Democratizing the Constitution, Reforming Responsible Government.

• Author: Levy, Gary
• Position: Book review

Democratizing the Constitution, Reforming Responsible Government by Peter Aucoin, Mark D. Jarvis, and Lori Turnbull, Emond Montgomery Publications, Toronto, 2011.

During the years of minority government political observers frequently decried the state of our parliamentary democracy. It was often said we needed an adult conversation. The academic community tried to shed light on some issues but mostly they vilified the Prime Minister, called for less partisanship, proposed proportional representation or cited the need for a cabinet manual to set out the rules of governance. Such suggestions were not very helpful.

Now, finally, with publication of this book we can have an adult conversation. The authors have done a serious analysis of our problems and made some serious proposals to fix them. What a tragedy that lead scholar Peter Aucoin died in July 2011 a few weeks after this book was published. It stands, however, as a fitting memorial to a career devoted to the study and reform of our democratic institutions.

The Canadian problem, according to the authors, is twofold--constitutional and parliamentary. The constitutional problem is the capacity of a prime minster "to abuse the constitutional powers to summon, prorogue and dissolve the House of Common to advance the partisan interests of the governing party." (p.4). The parliamentary problem is the ability of a prime minister to abuse the rules and procedures of the House of Commons that are meant to allow the government to manage the business of the House in an orderly way.

The authors point out the now familiar examples of abuse that occurred during the last few years but they rightly insist that Prime Minister Harper is hardly the first Prime Minister to be guilty of such behaviour. It is endemic to our system including Joe Clark's decision to wait 142 days before calling parliament after the 1979 election. That would never have been tolerated in other Westminster democracies. Jean Chretien used prorogation to forestall tabling of the Auditor General's report on the sponsorship scandal until his successor took office. There are many other examples.

The book includes a chapter on responsible government in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom but does not conclude we need to follow their practice of writing down the conventions in a cabinet manual. In our case a collection of precedents would merely be a catalogue of bad practices. Their message seems to be--let us get the system...