Whither Democracy in Canada?

Notes for Talk by Hon. David Kilgour, MP

Edmonton-Mill Woods-Beaumont
Democracy Now, Edmonton Chapter
University of Alberta Law School
Edmonton

16 March 2005

A representative democracy is supposed to function as a means for the nationals of a country to voice their opinions and concerns. MP’s, MLA’s etc are elected by constituents to represent their interests. They can only maintain legitimacy by acting in accordance with the wishes of their electorate most, if not all of the time.

In our current electoral system, the ability of an elected official in government to represent constituents is seriously impaired by the high degree of party discipline prevalent in the Canadian system since about 1900. Some degree of party discipline is necessary in order to maintain the coherence of political parties as viable institutions; this should not preclude an elected person’s ability to represent their constituents.

Currently, the role of the member as a representative is seriously compromised by the fact that the real political power lies with the Prime Minister of the day. The Prime Minister has the power to dismiss a member of his caucus at any time; to make all cabinet appointments, all appointments to the senate, to the Supreme Court; all ambassadors to name but a few. The combination of the Prime Minister’s explicit power to discipline through censure or expulsion; and the implicit power to discipline through denial of cabinet appointments, or other appointments creates an environment in which it is severely disadvantageous for caucus members to deviate from any agenda set by the Prime Minister.

One Attempt to Reduce Party Discipline

In February of 2004, the rules on votes for Liberal MP’s were overhauled and a “line” voting system was put in place. It categorizes all votes as one, two or three line votes. One-liners would be truly free votes, which would allow all members, including cabinet members to vote as they see fit. Two-line votes would compel cabinet members and relevant parliamentary secretaries to vote with the government and encourage all other caucus members to do likewise. Three-line votes are considered to be matters of confidence and would require all members to vote with the government. Items such as the Throne Speech, the budget and important supply motions are considered three-liners.

The aim of the new system was to create more opportunity for free votes by making what constitutes a matter of confidence, more explicit. Although the new system, in theory allows for more free votes by increasing transparency with regard to government prerogatives, the prime minister still holds the power to designate what category a vote falls under on a vote-by-vote basis.

Thus the new system does not change very much at all. A majority of votes under this new system have been deemed two-line votes; and there have not been any truly free votes to date.

Party Expulsion In Practice

In the case of three-line votes on which the ruling party decrees that all it’s members must vote in favour, a member might be expelled for understandably following the contrary wishes of their constituents. The threat of being expelled creates a major dilemma for the MP or MLA whose greatest desire is to be faithful in their service to their electorate.

An expelled MP is forced to sit as an independent and is virtually excommunicated from the political process. He/she must try and conduct their work with severely diminished resources and an extremely limited procedural ability to ask a question or raise an issue in the House of Commons, which diminishes their ability to serve their constituents. Such members have little means of influencing government policy to the benefit of their constituents in any way because they can no longer count of the support of their former party. While true that any non-cabinet member has the right to put forward a private member’s bill, this ability is of little practical value.

Private member’s bills are allocated a limited amount of time for consideration and are generally prone to failure since they require either the support of the governing party or broad-based support across party lines in order to be passed. Consider here the fact that during the Thirty Seventh Parliament out of the 880 private members’ bills tabled only eleven substantive bills (those bills which are not merely name changes) received royal assent. None of these bills had any significant socio-economic impact.

It is very difficult for an MP to vote against any piece of government legislation that the governing party has designated as a matter of confidence even though one’s constituents are not in favour of it. One is faced with a choice in which their ability to serve as representative is undermined regardless of what choices they made. If one toes the party line on a piece of legislation their constituents have deemed undesirable, you lose the faith and trust of their electors and are seen as a political figure that lacks legitimacy. If one obeys the wishes of their constituents, one’s ability to serve them becomes severely constrained as a result of being dismissed from their political party.

Trumping Public Opinion

The reality of our present system is that the will of the constituents is often “trumped” by party discipline. Ironically, members of the governing party, who should theoretically be in a good position to serve the interests of their constituents, are in practice the least empowered.

Inter-Party Cooperation

Another important consequence of the current system is that it often effectively closes the door to any sort of cooperative efforts in the policy-making realm among parties. Where parties dominate the process as they do now, there is no real forum for substantive policy dialogue to take place among members of different parties when one has a majority.

One may contend that Question Period serves such a role, but Q.P. can hardly be seen as a constructive policy forum. It is pointless for a member of any party to try and lobby members of other parties during Q.P. given the reality that virtually every vote will result in each party’s respective members voting with their party in the majority of cases. The lobbying that goes on in the House of Commons is really directed toward the public as parties jockey for position in anticipation of the next election.

In the U.S., where certainly there is a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branches of government, laws are passed with far less party discipline. The separation of powers and the weakness of party discipline in voting on Capitol Hill greatly facilitate effective regional representation in Washington. Unlike the situation in Canada where a government falls if it loses the support of a majority in the House on a confidence vote, U.S. presidents and congress are elected for fixed terms. Neither resigns if a measure of any kind is voted down in either the Senate or the House of Representatives.

The voting practices in our two countries are so different that The Congressional Quarterly defines party unity votes as those in which at least 51 per cent of members of one party vote against 51 per cent of the other party. Under this definition, itself astonishing to Canadian legislators, the Quarterly notes that for the years 1975-1982 party unity votes occurred in only 44.2 per cent of the 4,417 recorded Senate votes and in only 39.8 per cent of those in the House of Representatives. This sample, moreover, includes the years 1976-1980, the last period before 1992-96 when Democrats controlled the White House and both branches of Congress.

