The reserve power

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 9:38 AM - 15 Comments

Earlier this year, Nicholas MacDonald and James Bowden argued that the Governor General has no discretion to refuse a request to prorogue Parliament. In the latest issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review, Peter Russell counters.

On that question, it is my view, and it is a view that I believe is shared by a great many constitutional scholars, that “in this democratic age, the head of state or her representative should reject a prime minister’s advice only when doing so is necessary to protect parliamentary democracy.” Those words of mine are quoted, with what I take to be approval, by MacDonald and Bowden in their article. The justification for the convention is to ensure that parliamentary government is democratic and not controlled by an hereditary head of state or her representative. It follows that if a prime minister’s advice seems seriously adverse to the functioning of parliamentary democracy, it should not be followed. An authoritarian prime minister might be as much a threat to parliamentary democracy as an authoritarian sovereign.

Canada's best prime ministers

By Norman Hillmer and Stephen Azzi - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 62 Comments

CP; Chuck Mitchell/CP

Stephen Harper has his majority government. The Liberal party is in tatters, and the Bloc Québécois is devastated. The NDP, inexperienced in the limelight and leaning to the left, is a reliable target. No one now doubts the Prime Minister’s capacity for raw politics, or his staying power.

Harper is one of a select few Canadian leaders to have won three consecutive federal elections. When his current term ends, he will have been in office longer than many past titans, including Brian Mulroney, John Diefenbaker, and Lester Pearson.

All that remains, and it is a great deal, is to discover what Harper will make of his new lease on parliamentary life, and what history will make of him. To set a benchmark, we’ve undertaken Maclean’s second rankings survey on Canadian prime ministers, to determine the greats, near greats, and also-rans, as well as the ingredients of success and the reasons for failure.

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The damage done by doing so little

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, January 28, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 152 Comments

Photograph by Ian Barrett

Most of our prime ministers have been scoundrels: the successful ones, almost exclusively. They say Arthur Meighen was quite a stand-up guy. Alexander Mackenzie, the same. Possibly John Turner or Kim Campbell or Joe Clark might have proved brave and principled leaders, given time. But that’s the thing: they weren’t given time, dispatched instead at the first opportunity by their more unscrupulous rivals. Whether of necessity or simply tradition, in Canadian politics, nice guys really do finish last.

So if the past five years seem a peculiarly ugly, depressing episode in our nation’s political history, it is not because Stephen Harper is unusually unencumbered by principle. Rather, it is the absence of compensating achievement that distinguishes his tenure—if by achievement you mean something more than simply holding onto power. Scoundrels our past prime ministers may have been, but scoundrels with a purpose. Harper’s record, by contrast, is rare in its combination of longevity and vapidity. Seldom has a government lasted so long that did so little.

WATCH COYNE V. WELLS ON FIVE YEARS OF HARPER (VIDEO)

Let us dispense at the outset with some of the more common critiques. It is not true, as the Liberals claim, that the Harper years have been marked by an unending decline in living standards and rising unemployment—or, to the extent either is true, that a massive worldwide recession could be laid at the feet of the government of Canada. To the contrary, the recession here has been notably less severe than in virtually any other developed country, which if you follow the Liberals’ logic should be accounted to the government’s credit.

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The founding fathers?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Robert Baldwin (left) and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine brought a new approach to government in Canada; John Wycliffe Lowes/ June Forbes McCormack/Archives

It is on page three that John Ralston Saul’s new book might first shock its readers. There, in the midst of describing a riot that clogged the streets of Montreal on an April afternoon in 1849, Ralston Saul describes Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine as “the first real prime minister of a democratic Canada.” John A. Macdonald does not turn up for another 178 pages.

With all due respect to John A., the story of LaFontaine and his kindred spirit Robert Baldwin—set out in the latest instalment of the Penguin Extraordinary Canadians series edited by Ralston Saul—is about how we got to 1867. It is about how two complicated and burdened men brought Canada to responsible government. “If you got [George-Étienne] Cartier and Macdonald on the phone and said, ‘Okay, how do you explain Canada?,’ they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s really, really easy, LaFontaine and Baldwin.’ Their idea was LaFontaine and Baldwin’s idea,” says Ralston Saul. “It’s a technical, constitutional, boring detail as to how many votes and how you get a majority. Of course, in politics, you have to worry about these things. But that’s not what it was about. It was actually about a different kind of relationship between peoples, between religions, between languages. A different approach toward the public good, non-violence and so on.”

