Over the weekend, the Globe and Mail ran a lengthy opinion piece called “It Can Happen Here,” about how we are supposedly more vulnerable to an autocrat taking power in this country, under our rules, than the Americans were with theirs. I am dubious. While I very much respect the professor who wrote the piece, I worry that there were a few fundamental misunderstandings in some of the points he was trying to make. For example, there is a section about how we don’t have an impeachment mechanism in our constitution, and of course we don’t. Our system operates on confidence as opposed to a fixed clock, so we don’t need impeachment. If the government goes pear-shaped, Parliament can withdraw confidence and the government is out. If a caucus loses confidence in their leader, they can vote non-confidence in him or her at any point, and no, they don’t need the (garbage) Reform Act rules to do so.
Our rules can be pretty effective. For example, when Charles Tupper tried to hold onto power after losing an election, the Governor General refused to make any of the appointments that Tupper wanted him to, so he was forced to vacate the office. Oh, but what if the autocratic PM appoints a lapdog GG? People in serious positions tend to take up the seriousness of those positions even when everyone thinks they won’t. Not saying it’s an impossibility, but so far that’s been the case. And yes, some of our rules are “unwritten,” for which he suggests we need a Cabinet Manual to codify them, but I am dubious there too. Codifying those rules in such a manner invites people to look for legalistic loopholes rather than a principles-based system that makes it easier to point out when someone is trying to do through the backdoor what they cannot do through the front. I also find that the piece very much misread and oversimplified what happened with the whole SNC-Lavalin affair as one of the examples of how power can be abused, because in the end, it was Bill Morneau’s office that was lousy with SNC-Lavalin lobbyists and not PMO, and a more pliant Attorney General was not appointed and didn’t result in the deferred prosecution agreement. (In fact, when SNC-Lavalin eventually pleaded guilty, they got a lesser penalty than the DPA would have stipulated).
My biggest problem with the piece, however, is that it treats the (garbage) Reform Act as a kind of panacea that needs to be more widely adopted. It absolutely does not. What it actually does is put up a bunch of unnecessary rules and barriers to what is a simple vote of non-confidence, and more to the point, it tries to convince MPs that they have lost power over time, or that this will “empower” them when in fact it actually disempowers them because of its formalistic barriers. Yes, we do need to beware leaders who can become autocrats, but the Reform Act will not help avoid that in any way, shape or form.
My Latest:
- For National Magazine, I delve into the Alberta case that the Supreme Court of Canada has recently granted leave to appeal about lawyers’ oaths to the Crown.
- My column points to the things that the sanitized tales of Conservative “infighting” over generational change are ignoring or glossing over.
Ukraine Dispatch:
An early-morning missile and aerial bomb attack on Zaporizhzhia has killed five and injured at least twenty. As many as 50,000 North Korean soldiers are being deployed to Russia, and Ukraine is hoping South Korea will help with air defences.
Noteworthy:
- The federal government hasn’t filled the vacant Correctional Investigator’s post after four months, when he gave them seven months’ notice he was leaving.
- Justin Ling points out that the rash of cyclosporiasis cases in the US is yet another reason why we should avoid buying American.
- Althia Raj reminds us that the Building Canada Act is an attack on the rule of law.
- Philippe Lagassé examines some of the root causes of risk aversion in procurement processes, and suggests that proper ministerial responsibility can help solve it.
- Paul Wells reflects on the hand-wringing about the ongoing reduction in Canada’s contribution to peacekeeping.
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