. So does Nebraska in the United States, in a republican model with separation of powers. If we are to be bicameral, should the second House be elected — we might look to Australia for ideas on how to balance the issues of Government in a Parliamentary system with an elected “Senate” — or appointed (in which case we might examine the updated British House of Lords, or the German Bundesrat (which reflects their provinces’ changing political landscapes) for ideas. Should our Cabinet ministers be drawn from and responsible to one House? To both? (Australia) Or be chosen from outside (the American model of selection) but be required to take far more regular questions than committee hearings?
One lesson that’s deeply needed is to consider the size of these bodies. The reason British Governments fear their back benches and a Prime Minister’s skill in commanding the House of Commons still matters — even though Downing Street is as much an executive system as is our own Langevin Block PMO — is because the British House of Commons is large enough that at least half the MPs will, despite a twenty-plus year run as an MP, never see a sniff of power: they will never chair an important body, be a Parliamentary Secretary, or make Cabinet. As a result, the penalties for telling the Party Whip to self-fornicate: “I stand with my convictions” (or with “the convictions of my riding”) are relatively meaningless. (Local riding associations also control candidate selection, without a Prime Ministerial sign-off on candidature, making de-selection for rebellion — another Canadian form for forcing obedience and obsequious behaviour — an option denied a party leader. Keep your local supporters with you, and you stand for election.)
Our House of Commons should be at least twice its current size. So, too, a second chamber: probably close to the size of our current House. To those who think this is all far too expensive, what is the price of bad governance? If you fear a certain party in power, why not make it as difficult for them as possible to exercise power, rather than be cheap in setting up our institutions?
Then, too, there is a need to seriously go through all the breaches of the intent of our existing Constitution (the abrogation of provincial powers by the federal government, for instance, or the use of spending “traps” to enforce actions, or the creation of “special bodies” such as quasi-governmental organizations, tribunals and commissions, etc., that work against our core legal principles) and to ensure that the underlying civil régime is cleared up in the process of re-confederating the country. Do we still value the common law inheritance? If so, strip away the overburden of executive orders in council, administrative regulation and excess legislation that acts against it, streamlining and sunsetting as appropriate. Or would we prefer a fully-legislated model? In which case, legislate to avoid bureaucratic interpretation and “law making”. Or do we believe we ought to simply let civil servants decide for us? Then, in that case, let’s recognize that we don’t believe in a government of free men and women who deal in law.
Do we, with the Trudeau Charter, uphold group rights over individual rights? Or do we reassert the Canadian tradition of individual human rights and dealing with individuals on a case-by-case basis rather than as classes of people? Are our rights over, or under, enumerated? What limits on the exercise of rights is appropriate — do we keep the “notwithstanding” rule, or the “limits of a free society” one, or do we actually declare one or more rights as inherent and inviolate? These are debates we need to have as a people, no matter how much the prospect is disturbing.
The last debate is whether we ought to have a continued Monarchical form — and there are solid arguments to be advanced for that, even in 2010 — a modified Monarchical form (a non-executive Presidency, such as is found in Germany, Ireland, etc.) — or a true Republican form with an executive President, such as in France or the United States. Whatever we may think of one option or another, we do need to think through two key factors: how do we make it possible for someone to govern effectively and responsively (overloading one role impedes that), and what escape valves do we build into the system for emergencies (such as the Royal Prerogative, or the long-unused Section 47 of the Constitution)? Our own Constitution — one of the very few in the world to have survived for nearly 150 years — has survived in part because our Fathers of Confederation thought about these issues. Countries where this was overlooked have had far less happy experiences!
It is long past time we recognized that the problems we have in our Confederation run far deeper than whether Parliament “sits” in February 2010. Let’s get past the wave of snarky remarks, Photoshopped images, clichés, media attempts to brew tempests in teacups, and get serious about our future.