Indeed, in lavish detail, Ralston Saul revives not only Canada and Canadian life at the moment of this new beginning, but these two men as they found their respective ways as individuals and allies. It is a dramatic time, but it is amid the tumult that much of what has come to define Canada—much of how we define ourselves—was established. As Ralston Saul writes, “The ongoing dramas of Canada—positive and negative—were shaped and energized as if in perpetuity by these two men and their great friendship.”

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Ichiro Ozawa: 'Wily, Machiavellian, amoral'

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Japan, it seems, it set to dump its prime minister. You’d be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. If scandal-tainted power broker Ichiro Ozawa knocks off Naoto Kan in a challenge for the leadership of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on Sept. 14, he’ll become the country’s third leader in 12 months. Kan has been in office for all of 90 days. His predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, who decamped, as he explained, because a “little bird” told him it was time, lasted less than nine months. Indeed, Japan has seen six leaders in four years, its spin-cycle politics spitting out new prime ministers with frightening speed.

“Although I am unworthy, I have decided to run in the leadership election,” Ozawa said last month, announcing his intent. Few pundits disagree. “He’s a wily, Machiavellian, amoral player—and he knows where all the bodies are hidden,” says former Canadian ambassador to Japan Joseph Caron. Three months ago, the 68-year-old veteran power broker was forced out as the DPJ’s secretary-general, the party’s No. 2 position, because of his links to a campaign funding scandal for which he may still face indictment.

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We get the feeling you’re tuning out, Steve

By Scott Feschuk - Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 2:17 PM - 0 Comments

Dear Steve,

We’re just going to come right out and ask. Are you bored with being Prime Minister? Are you bored with us? After four years, it feels as though the magic is gone from our relationship. You seem about as interested in your job as John Baird is in nuance.

We don’t communicate like we used to, that’s for sure. Despite the turbulent times, you haven’t delivered a major speech to us since the first week of March—and the content of that address, to mark the return of Parliament, could be reduced to two words: “Olympians? Yay!” How are we supposed to understand what you want, or know what you believe in, or remember what you look like?

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As to the situation of Richard Fadden

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 5:25 PM - 0 Comments

After an announcement in Waterloo this afternoon, the Prime Minister managed to get through a brief session with reporters without a single question about the director of our national spy agency. Nonetheless, I had previously filed a couple questions, via e-mail, with the Prime Minister’s Office:

1. “Does the Prime Minister feel that Richard Fadden has violated the CSIS Act?”
2. “Does the Prime Minister still have confidence in Richard Fadden as the director of CSIS?”

And now, some responses. Continue…

Waiting for a leader

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 10, 2010 at 12:11 PM - 44 Comments

We pause from our usual polling moratorium, to consider the current federal leadership standings according to Nanos.

As you may know, Michael Ignatieff is the leader of the federal Liberal Party, Stephen Harper is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Jack Layton is the leader of the federal NDP, Gilles Duceppe is leader of the Bloc Quebecois and Elizabeth May is the leader of the federal Green Party. Of the following individuals, who do you think would make the best Prime Minister?

Stephen Harper: 29.5%
Michael Ignatieff: 17.3%
Jack Layton: 15.6%
Gilles Duceppe: 6.3%
Elizabeth May: 5.5%
None of them: 11.3%
Unsure: 14.5%

The peace of this kingdom

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:51 PM - 64 Comments

Brian Topp makes the case for the import of last week’s House vote on prorogation.

This is how Parliamentary and democratic conventions are made in our parliamentary system. A clear statement by the House, after a clear abuse. The House has spoken, and the Crown and its counsellors must now so govern themselves, except at their peril.

In future, a Prime Minister who advises the Governor-General to padlock our Parliament in order to avoid accountability on a great public issue (as opposed to a routine proceeding) is in violation of a direct order from Canada’s only legitimate and elected democratic body — the House of Commons.

In future, a Governor-General who accepts such advice is therefore inviting a wide debate about the future utility of her office — which would also raise fundamental issues about the future of the Crown in Canada.

The will of the House

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 5:54 PM - 15 Comments

The NDP’s motion calling for a limit on prorogation has just now passed the House by a 139-135 vote.

Over then to the constitutional scholars to debate what this meaning, its precise significance undefined, one supposes, until some Prime Minister dares test it.

