Dief the Chief's Bill of Rights

Yesterday's 50th anniversary seems to have passed unnoticed by most Canadians, except the editors of the Toronto Star: Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights an act worth remembering. The nonentrenched Canadian Bill of Rights is still in effect, but its place in the consciousness of the nation has largely been supplanted by the entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982).

Parliamentary reform

A fixture on CBC News for decades, Don Newman has put forth a sensible proposal for parliamentary reform: If we want real parliamentary reform, follow the Brits.

To recap, here's my idea. It is based on the premise that a fixed-date election law should mean something. And that, if such a law is enacted, it should be the responsibility of the Governor General to ensure that there is a government in place between the fixed dates.

To do this in a minority parliament, I proposed that any government that was defeated on a confidence vote, which would ordinarily trigger an election, should have the opportunity to face the House again on a straight vote of confidence, 36 hours after its initial defeat. That would allow a prime minister the opportunity to look around for an arrangement with one of the opposition parties, as Joe Clark might have done in 1979 when he was defeated by a handful of Créditistes.

True, it could mean wheeling and dealing and trade-offs, but that is what a minority parliament is meant to be about. If the sitting government doesn't win that second confidence vote (and to ensure it tries), the Governor General would be obliged to ask another party leader to try to form a government. Again, more wheeling and dealing, but again that is what minority parliaments are supposed to do.

If this new attempt by a different party or coalition cannot win a confidence vote, only then would the GG order an election, to be held in the briefest period allowed by law. The effect of this proposal is that a party forming the government after an election would go out of its way to make sure it didn't lose a confidence vote, and certainly that it didn't lose two in a row. But if somehow it did, then an alternative government would be possible until the next official election date.

Where does Britain come in? Newman explains:

There the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition headed by David Cameron is introducing legislation that will fix the date of the next British election in May of 2015, five years after the election this year that created the current minority situation.

A key element is that the legislation will require a two-week cooling-off period should the government be defeated in a confidence vote in the Commons, before a general election can be called. The reason for the cooling-off period is to allow for a new governing arrangement to be formed, which would prevent the necessity of an election. The new government could have many or at least some of the participants from the group that was just defeated. If, after two weeks, no new government had been formed, then off to the polls the British would go.

Perhaps it's time to scrap our minority governments and encourage at least some of the parties to work together instead. If the Brits can do it, why can't we?

Party merger?

This would be an extraordinary development if it were actually to come about: Liberal, NDP insiders talk merger. However, this news is no surprise: "Last week, a poll suggested that a coalition led by NDP Leader Jack Layton would beat Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives while one led by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff would lose." Could talk of merger be a ploy on the part of disaffected Liberals to dump "Iggy"?

Conservatives favoured? Yes, but. . .

Anywhere else this might portend disaster for the governing party, yet our first-past-the-post electoral system somehow makes this good news: Tories' lead solid as Ignatieff slips: poll. Good news for Stephen Harper, no? Well, not exactly. The public favours him to the tune of 31.9 percent, which is rather less than overwhelming. Stated otherwise, a substantial majority of 68.1 percent of Canadians dislikes Harper. Yet he stays in office.

Perhaps one day we will have the presence of mind to recognize that elections are about, not winning and losing, but just representation in parliament. May such groups as Fair Vote Canada hasten that day.

Senate reform, yet again

We've heard it all before, of course, but the government is trying again: Harper Tories take another stab at Senate reform. Eight-year term limits are on offer this time.

[Minister of state for democratic reform Steven] Fletcher also said the government plans further Senate tinkering, including legislation to consult Canadians at the polls about the choice of senators. That's a compromise between a system of direct election of senators — which likely would require a full-blown constitutional amendment — and the present direct appointments (emphasis mine).

Yes and no to the italicized phrase. We could provide by ordinary statute for the election of senators, in which case they would be appointed formally by the Governor General in Council, yet on the advice, not of the Prime Minister, but of the electorate of each province. This would in no way necessitate a change in section 24 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which would remain in place. Nevertheless, we would effectively have an elected Senate.

Of course, even short of statutory reform, the Prime Minister could simply allow the provinces to poll their own voters and then appoint the winners to the relevant seats. Since such appointments are entirely up to him, I should think he would be able to set the machinery in motion without having to consult the opposition parties. It might be worth a try.

