During the infamous Senator Duffy-Nigel Wright debacle, a forwardly mobile Parliament secretary told CBC’s Evan Solomon that the then–chief of staff of the PMO was a Canadian patriot, so concerned that the taxpayers of Canada would be out the $90,000 that the senator had improperly claimed as a housing expense that he reached into his own pocket to ensure that the taxpayers would not be left holding the bag.
Four days later, Wright was gone, immediately becoming the object of vilification. Two months later, the aforementioned parliamentary secretary was appointed minister of state for democratic reform. This observation is in no way personal to the honourable minster, who I consider to be a friend; it is an institutional observation. The system, by design, encourages and promotes sycophancy. Prove yourself to be a loyal team player and your career prospects brighten. Represent your constituents and speak or vote in a different direction than your party leadership wishes you to and you will find yourself on the outside looking in.
American satirist P.J. O’Rourke wrote an entire treatise on this concept, aptly named Parliament of Whores.[4] No self-respecting individual would barter away his or her integrity or credibility in exchange for career advancement, especially in such an ephemeral world as Canadian politics. Just as no self-respecting adult would paint his face just to show support for his favourite hockey team. As Elaine Benes said in Seinfeld: “Because it’s insane!”
7.
The Prime Minister: The Americanization of Canadian Politics
The Canadian and American systems of government are very different. Although both, at least theoretically, are functioning democracies, the framers of the American Constitution rejected the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy in favour of a republic with a formal separation of powers. Whereas no member of the U.S. Congress can serve in the executive (both Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton had to resign their Senate seats in 2008 to serve in the executive branch of government), it is almost unheard of, although constitutionally permissible, for a minister of the Crown not to be a member of the legislative branch.
Responsible government, by practical definition, ensures that the executive cabinet is comprised of, but distinguishable from, elected legislators. This fusion of the roles ensures a very powerful and dominant position in the job of Canadian prime minister.
A prime minister is both the head of the executive government and his party’s chief spokesperson in the legislature. Given his predominant position in both the executive and legislative branches, he has no equal in a congressional system based on a separation of powers.
As noted earlier, eminent constitutional expert Peter Russell has remarked that to be a prime minister in a majority Parliament is like being a U.S. President without a Congress.[1] There are few practical checks on prime ministerial power and certainly none of them are housed in the Parliament Buildings.
A prime minister, supported by a caucus that holds a majority of seats in the House of Commons, is, if he chooses to be, an elected dictator for the duration of that Parliament. His government’s agenda will find no opposition in the House of Commons; private members’ bills and Opposition motions, meanwhile, will pass only if they receive the thumbs up from the PMO.
As we have seen recently, even the unelected Senate is not immune to the PMO’s influence and attempts at control. Realistically, a prime minister who has appointed over half of all sitting senators is unlikely to find any checks and balances in the house of sober second thought either.
A prime minister’s authority is further consolidated by his seemingly unfettered power of appointment. The governor-general-in-council, the constitutional term for the cabinet, appoints all senators, all superior court judges, including those appointed to all appellate courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. The prime minister formally appoints all members of his cabinet and the parliamentary secretaries to approximately half of the ministers. The cabinet then appoints the heads of all Crown corporations, the chairs and members of all government boards and commissions, all deputy ministers, all ambassadors, and all of the officers of Parliament, such as the auditor general, the chief electoral officer, and the privacy and ethics commissioners. Finally, the prime minister appoints or delegates the appointment of all members of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office.
The prime minister may not be the head of state, but the U.S. president, who is head of state and shares responsibility for many of the above appointments, must have many of those appointments ratified by the U.S. Congress. A Canadian prime minister’s power of appointment is subject to no comparable legislative ratification, although officers of Parliament are perfunctorily approved by the assembly.
As a result, the office of the prime minister is all important and dwarfs the importance of all supportive and secondary offices and positions. The late Jim Travers, in an excellent essay, remarked: “It is his clear and credible view that between elections, prime ministers now operate in the omnipotent manner of kings. Surrounded by subservient cabinet barons, fawning unelected courtiers and answerable to no one, they manage the affairs of state more or less as they please.”[2]
This has even been demonstrated in the nomenclature of government communications. The current government is fond of referring to itself as the “Harper Government” in government communications and press releases, as opposed to the more familiar and, I would suggest, appropriate, “Government of Canada.”
This trend has evolved to the point that election campaigns are almost exclusively leader driven. Whereas the media will travel thousands of kilometres covering the respective leaders’ tours, the rest of the candidates will go largely unnoticed unless they fall prey to a gaffe or blunder.
Undoubtedly, the best predictor of the results in any constituency election is the popularity and effectiveness of the campaign of the leader under whose banner the candidate is running. Elections are determined largely on voters’ impressions of national leaders, gleaned from national media sources. Many pundits and strategists believe that over 90 percent of the electorate make their voting decision based on some combination of their impression of the party and the party leader.
It has been suggested, sarcastically, that the candidate is a hood ornament in the election campaign, making a difference perhaps in a close electoral contest. How else do you explain the fact that several NDP candidates were elected in the Jack Layton “Orange Wave” without spending a dollar on the campaign and some not ever having been to their riding?
I understand this concept quite well. In the 2001 Alberta election, I was a replacement candidate. Nominated literally days before the writ was dropped, poorly organized, and not well financed, I was given little chance of successfully carrying the PC colours in 2001. However, in that election, Edmonton, for the first and, to some extent, only time, warmed up to Ralph Klein. His coattails were wide enough to provide me with a five- hundred-vote plurality in Edmonton-Calder.
However, by 2004, Edmonton had again turned on Premier Klein. Many long-time Capital Region MLAs went down to defeat, and despite the fact that many media commentators and constituents rated me as an effective representative, I was defeated in another three-way horse race. Ralph Klein’s coattails carried me into the Alberta Legislature and they carried me out again three and a half years later.
Our elections are so leader-centric that most Canadians believe they directly elect their prime ministers and premiers. Of course, we do not; each of us elect a Member of Parliament and a member of the legislative assembly. It is the support that the respective party leaders enjoy amongst those legislators that will ultimately determine who has the confidence of the House and therefore can serve as first minister.
Meanwhile, MPs, who should understand that the prime minister is chosen based on the support they command in the House,