Regional Block Voting

Another feature of the American system that fosters effective regional input in national policymaking is territorial bloc voting - something quite unknown in Canada's House of Commons. Representatives from both political parties from the Mountain, Sun Belt, New England and others regions vote en bloc or work together in committees to advance common regional interests.

A good example of how effective regional representatives can influence the geographic location of federal government procurement, which affects the geographic distribution of the manufacturing sector, is the Southern influence in Congress. It played a major role in the post-war concentration of federal military and space expenditures in the South and in the general economic revival and growth of the Sun Belt. During 1981-82, for example, the height of the "boll-weevil era", the long-time legislative coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans was successful more than 85 per cent of the time, due to mutual areas of agreement and interest.

The point of this comparison is only to emphasize that, unlike the American Congress, Canadian bloc voting makes bi- or tri-partisan agreement on anything in our legislatures except in minority government situations, exceedingly rare. In our current political culture, if a government or opposition MP’s loyalty to his/her province clashes with the instruction of the party whip, placing constituent or regional considerations first voting implies considerable risk to one's prospects for party advancement.

Private MPs in Canada are thus far less able to represent regional interests effectively than are their counterparts in Washington, where there is freedom allowing effective regional representation when an issue has clear regional implications.

This, of course, is not to suggest that Canada should duplicate the American style of government. It is to point out that the best solution to ongoing problems of representative democracy in Canada might be to adapt attractive features from various systems, including the American one.

Another system useful to examine is that of Germany. In Germany a vote of non-confidence requires that the opposition, on the same motion also propose a candidate of their own whom they wish to be appointed Chancellor by the Federal President. A motion of non-confidence is required to be made at the same time as one for a new Chancellor. The idea behind this structure was to prevent crises by always maintaining a Chancellor in office. Unlike Canada’s current application of the Westminster model, the Chancellor does not resign upon the passage of a non-confidence motion and must instead be dismissed by the Federal President. To put this into a Canadian context, in the case of the Clark government as an example, the defeat of the government’s budget in December 1979 would not have ousted Clark from office unless the Liberals, New Democrats and Social Credit MPs had agreed simultaneously on a new prime minister who could hold the confidence of a majority of MPs. The adoption of a similar measure in our own practices would weaken party discipline and facilitate greater independence for MP’s to vote on the merits of issues without fear of toppling a government.

Revitalization of Canadian Democracy

The democratic deficit in Canada is clearly in need of some work when one examines the long-term trends in participation rates. Voter turnout has been steadily trending downward over the last two decades from an average of 75% between 1945 and 1988. Since then, it was recorded at 61.2% for the 2001 election and reached an all time low of 60.5% for the 2004 election despite the fact that it was hotly contested. As Carty, Cross and Young noted in Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics:

“Public opinion and survey data confirm that at the outset of the new century large numbers of Canadians continue to believe their politicians and political institutions are out of touch and unresponsive, and are increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of parliament and political parties.”

This is borne out in a poll Pollara conducted in 2003, which showed that 74% of respondents agreed with the statement “Generally, those elected to Parliament soon lose touch with the people”. Fully 67% agreed that, “People like me don’t have any say about what government does.” If we are to continue to have a vibrant democracy in Canada it is clear that the relaxation of party discipline and the facilitation of greater opportunities for free votes will go a long way toward increasing the degree of engagement that Canadian citizens now have with the political process.

Canadians will feel that our elected representatives have a greater degree of accountability toward them as opposed to their party if a member is empowered by having the ability to vote in ways that accord with the wishes of their constituents on a regular basis. This will be an important step in reversing voter apathy. Increased accountability of MP’s to constituents will increase the degree of engagement Canadians have with the political process; it will encourage them to get more involved not only at election times but in between as well.

Canada is a federal state and federalism means that on some issues the will of the popular majority will be frustrated. If the biggest battalions of voters are to prevail over smaller ones under any circumstances, we should drop the charade that we have a federal system of government that respects minorities in times of stress. The notion that the largest group of Canadians, i.e., southern Ontarians and metropolitan Quebeckers, must be accommodated always has resulted in discontent everywhere and accompanying feelings of regional subordinancy.

Putting Constituents First

In an increasingly interdependent world, many Canadians in our outer eight provinces and territories at least want new or altered institutions that will represent the interest of both "Inner Canadians" (those who live in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor) and "Outer Canadians" effectively. Unless we move away from the notion that "the national interest" is merely a code-phrase for the most populous region dominating all corners of the country, frictions between Inner and Outer Canada are likely to remain and worsen.

If party discipline is relaxed, representation for all areas of Canada would be improved. It would be easier for, say, Western MPs to defy their party establishments, if need be, in support of Western issues. Coalitions composed of members of all parties could exist for the purpose of working together on issues of common regional or other concern. The present adversarial attitudes and structures of Parliament or legislatures in which opposition parties oppose virtually anything a government proposes might change in the direction of all parties working together for the national good.

At present, few government and opposition MPs have any real opportunity to put constituents first in votes in the House of Commons. Real power is concentrated in the hands of the three party leaderships. Canadian democracy itself would benefit if we put our present mind-numbing party discipline where it belongs - in the history books.