Otherwise, in 2030, when you look around and wonder where your country went, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself — for it will evapourate into mist and memory at best, and into rebellion and breakup at worst, if we don’t be as serious about it as Baldwin and LaFontaine were in the 1840s, and Macdonald, Cartier, Howe and Brown were in the 1860s.
I think we need to reassess individual rights as proposed under classical liberal theory, and in particular just how much we have surrendered to live as a collective in order to fulfill the aims of the social contract. Originally, it was intended to protect individual rights by surrendering full exercisable rights in order to create a government which adjudicates the breach of inherent rights. Government, it would appear, has begun to act as a full member, an equal partner as it were, in the contract between men, and that is not the aim of such institutions. When government acts with a will that is wholly beyond the needs of the people; that is, it acts with self-interest for the perpetuity of itself independent of the needs of the people, then it can be reasonably said that reform is not only advisable, but urgently required.
“Government acting as a full member” is not something I had thought of, but I do believe you are right. Thank you for that insight, Adrian!
Bruce Stewart: Canada needs change #roft #cdnpoli…
While a true conservative is always cautious about making change, and avoids gratuitous change, the true conservative also is willing to step up and recognize when change is required. Such a moment is long overdue in Canada. via thinkinginplainsight.wo…
Werner’s own post at his site, after reading this piece, is itself well worth reading, and I strongly urge my readers here to follow the link to his.
It is nice to see this level of thought applied to renewing the Canadian system. We are not the country that was confederated in 1867 or even the country that existed when the constitution was repatriated. My Canada, the one I live in day-to-day, is not an offshoot of Europe or classical Liberalism and is not the product of two founding nations. But I think it is disingenuous to suggest that this has anything to do with the decision to prorogue Parliament. Prime Minister Harper did that on the basis of cynical political calculation and a desire to avoid criticism.
Do you think that this kind of political renewal is a necessary precursor to our reinventing our economy or are these things that can be done in parallel? If we have to renew the political system before we can reinvent the economy we are in deep trouble. I suspect that the Canadian system has enough flexibility to evolve and that it does not need the kind of conscious reinvention that you describe. The effort required to do this would detract from the energy needed to move to a post-carbon economy, one founded on very different values from those that have driven industrialization and its last gasps of globalization.
One would hope we’d have enough energy to do more than one task of reinvention at a time, Steven. Still, if we don’t, I think I’d almost be prepared to let Canada go and collapse into micro-states.
Even more important, though, is to lose — outright — the idea that it’s a social project to move to a post-carbon economy. The previous industrial carbonate model, and the current globalized financial model, both grew because for some people they “made sense”. The return to local manufacturing (part of undoing the global financial capital model) requires nothing more than the commitment to build a quality product — and the getting out of the way of a myriad of social engineering rules and regulations.
Economically, not wasting heat, not expelling useful by-products, etc. will be essential: there are few (if any) pools of cheap & easy to get at resources left. For here’s the thing: you can’t socially engineer outcomes that don’t make sense. If (for instance) building a small power facility near Campbell River/Comox, BC, means tapping the coal seam near there, there will be a coal-fired plant there. It can sequester or reuse what once was pollution, but only if that makes sense (and there is an economic case for that). Forcing them not to use the resource will simply lead to its eventual exploitation, but at a time when wasting the outputs is the only viable option. Ordering certain levels of action will lead to things not being built that could undo the damage of globalization. (The BBC’s “Excess Baggage” had a short segment about three weeks ago showing the carbon footprint of global shipping far exceeds global automobile use — whether that’s true or not, it’s indicative to me that globalized manufacturing and shipping is ignoring its true cost structure.)
I mentioned political renewal first because, in today’s world, the demand that government (a) pay for all change with money we don’t have [thus further bankrupting us] and (b) regulate everything to create an “ideal” outcome does take precedence over common sense. We keep wanting the perfect to crowd out the good, and we end up with nothing useful as a result. But I don’t think it’s the biggest problem — merely a necessary one to overcome.