The Senate: better than we think?

It often seems that Canadians generally dislike the Senate but cannot agree on what should be done with it. It is an appointive body, intended by the Fathers of Confederation to be a "chamber of sober second thought." Westerners would like to see an elected upper chamber, while Québécois and New Democrats generally prefer to see it abolished, much as the provinces abolished their own upper chambers decades ago. Alan Broadbent, Chairman and CEO of the Avana Capital Corporation, disagrees: The Better Chamber: A Defence of the Senate. Here's an excerpt:

The Senate record of useful investigations is impressive. Senator David Croll chaired two critical investigations, on Aging in 1966 and on Poverty in Canada in 1971. The Poverty report became a signal document internationally. In 1970, Senator Keith Davey chaired an investigation on concentration in the media, which has been revisited by the Senate several times since. The Standing Committee on Banking, Trade, and Commerce has studied Canada’s financial institutions regularly since the 1980s, contributing much to the stability of our banking system, which has stood out in the last two years. . . . Almost all of these reports have been of high quality, and their recommendations have often created key building blocks for Canada. In this regard, the Senate has completely outperformed the House of Commons for decades.

Broadbent may not persuade the sceptics, but I personally hope it takes some of the steam out of the efforts of the abolitionists.

Canada's Grant family

Yes, after more than two decades, I still have my Canadian politics students reading George Parkin Grant's Lament for a Nation. It's not that I agree entirely with his argument. In fact, I think he severely shortchanges Canada's political institutions, as I wrote here five years ago: George Grant and the Primacy of Economics. Nevertheless, his views are worth taking seriously and grappling with.

It just so happens that Grant's nephew is the leader of the federal Liberal Party, a certain Michael Ignatieff, who has just published a book on his maternal ancestors, True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada, an excerpt of which is published in Maclean's: Nation in progress. Robert Fulford thinks, not unreasonably, that Ignatieff is repackaging himself for the voters in this book: Ignatieff gives a shake to the family tree. Writing for Maclean's, John Geddes praises the book, perhaps too obsequiously: Michael Ignatieff’s ‘True Patriot Love’. In the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran claims that neither Ignatieff nor his late uncle had a real grasp of economics and markets: A true patriot of megaprojects.

Will this latest book endear Ignatieff to the Canadian public? Will he successfully convince them that his days as a rootless cosmopolitan are over and that he's finally returned to his roots? Or will they see this as a cynical ploy to gain political power in a country that has not been his for most of his nearly 62 years? Time will tell.

Crises in Canada and Illinois, continued

Canada — This story is changing by the hour, but here is what the CBC reports as I write: Ignatieff prepared to form coalition. Michael Ignatieff has his wish: he is now leader of the federal Liberal Party and only three years after returning to this country after his decades of residence in the United Kingdom and the United States. Or to put it another way: he is returning to the cave after seeing what eludes the rest of us unenlightened ones: the bright ray (definitely not Rae!) of the sun.

I will be reposting something I wrote a few years ago about Ignatieff's liberal individualism, but a colleague has pointed out to me that he may not be that different from his immediate predecessor, as indicated here: Stéphane Dion, inconspicuous achiever. This quotation is telling:

Dion's academic work has mostly been as a cold-eyed analyst of bureaucracies and public administration and he is not a particular fan of institutions, religious or otherwise. As his wife, Janine, told an interviewer, for her husband "all that exists is the individual. Everything else is a social construction, hence does not exist."

Illinois — Meanwhile, at the other end of the Great Lakes, Illinois is still reeling from yesterday's dramatic arrest of Governor Blagojevich. Writing for the BBC, Matt Frei asks: "When will the Illinois prison authorities finally grasp the nettle and open a governors' wing in Chicago's premier jail?" He recites a litany of gubernatorial names familiar to me from my early years:

If convicted, Governor Rod Blagojevich will follow in a long and established line of former governors who have served time in both office and jail.

Governor Otto Kerner was governor from 1961 to 1968 and served slightly less than a year in 1973 for bribery and fraud.

Governor Dan Walker served in office from 1973 to 1977 and in jail for 18 months on charges of bank fraud and perjury.

Governor William Stratton ran Illinois from 1953 to 1961 and was later indicted but acquitted for tax evasion.