The secret to electoral success: Jetpacks!

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 9 Comments

Sometimes you’ve got to feel for Stephen Harper. Consider his changing-the-national-anthem fiasco: the guy finally takes a shot at appealing to women and what does he get? Glares, insults and mockery. It’s his high school Sadie Hawkins dance all over again.

But Harper brought it on himself. The Prime Minister set aside two long months to “recalibrate” his agenda and still he failed to embrace the word that would ignite his electoral prospects—the one word that would rally the people of Canada to his cause and assure him of the majority he so desperately seeks.

Jetpacks.

Do the math, people. For years now, the PM has been mired in the mid-30s in polls. But political scientists unanimously agree that pledging to commit our nation’s resources to the development of a National Jetpack Program would win the votes of 100 per cent of Canadian men who are me.

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This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

A week in the life of Yulia Tymoshenko
The prime minister of Ukraine, Tymoshenko is set to face Viktor Yanukovych in second-round
voting for the country’s presidency, expected to be held next month. Tymoshenko was a leader of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, the popular uprising against Yanukovych in the aftermath of the country’s 2004 presidential election. While Tymoshenko blamed Russian interference back then, she is now seen as being in favour of closer ties with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Correct punishment
A Canadian man who conspired to commit mass murder in the name of Islam has been handed the harshest punishment possible: life behind bars. The judge who delivered the sentence said it best: “It is difficult to put into words Zakaria Amara’s degree of responsibility. He was the leader and directing mind of a plot that would have resulted in the most horrific crime Canada has ever seen.” The confessed ringleader of the “Toronto 18”—a man obsessed with detonating truck bombs—was hoping for a 20-year term, which, with credit for time served, may have put him back on the streets by the end of the decade. But the life sentence ensures Amara will remain in prison until the day he dies, or the day the National Parole Board decides he is no longer a threat to fellow Canadians. We hope that’s a very, very long way off.

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'It is time … for Parliament to be restored to its position as the ultimate sovereign body for Canada'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 57 Comments

The Globe editorial board calls for reform.

It is time the rules governing prorogation changed. Canada’s Parliament has shown itself vulnerable to an excessive concentration of power, and hence is hampered in fulfilling its role as the “ultimate sovereign body.” The prorogation of 2008 has now been followed by another, this time simply for partisan tactical convenience. The Prime Minister is misusing the power to shut down Parliament, and in the process destabilizing Canada’s democracy. For that reason, prorogation should be made subject to legislative controls.

How to go about this (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 4:29 PM - 31 Comments

Spoke to Ned Franks just now. Here’s the essential gist of our conversation.

Q: So if the NDP comes in and says, just lays out legislation that says, essentially, the Prime Minister cannot prorogue Parliament without a majority vote of the House of Commons, a majority of members, that effectively limits, from that points forward the Prime Minister can’t prorogue Parliament without a majority vote of the House of Commons?

A: Well, they wouldn’t say it that way. What they would say is the Prime Minister cannot advise the Governor General to prorogue Parliament unless a motion to that effect has been passed in the House of Commons. So it’s limiting the Prime Minister’s power to advise rather than the Governor General’s discretion … It would leave the Governor General open to prorogue without the advice of the Prime Minister.

Q: I thought it would require some sort of constitutional wrangling.

A: The Conservatives might argue that Parliament cannot legislate limiting the Crown’s discretion and reserve powers, but Parliament isn’t as long as it’s limiting the Prime Minister’s powers to advise. Advice within the meaning of the constitutional meaning of advice to the Governor General.

When the going gets tough (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 9:36 AM - 27 Comments

Talk of proroguing Parliament may not be grounded in fact, but it is apparently grounded in the advice the Prime Minister is receiving from his advisors.

MPs are not due to come back to Parliament until Jan. 25. One scenario under consideration by Harper’s inner circle would be for the prime minister to prorogue Parliament a few days before that, have MPs return to Ottawa as planned on Jan. 25, and then quickly roll out a speech from the throne followed by the presentation of the 2010 federal budget — all before the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver on Feb. 12.

Still, if he does choose to prorogue, Harper would open up himself to some other potential political problems, primarily because prorogation has some similar effects to a general election: it would kill 40 pieces of government legislation — including the government’s own tough new bills on consumer product safety and on harsher sentences for drug traffickers — and it would disband parliamentary committees.

