The political structure of our government is outdated and it’s time to give it a facelift.
On Oct. 10, the Globe and Mail published an article exploring the topic of what the Governor General’s role in Canada should be. Apparently, Her Excellency Michelle Jean accidentally let it slip that she was Canada’s head of state. This is untrue—technically Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is Canada’s head of state, while her Governor General is empowered to act with all of her authority.
What does this authority empower Her Excellency to do? It’s a long list: calling Parliament to sit, dissolving Parliament to call elections, Commander-in-Chief of Canada’s armed forces, appointing Senators, appointing Cabinet Ministers, g or vetoing all legislation ed by the house, reading the speech from the throne, not to mention a plethora of ceremonial tasks and whatever I might have missed.
So basically a lot. So much actually, that she’s by far the most powerful person in Canada by a long shot—and she’s not even elected.
Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Hold on, I thought that the Prime Minister was the most powerful person in Canada?” You’d be right there. Because although Her Excellency has all the above powers, she performs all the really important tasks described above, “on the advice of the Prime Minister.” In practice, this works out as Prime Minister Harper sending a message to Rideau Hall—where Her Excellency lives—telling her whom she should appoint and she does it.
This was probably best illustrated last December during the now infamous “Coalition Crisis.” Prime Minister Harper, faced with the threat of a non-confidence vote, asked the Governor General to “prorogue” parliament, essentially postponing the sitting of the house until January of this year. I never had any doubt about whether Her Excellency would agree or not. One only has to look at precedent to see why.
There’s the infamous “King-Byng” crisis of 1926. Prime Minister Mackenzie King asked Governor General Byng to dissolve his minority government due to deadlock in the house and instead of dissolving Parliament to call an election, Byng handed over the reigns to the opposition Conservatives led by Arthur Meighen, who promptly formed a coalition government of his own.
Soon Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister of all time found a way to turn the coalition against Meighen and after forcing an election, campaigned on getting the Governor General to quit meddling with Parliament because he wasn’t elected. The lesson to successor Governors-General has been to take a ive, symbolic role in the political process.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in a conglomeration of power in the hands of one person—the Prime Minister. If we compared our Prime Minister’s role to that of the President of the United States, it’s clear to see the Prime Minister with a majority of seats in the House of Commons holds much more power than his American counterpart—in relative of course.
The U.S. President, being both the head of government and the head of state, can call Congress to sit, can hold a Presidential veto over legislation that isn’t ed with 60 per cent approval, appoints his own cabinet, is Commander-in-Chief of the American Military, fills Supreme Court vacancies with Senatorial approval, along with all his roles as figurehead.
A Canadian Prime Minister with majority seats in the House of Commons holds all these powers and more. He can fill Senate vacancies with whomever he chooses, replace Supreme Court vacancies with whomever he fancies, or block any legislation he pleases, can call an election whenever he wishes—and if he really wanted to—unilaterally declare war.
This is far too much power to rest in the hands of one man. To quote Abraham Lincoln, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The strength of the American system has always been its checks and balances, not to mention its constitutionally scheduled elections—which would be a good place to begin reform of the Canadian system. We need constitutionally fixed federal election dates. This would promote political stability—especially during minority governments—and allow politicians to act with greater conviction, as they wouldn’t be worried about when the next election might be.
Another check on the power of the Prime Minister would be to dilute it. That could easily be accomplished by giving political authority—by electing—to the two institutions that currently have the technical authority to oppose him—the Senate and the Governor General.
One or the other might do and it’s more likely that the Senate would come first. Along with a few other tweaks, an elected Senate would provide not only a balance on the power of the Prime Minister, but it would also help to balance out the huge power of Ontario and Quebec with the other eight Canadian provinces.
The best thing about having an elected Senate or fixed federal election dates is that they don’t even need the approval of the provinces to be changed, as changes to our constitution that only affect the federal level of government need only a majority approval in the House of Commons.
Luckily, Canadian politicians have rarely abused our political system, but I don’t want to wait for a crook to come along before we start making changes.
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