Governor George Ryan, who was Governor Blagojevich's immediate predecessor is still IN jail, completing a six-and-a-half-year sentence on, yes you've guessed it, wire fraud and bribery.

The closest Canada has to Illinois's brand of politics is British Columbia, the major difference being that BC has far more interesting scenery.

Prorogation: the day after

As the dust settles for now, Canadians are trying to come to grips with the events of the past few days. This sport story is clever, to be sure: Leafs Just Won The Cup, but it plays into the popular misconception that electoral politics is about winning and losing rather than representation. Fair Vote Canada tells us what a coalition government would look like if we had some form of proportional representation: The sound of one democratic hand clapping. As it turns out, not everyone in the back benches is happy with Dion and Layton's proposed coalition: Dissent in Liberal ranks appears after Parliament suspended.

Stephen Harper has his reprieve, but he will have to face the Commons once again at the end of next month. Now it's home for Christmas. And the Governor General can resume her European tour.

Crisis in Ottawa, continued

Just when we thought that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government was settling in for at least another two years in power, the events of the past several days have upset these expectations. Now we read that Her Majesty's representative, Governor General Michaëlle Jean, is cutting short her European state visit to deal with the current crisis. That two opposition political parties would conspire to topple the government and replace it with a coalition government is unprecedented in Canada's history. It would not be unusual in some European countries, but those of us living under Westminster-style systems have generally eschewed multiparty coalition governments as somehow undemocratic — as if party leaders collaborating to form a government thereby frustrate the will of the voters.

On the other hand, there is something rather surreal in the spectacle of a single party taking power based on only 37.63 percent of the vote and fewer than half the seats, and then having the effrontery to claim a mandate from the Canadian people to govern. It is scarcely less absurd when such a government receives an absolute majority of seats though most citizens have voted against it. This, once again, points to the need for electoral reform in this country.

Though I am not teaching Canadian politics this term, I have spent some time in each of my classes this week talking about the developments in the nation's capital, due to their historic nature. I have likened what is happening to pre-1992 Italian politics, when multiple parties would have to take great pains to form a government, with leaders deciding to elevate to the premiership, not one of themselves, but a comparative nonentity deemed least objectionable to them. I couldn't help thinking of this as we witnessed especially the Liberals haggling over who would become prime minister. Would it be Stéphane Dion, the current but outgoing leader? Or Michael Ignatieff? Or Bob Rae?

What are Stephen Harper's options? Some are suggesting he could request the Governor General to prorogue Parliament, that is, to end the current session. But given that it began only two weeks ago, ending it this early would be a highly unusual move that would certainly stretch our constitutional conventions beyond what any previous prime minister has attempted. There can be little doubt that this would flirt with the edges of democracy itself. What would the Governor General do? She has the authority to refuse Harper's request, but since 1926 her predecessors have chosen not to confront their prime ministers, even when it might be advisable for them to do so to protect the constitution.

A central question is, of course, whether the Liberals and New Democrats would actually be able to govern. Together they boast only 114 seats as compared to the 143 held by the Conservatives. One-hundred fifty-five are needed for a majority. This means that the separatist Bloc québécois holds the balance of power with 49 seats. This gives the BQ king-making power. They will not, of course, participate in a coalition government, because they have few aspirations beyond being a protest party. Though Dion and NDP leader Jack Layton claim that the BQ will support their proposed government, at least in the short term, it is not in its long term interest to continue to prop up two parties that are more centralizing in their federalism than the Conservatives. Yet it is difficult to imagine the BQ propping up the Conservatives either.

My own solution? I don't claim this to be the definitive answer, but it might just be wise for Harper, whom 62.37 percent of Canadian voted against, to enter into negotiations with Dion towards forming a grand coalition government, rather like that between Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats in Germany. To be sure, the business of government would not move quickly under such an arrangement, but the divided verdict of Canadians two months ago may have left our politicians with no real alternative. Harper might do well to cast a backward glance to consider what happened to Prime Minister Joe Clark back in December 1979, when he tried to govern as if he had a majority, but found his minority government quickly defeated on the budget. If, as Henry Milner believes, we are in for a protracted period of minority government, our political leaders will have to overcome their overwrought fears of co-operating with the other parties and sit down and actually talk with them rather than just shouting at them from across the floor of the Commons.