Fixing the system

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 59 Comments

Starting with the premise that last December’s proroguing of Parliament was “entirely inappropriate, democratically illegitimate and improper,” Brian Topp uses the last installment of his coalition series to suggest two changes.

First, the House of Commons could and should legislate to direct the prime minister to never provide advice to the Governor-General that interferes with the functioning of the House when a confidence motion is before it. This would hopefully make it more difficult for a prime minister to avoid democratic accountability to the House of Commons through a politically illegitimate and improper use of the Royal prerogative.

Second, the House of Commons could (and I think should) legislate that confidence votes must come in one of two forms. Option A: the government is defeated and an election is called. Or option B: the government is defeated and immediately replaced, at that moment, by a new one, specified by the House of Commons in its confidence vote. Subject of course to final approval by Her Majesty, as represented by our Governor-General, who in these circumstances will hopefully be more attentive to the views of the House of Commons.

When the referee wasn't looking

By Paul Wells - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 164 Comments

We’re all exhausted up here in Ottawa. We are so busy telling you whether there will be an election (Yes!) (No!) (SO EXCITING) that we sometimes don’t notice things. Sometimes the government doesn’t mind our not noticing, and it plays little tricks to encourage the not noticing. So on a Friday afternoon the government announced it was putting a question to the Supreme Court of Canada. Friday afternoons are an excellent time to say things if you don’t want them noticed. Yet it is such a rare thing for a government to put a question to the Supreme Court that some of us reported it this time, even though it had happened on a Friday afternoon. All the same, by Monday most of us had forgotten it had even happened, because we needed to spend more time wondering whether there will be an election (Yes!) (No!) (SO EXCITING).

The question the Harper government has put to the Supremes is whether the federal government has the power to establish a national securities regulator, a body for writing and enforcing the rules around transactions like stock trades. The question really is whether Canada will provide a single regulatory climate for investors, or a patchwork of different ones. Continue…

It’s time to tear down 24 Sussex

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 26, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 65 Comments

It has no fire sprinklers. Its walls are lined with asbestos. Its plumbing and wiring would not pass muster in any other house in Ottawa. It is drafty. Its air conditioners make a racket. It has, by all accounts, hideous carpeting on the stairs.

It has not had a thorough makeover in half a century. Fixing it in 2006 would have cost $10 million. Fixing it now will certainly cost more. Whenever the repairs begin, the tenants will have to vacate the property for at least a year, probably more. It was not built for its august purpose and it does not bear its burden gracefully. It oppresses its residents—though they are required by the unbreakable codes of populism to deny any problem—and it doesn’t uplift the nation. Frankly it doesn’t even do much for the neighbourhood. Continue…

Taking aim at Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 6 Comments

In the coded language of official Ottawa, they are known as SO31s. It’s a reference to Standing Order 31 of Parliament, which allows that 15 minutes be set aside before question period each day for MPs to stand in the House and make brief remarks about a subject of their choosing. For the most part, members use the time to salute constituents, celebrate charitable causes, mourn sad occasions or pontificate on matters of national or international importance.

When they still had Stéphane Dion to kick around, the Conservative government took great pleasure in mocking the former Liberal leader before he rose to ask another awkwardly worded question of the Prime Minister. And though they waited a few days before doing likewise with Dion’s successor, a steady succession of Conservative backbenchers has been sent up to denigrate Michael Ignatieff or his party since he took the leader’s chair. Indeed, despite an attempt recently by the Speaker to limit personal attacks during this time, government MPs have used more than 100 of these statements to needle the Liberal side in the 12 weeks since Parliament returned in January—a concerted campaign that reached a particular low when Ron Cannan rose on the afternoon of April 20 and attempted to segue from a preceding statement of condolence by Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua about the deadly Italian earthquake.

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Slicing through the fog of Airbus

By John Geddes - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 4 Comments

The contrasts between Brian Mulroney and Richard Wolson, the lawyer who questioned the former prime minister at the public inquiry into his dealings with German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, could hardly have been starker. Mulroney was a portrait of weary, wounded dignity. Every complex, equivocal sentence he uttered threatened to lead the proceedings by a winding route to a dead end. Wolson was a study in tenacity and focus. His blunt questions came with minimal preamble, and, although courteous in a curt way, he didn’t hesitate to cut short a lugubrious Mulroney digression with an abrupt, “Stop there.”

