Over the last several decades, Canadians have witnessed an alarming change in governance at the federal level as power has increasingly shifted from elected representatives to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Jeffery Simpson in his book, The Friendly Dictatorship (2001), contends that the Canadian Prime Minister exerts more direct and unchecked power than the leader of any other parliamentary democracy.
Gordon Robertson, a highly respected top -level civil servant, shared the same opinion many decades earlier. He noted that the lack of influence and power of not only MPs occupying the back benches, but also of cabinet ministers, comes very close to being unconstitutional.
Donald Savoie, retired Professor of Public Administration and author of Governing From the Centre: The Centralization of Power in Canadian Politics, points out that, in Canada, the prime minister has control of all the levers of power. These levers grant the prime minister unlimited and unfettered authority to appoint people who have a compatible ideology to positions of great influence and power.
At the pleasure of the Prime Minister, an agreeable aspirant can become a cabinet minister, senator, supreme court justice, deputy minister, Clerk of the Privy Council, President of Treasury Board, ambassador, or the head of a crown corporation. As well, thousands of less important appointees also owe their good fortune in their careers to their ideological alignment with the PMO.
While consultation with parliamentary committees and central agencies is sometimes part of the appointment process, final decisions, particularly for high-level positions, are made in the PMO. As pointed out by Savoie, the power of appointment should never be underestimated. As Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Harper’s disgraced Chief of Staff, recently found out the prime minister’s power of dismissal also should not be underestimated.
In their award winning book, Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government, Peter Aucoin and co-writers Lori Turnbull and Mark Jarvis observed that the current governance structure in Canada appears to be more like an historical monarchy than a modern parliamentary democracy. In their opinion, the prime minister, like a monarch, has too many discretionary powers. For example, Canadian prime ministers, in consultation with their court of advisors, decide when parliament is to be summoned, prorogued or dissolved, manage and control the House of Commons agenda, control debate in the House through closure, and whip backbenchers, committee chairs, and Senate leaders into silence, or demand that they slavishly follow the party line.
Part of the problem, as they see it, is the fact that Canadian prime ministers govern according to unwritten conventions.
Changes over the years in the role and function of the PMO have given particular lift to the wings of power at the top. Centralizing power in the federal central agencies - particularly, in the PMO can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s when Liberal Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau greatly increased the size of the PMO and extended its mandates. Currently, there are about 100 “exempt” staffers working in the PMO. As expected, these staffers are political operatives who are appointed by the Prime Minister to carry out his agenda. In this case, exempt status means that PMO employees do not have to answer to the public, nor do they have to follow the rules governing public civil servants - they simply follow the rules of the prime minister.
The late Jim Travers, an astute political observer who was often referred to as the journalist’s journalist, suggested that the way forward is the way back. “Piece by piece, democracy must be rebuilt. It begins with political parties re-establishing their rightful place in the policy process...it continues by giving back to Parliament what is Parliament’s... to know what ministers are doing and to hold the prime minister accountable.”
The title of Jeffery Simpson’s book, now over 14 years old and written during the heyday of Jean Chretien’s leadership, suggests that Canadians are governed by a friendly and somewhat benign dictatorship.
Would parliamentary reform help us rehabilitate our international image? Stem the erosion of environmental standards? Close the widening income gap? Put heart back into our social programmes? Address the third world conditions in which our first nations live? Rethink our approach to law and order based on solid research? Raise the ethical standards of parliamentarians? Guarantee our rights and freedoms are respected? Improve transparency and accountability? The answers to these any many other pressing questions are really unknowns.
Dr. Edgar MacDonald is a retired university professor living in Winsloe. He is not affiliated with any political party.
