I read a post on Substack recently which suggested that what has happened in the United States – with a highly polarized political landscape and a Congress and Supreme Court that are bowing down to despotism – could not happen in Canada. The article leaned on our Governor General, Senate, and Supreme Court as defenders of our democracy.
I think that is tragically, bizarrely, optimistic.
American democracy was supposed to be the model by which other democracies operated. And it seemed to be structurally sound. Two Congressional houses, the President, and the Supreme Court were, reasonably it seemed, expected to keep checks on each other and find balance between the States and the Federal Government. Clearly, that has failed much to the detriment of, well, almost everybody except, perhaps, a handful of billionaires.
It Can Happen Here Too
I’ve talked before about how Canada’s Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is extremely powerful – probably the most powerful political office in the democratic world. The PMO, particularly in a majority government, runs the agenda in Parliament. It directs the Cabinet and MPs. It appoints Senators and Supreme Court Justices (without the same vetting that the US has!). I suspect, as others have, that the PMO often runs the Prime Minister too1.
Harper’s PMO directed Conservative MPs to filibuster Parliamentary Committee work – so that the PMO agenda could be pushed through Parliament. Jody Wilson-Raybould commented in her book Indian in the Cabinet that, by order of the PMO, she was not able to communicate openly with other Cabinet ministers and, only a year into her appointment as AG, the entire focus of government shifted away from implementing agenda (important ones considering the promises made to First Nations about improving justice-related issues) to winning elections.
With that kind of power, what is stopping the PMO in a majority government from taking the kind of control we’ve seen in the United States?
The Governor General is mostly powerless to stop a seizure of power. It isn’t like King Charles is going to order the British Army to intervene. Being mostly ceremonial, there is nothing there to use as real teeth to bring a democracy back in line. Perhaps the Senate or the Supreme Court might intervene but I’m not confident that either has the power to reign in a rogue PMO (see below).
So, why hasn’t it happened here?
integrity
ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti
noun
the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
the state of being whole and undivided.
Honour, Ethics. Virtue. Respect for democracy and the institutions that keep it sound is vitally important to the health of what is, as is often said, a fragile system. We must be able to trust our elected representatives to respect our institutions, to keep them healthy and vibrant. To respect our electoral system and orderly transfer of power. To select Supreme Court judges with respect for the Constitution before party loyalty and agenda.
So, what worries me about the Supreme Court? The Notwithstanding Clause. Not the NWC specifically but the emerging pattern in its use. It is egregious enough that Danielle Smith has used it to trample on Trans rights ( is it Alberta’s culture to hate others? ). But the defining moment for me was when Pierre Polievre2 threatened to use it to override a court decision on sex offenders3. He’s also promised to use it to punish other criminals beyond what the Charter allows by using the NWC.
What Smith and Ford and other Premiers do is within the scope of Provincial rights to use the NWC. For Poilievre, however, it is literally his job as an MP of the Government of Canada to respect the Constitution and to work to craft laws that don’t violate the Charter. This is the same person that, in 2014, introduced the Fair Elections Act which appeared to limit access to voting by increasing ID requirements4 and muzzling Elections Canada in favour of having political parties communicate to the public about voter education5.
We need to be very cautious about a candidate for Prime Minister who is willing to put the Constitution and electoral integrity aside to further his political aspirations.
First Past the Post Fails (again)
Realistically, we have no checks and balances in an electoral system that is all about generating winners and losers. Because “winners and losers” is all about power. There is no room in our hockey mentality for consensus, building relationships, or working together.
First Past the Post guarantees the polarization that creates an us-vs-them mentality. This is not a bug in the system. Gravitating toward a highly polarized environment dominated by two big parties is an unavoidable dynamic in any FPTP electoral system.
All we have left, under our electoral system, then, should a rogue PMO decide to go too far, is to protest. Thankfully, I suppose, we have a great model in Minnesota should it come to that.
Personally, however, I’d rather see us proactively build a better system. We need to implement a proportional system, the sooner the better, in an increasingly polarized world. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it would reduce partisanship, create more voter engagement, and take power out of the PMO and put it back in the Parliamentary seats where it belongs.
In doing so, it would reduce the risk of a government and court system being hijacked by a big-tent party that has radical politics (left or right) lurking within.
- Was Gerald Butts actually running the country? ↩︎
- Yes, I talk about Poilievre a lot. I don’t like his politics. I hope this piece makes it clear why. ↩︎
- Before anyone gets themselves in knots, this was a nuanced decision. The courts were quite clear that they were worried about making too narrow a decision that would result in putting innocent people in jail, such as a hypothetical, but realistic, case of a 17 year old sharing nude photos with their 18 year old partner. Poilievre would have them criminalized and locked up and he would override the Charter to do it. ↩︎
- There’s little evidence to increase voter ID requirements. On the contrary, it would disenfranchise many people who may not have the designated ID. Ironically, part of electoral integrity, is to make sure as many eligible people vote as possible (also, ahem, watch the results of the SAVE act in the United States, which could disenfranchise millions, particularly women who have changed their names after marriage. And watch for the CPC to pick up pieces of it for their own policy) ↩︎
- I interpreted that as “the party with the most money gets to tell people how to vote” ↩︎