Beyond their verbal styles, the two men’s physical presence offered striking juxtapositions, too. Mulroney, 70, sometimes looked drained. But his baritone still resonates with the rich undertones of irony and sarcasm that once made him such a riveting Parliament Hill orator. Wolson, 61, carries himself with a coiled energy. Aside from his distinctive coiffure—less a head of hair than a back-swept crest of quills—the closest he comes to a theatrical quality is when his patience runs thin and his voice upshifts from dogged to insistent.

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So, how do you feel about activist auditors general, Prime Minister?

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 7:47 AM - 15 Comments

Because this could get interesting:

Auditor General Sheila Fraser says the government should be prepared to defend its rationale for changing any rules or processes and spell out who is accountable in its race to get stimulus money out the door.

As her office prepares for a audit into the expected spending frenzy of the next two years, Canada’s spending watchdog laid out her expectations for the management of stimulus money in a recent letter to Treasury Board Secretary Wayne Wouters.

“In all our audits, the criteria we use are based mainly on the government’s own rules,” she wrote in the letter. Should the government decide to modify its normal processes in delivering the Economic Action Plan, we would expect the rationale to be clearly documented and accountabilities to be clear.”

She warned that public servants and politicians rushing to get that money into the economy better balance speed with “due diligence.” That demands “a sound analysis of risk” and a level of scrutiny in approving programs and projects that are “commensurate with those risks.”

“I appreciate managers will face challenges in implementing the plan, given very tight time constraints. They will need to balance the government’s wish to move quickly with the requirement to exercise due regard,” she said.

She also seems to be siding with some of those whiny, high-maintenance, hyperdemanding opposition members on the question of whether the government should provide at least a “rudimentary list” — and not, presumably, just pictures of the prime minister holding court in front of various scenically shovel-themed backdrops — of the projects that will benefit from the $3 billion quick start fund:

She also said she didn’t have any concerns with the principle behind the $3-billion fund to fasttrack projects between April and June, but she questioned why the government couldn’t give MPs a rudimentary list of the programs and projects that will be financed.

“It’s not unreasonable.

$3 billion is a fair bit of money and they must have ideas, even in broad strokes, how that money will flow between April and June,” she said.

“I must say that I don’t buy the argument that they can’t tell them something — maybe not the detail of, say, what festival, or how much, but they could at least say where the money is going, whether it’s (to) infrastructure or festivals.”

“Festivals”? My goodness, how did that word worm its way into the discussion?

Expert insight on the Governor General's dilemma

By John Geddes - Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:32 AM - 19 Comments

University of Toronto law professor Ed Morgan is an expert on the Constitution and the traditions that underpin Parliamentary government. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke with Governor General Michaelle Jean at Rideau Hall, Morgan answered our questions about the decision she must soon make. An edited version of that conversation:

Q. What rules will guide the Governor General this morning?

A. All we have on these matters is a phrase that says our Constitution is similar to the constitution of the United Kingdom, and we know they have an unwritten constitution. So we’re into the area of unwritten constitutional conventions. The so-called reserve powers of the Crown are not unlimited but they are just unwritten.
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We apologize for any misunderstanding

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 4:34 PM - 6 Comments

Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi wants to set the record straight. According to team sources, the man with the seven-year plan is preparing a press release that he hopes will clear up all the recent “confusion.” The Prime Minister’s office is still reviewing the wording, but Maclean’s has obtained a draft copy:

Dear Fan(s),

As you know, the past two weeks have been a bit, well, shocking. Ten wins in a row!!! Twelve games over .500! I must admit, the whole thing has been such a roller coaster that I can’t even see straight anymore. The other day, I could have sworn Cito Gaston was sitting in the dugout. How crazy is that?!

Anyways, I think it’s only proper that we in the front office clear up all the confusion before somebody gets hurt. Ladies and gentlemen, despite what you’re seeing, THE TORONTO BLUE JAYS ARE NOT TRYING TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS. I repeat: WE ARE NOT IN THE MIDST OF A PLAYOFF RUN.

Yes, our effort of late has been extraordinary. The boys are finally beginning to hit. A.J. Burnett—auditioning for a big off-season payday—is collecting more srikeouts at the plate than I do at the bar. And the last time I checked, we’re a respectable 7 games back of Boston for the American League wild card. Who knows, right? Bigger miracles have happened.

Well…give your friggin’ head a shake. This isn’t Colorado.

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