Assessing The Reform Act as a tool of parliamentary reform: one step forward, one step back.

• Date: 22 June 2020
• Author: Thomas, Paul E.J.

Two general elections have been held since the 2015 Reform Act was passed by Canada's Parliament. In this article the authors assess its success in rebalancing the relationship between individual MPs and their parties, discuss why many MPs remain reluctant to openly challenge their leaders' authority, and conclude that institutional or legislative changes alone will likely not change the culture that has permitted power to be concentrated in a leader's office.

Introduction

In 2014, Conservative MP Michael Chong introduced a private member's bill called the Reform Act with the goal of rebalancing the relationship between individual MPs and their parties. After months of debate and amendments, the final version required party caucuses to vote after each general election on whether to reclaim certain powers for caucus and party management that had been assumed by parties and party leaders. In early 2015, the Act passed the House of Commons with overwhelming cross-party support, and Mr. Chong and his supporters hoped that MPs would use these post-election votes to give themselves more independence and autonomy.

However, within less than a year, this hope had turned to dismay. Following Canada's 2015 federal election, two of the three officially recognized party caucuses not only failed to take up the powers on offer, they did not even hold the required votes at their first post-election caucus meetings. (1)

Now, after two federal elections, the time has come to evaluate the Reform Act as a tool for parliamentary reform and to draw lessons from the experience. This process has not been straightforward, as much of the information publicly available on the results of the Reform Act votes is either incomplete or inaccurate. This article, therefore, draws both on media reports and on direct correspondence with current and former MPs to provide a definitive account of the votes held by each party caucus following the 2015 and 2019 elections. It also presents the results of the Samara Centre for Democracy's survey of 2019 federal election candidates to explore whether the caucus votes reflect MPs' true beliefs about the proper relationship between caucus members and party leaders.

This review found that compliance with the Act improved over time, with all parties holding the votes as required after the 2019 election. Yet, despite following the proper procedures, the votes still do not appear to offer MPs an effective way to empower themselves relative to their respective leaders. Although the vast majority of the 2019 election candidates who responded to our survey favoured giving themselves more independence, MPs largely failed to take up the powers when given the chance.

All told, the experience of the Reform Act highlights the difficulty of implementing parliamentary reforms using tools that require ongoing expressions of independence by MPs. No matter what MPs may personally believe, many remain reluctant to openly challenge their leaders' authority, particularly as the votes regularly come to be interpreted in light of short-term political developments. However, before presenting these results in full, this article first explores the challenges the Reform Act sought to overcome, and the development of the Act itself.

The problem: discipline creep

For decades, observers and MPs themselves have warned that power was increasingly being concentrated in the hands of party leaders; as a result, individual MPs had less capacity to represent their constituents and to hold the government to account for its actions. (2) As with other Westminster-style legislatures using the single-member plurality electoral system, Canada's MPs are officially elected as individuals, not party members, and can theoretically choose how to vote on every item of parliamentary business. In reality, however, only one MP in the last two decades was first elected without a party affiliation. (3)

Within Parliament, MPs from the same party vote together over 99 per cent of the time on average. (4) While it is not surprising that MPs from the same party have similar views on most things, this level of unity is not spontaneous. Given the range of issues that MPs debate and the diverse communities they represent, there are many times when MPs in the same party will disagree. To ensure unity in these situations, parties "whip" potentially rebellious MPs to make sure they stay in line. MPs who fail to conform face discipline, including limits on their ability to speak in Parliament, removal from committees, and even expulsion from the party.

The number of "whipped votes"--where parties require their MPs to vote together--used to be comparatively limited, and parties were more accepting when MPs did vote against the party line. (5) Now, however, parties expect unity on nearly every issue. Moreover, this uniformity is increasingly demanded outside of Parliament as well, with MPs expected to promote their parties' messages in communications with constituents and social media posts. (6) This creeping expansion of party discipline has led to growing concerns among the public and MPs themselves that the quality of parliamentary representation is being eroded, with more and more power going to the party leaders instead.

What enabled party discipline to expand in this way? While researchers identify several factors that...