Summary
Constitutional Conventions And Election Campaigns
See the full content of this document
Extract
The status of the caretaker convention in Canada.
The autumn issue of the Review included an article by Professor Andrew Heard on the general nature of constitutional conventions and discussed the kinds of constraints that face a government in its last days. On September 25, Professor Heard appeared before the Special Senate Committee on the Pearson Airport Agreements. At that time the Committee also heard from Professor John Wilson and Professor James Mallory. In this article Professor Wilson provides a different perspective on the nature of constitutional conventions during election periods.
********** Many different issues are involved in the agreements between the Government of Canada and the Pearson Development Corporation which were authorized by the Prime Minister on October 7, 1993 and signed on the same day by representatives of the Government and of the Corporation. The Special Senate Committee has examined these in some detail but it has given hardly any consideration at all to what many observers regard as the most important element of the whole question--the status of the constitutional conventions surrounding the event and the importance which should be accorded them. (1) Indeed, this may be the only issue which has any significance in the debate which has been taking place since the new Liberal Government moved to cancel the agreements. Nearly every other aspect covers an area where there is legitimate room for different opinions about what is acceptable and what is not--in short, about different views based on different value systems--if only because such differences always exist in our society and in politics nobody is necessarily right. We are all, in our way, partisan. But when it comes to questions of constitutional propriety we go beyond the particular merits or otherwise of the agreements and how a decision was reached. We are dealing instead with the practice of government itself--the rules and forms for decision-making in our society--and here there ought to be no room for argument. If we know what our constitutional practice is and should be then we should always insist on its observance. In what follows I therefore want to addre...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
