I DID NOT THINK I was nostalgic for the 1860s. But I finished this book about the making of confederation in the spring of 1997, when a federal election campaign was dominating the news. Against that spectacle, I could not help envying some aspects of the politics of British North America in the era of confederation.
During the campaign leading to the election of June 2, 1997, television coverage focused almost exclusively on the party leaders. They jetted about the country, seeking photogenic backdrops against which to strike poses and to deliver the sound bites by which advertising managers hoped to gain a point or two in the polls. I was glad when it was over.
In the west Toronto constituency where I live, the winner was a first-time candidate, a Liberal. She seemed able and energetic and well-meaning, as, indeed, did many candidates around the country. But, like all the other candidates in all the parties, she offered nothing but blind support of her leader. Though we had made her a member of Parliament and a member of the government caucus, it seemed understood that she could do nothing to represent us, or even to assert her own convictions. Should the re-elected government decide to bulldoze a square mile at the centre of our constituency to build a nuclear waste disposal facility, her duty would be to tell us that it might be unfortunate but it had to be done. Should she resist that assignment, she would suffer the fate of the member for a neighbouring riding, John Nunziata, expelled from his caucus and his party for voting against a party measure. Nunziata won re-election on June 2, defeating an official candidate personally designated by the party leader. But as an “independent,” Nunziata would be as unable to influence policy as he had been as a docile member of caucus. The government’s majority was small (and had been won with only 35 per cent of the vote), but unconditional support from its backbenchers would keep the government beyond control of Parliament and the voters for another four years.
After the election, many Canadians seemed to find it difficult to credit that in these ways one of the world’s great democracies chose among leaders who seemed little more than media images. Indeed, the election seemed to have strengthened many Canadians’ loathing for the whole political and constitutional tradition of their country. In the weeks after the election, demands for fundamental change, even for the immediate creation of “the republic of Canada,” floated through opinion columns and talk shows.
These pleas all started from the assumption that parliamentary democracy was the root of the problem. As ex-MP James Gillies put it in his post-election plea for establishing an American-style republic, a system “designed for a small, relatively non-industrialized unitary state” may have been appropriate in the élitist and anti-democratic day of confederation, but was simply out of date in modern, sophisticated times like ours. In the summer of 1997, that kind of contempt for the Canadian political tradition was a rarely challenged proposition.1
In those circumstances, I wondered if it was simply perverse to be offering a book that gave close and often respectful attention to the ways responsible government and parliamentary democracy had made possible the constitution-making of the 1860s. Yet the 1860s suggest powerfully that the problem of the 1990s lies less with parliamentary government than with the fact that it has largely ceased to function in Canada. When the election was over, what seemed missing from Canadian politics was that dead, and dismissed, and derided concept from Victorian textbooks, responsible government.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, responsible government meant that the survival of the prime minister and his cabinet depended, day by day, on the verdict of a vigilant Parliament. Members of Parliament were chosen by, close to, and dependent on (for those times) a broadly based and well-informed electorate. Contemplating the results of the election of 1997, I found myself wishing we lived under conditions more like those.
If parliamentary democracy functioned in Canada, the future of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien would depend on the Liberal Party caucus. It was widely expected after the 1997 election that Chrétien would not lead his party in the next election. But it was also understood that his retirement would come entirely at his own choice and he would determine the timing. Neither the Liberal caucus, nor the party at large, nor the voting public, would wield any notable influence on the decision. In a functioning parliamentary democracy, however, Prime Minister Chrétien’s leadership – and the choice of his successor – would lie in the hands of the caucus of elected parliamentarians. They would assess it constantly – according to their own political calculations, according to the interests of their constituents, perhaps even according to the needs of the country. The same would apply to the leadership of Mr. Manning, M. Duceppe, and all the other party leaders. If the 301 men and women whom Canadians elected in June 1997 recovered authority over their leaders, they would also recover power over the making and changing of party policy.
No constitutional amendment, not even a legislative act, would be required to return a prime minister’s tenure in office to the control of the parliamentary majority, or to make all the party leaders answerable to their caucuses. It would simply require an act of moral courage and a little organizing on the part of the backbenchers.
Compared to calls for spectacular transformations – for proportional representation, referendums, an elected Senate, a Republic of Canada – mere parliamentary democracy seems a very modest, unambitious, and anti-utopian notion. It offers, however, the great advantage of being possible. To restore parliamentary authority, no sweeping constitutional amendments and no radical legislative initiatives would be needed. The starting point would be a change of mind. At the beginning, all that would be required would be an act of will by elected members of Parliament, a decision to shoulder once more the fundamental responsibility of representatives in a parliamentary assembly – the making and breaking of governments.
This book has been about constitutional deal-making in a parliamentary system. And it may be in the constitutional sphere that parliamentary government offers the most intriguing possibilities. No sovereign Parliament could possibly permit the astonishingly autocratic (and consistently unsuccessful) constitution-making that our first ministers have engaged in for twenty-five years. Parliaments that actually controlled governments would certainly insist on participating in the making of a new constitution.
“Responsible government,” more or less as the confederation-makers of the 1860s understood it – but under the universal suffrage that prevails today – has been the least “thinkable” of all the political options Canadians have canvassed during the 1990s. It would, however, be relatively easy to reach. If it did not save the country, it would at least offer a political scene more lively, more interesting, less demeaning to all concerned than the present spectacle.
– July 1997