AC: You’re right about that. But connect the dots: Ottawa is brain-dead, because debate, the lifeblood of ideas, has been outlawed—as a glance at question period will confirm. Debate is dead because MPs have become mere appendages of their parties, which is to say of party leaders. So we start running into some of those systemic questions you’d prefer to avoid.
The irrelevance of Parliament and the impotence of the individual MP are both, I think, rooted in the decline of the political parties as democratic institutions. I’ve long been a convert to the idea that the rot set in when parties began choosing their leaders by national conventions, rather than by the parliamentary caucus. Emboldened by this mandate, leaders could lord it over MPs without fear of reprisals.
Maybe we aren’t ready to have MPs choose party leaders. But must we have leaders choosing MPs? I mentioned the appointed Senate—but the Commons is effectively appointed as well, inasmuch as candidates are required to have their nomination papers signed by the party leader.
So one part of reviving national politics is restoring local democracy. But we can’t just yet, because local democracy is a joke. In no other advanced democracy that I am aware of are nominations decided by who can raffle off the most party memberships, or stack meetings with the most instant members.
Isn’t this just an internal party matter? Aren’t parties private entities? So are corporations. I don’t see anyone saying there should be no laws governing how shareholder voters are run. Should we impose any less obligations on the organizations that seek the power to rule us?
PW: Ah. So the Prime Minister can act like a martinet, even in a minority, because the parliamentary alternative—a coalition—has dubious legitimacy, thanks to the overrepresented Bloc. And because alternatives in his own party—potential new leaders—can’t get oxygen because of leadership-selection rules. Are those the dots you mentioned?
Like you, I buy historian Christopher Moore’s argument that MPs should select their leaders. There’ll be people who call that “undemocratic,” so how about this: MPs should at least be able to start a leadership race, by declaring in some kind of qualified majority vote that they’ve had enough of any current leader.
The problem with all of this, of course, is that the one person in Canada with the least interest in changing the system is, perpetually, whoever rode it most recently to 24 Sussex. But it helps to admit you have a problem, and that’s where we’ll begin when we meet in Toronto on Sept. 23. I think it’ll be fun.
