The
Dilemma of a Member of Parliament of Canada:
Constituent
vs. Party Whip
David Kilgour,
M.P. Edmonton
Southeast,
to
the Students of Political Science at
The
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge,
AB
March
18, 1991
It is a pleasure to be here today to share a few thoughts
on how a Member of Parliament can affect
the political system in Canada.
A perennial question of Canadian
politics remains, are MPs destined to
be 'trained seals' by one unkind definition,
responding to whips' explicit demands
or can they function as influential policy
makers guided by their constituents and
regional interests?
In order to attempt to answer this
question we have to discuss the role of
an MP against the whole background of
our federal system.
Canada is among the world's longest practitioners of federalism.
A unitary form of government would
never meet the needs of a country as geographically,
linguistically and culturally diversified
as ours.
Yet, regional differences and priorities
require much better pyblic expression
in Parliament if the central institution
of our national government is to reflect
all parts of the country.
Regional voices are frequently
suffocated by rigid party discipline and
the entrenched habit of all three national
caucuses to maintain a close eye on what
opinion leaders in Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal
regard as the national interest on any
issue.
The constant priority of most MPs
in our House of Commons is to defend or
attack the government of the day.
Therefore, regional concerns usually
fail to be expressed because it might
fracture the unity each party wants to
project during the partisan wars waged
daily in the House.
Nor can one consider the Senate
in its present form as a forum where legitimate
regional interests can be voiced.
No one in the Senate, except Stanley
Waters, today represents anyone except
him or herself.
In practice, the loyalty of most
senators today is to the prime minister
and political party through which they
gained virtually life-time membership
in the best-paid club on earth.
Neither chamber of the Canadian Parliament today encourages
the articulate expression of regional
concerns that the national legislature
of a federation must provide.
Accordingly provincial governments
years ago assumed the task of defending
regional aspirations, not only on areas
of provincial constitutional responsibility
but in relation to matters such as interest
rates, federal procurement policy and
tariffs, which are squarely within Ottawa's
jurisdiction.
In doing so, the provincial governments
discharge no constitutional responsibility:
they are elected to deal with problems
within the provincial jurisdiction, not
to be regional voices in the formulation
of national policy.
This function should be provided
in the Parliament of Canada, probably
most effectively by a reformed upper chamber.
The decreasing support among Outer Canadians for a strongly
centralized national government is the
sensitivity of our federal institutions
to regional interests.
Most notably the House of Commons
and the Senate have not provided effective
regional representation to Outer Canadians.
The American federal system developed
towards centralization partly because
its Senate took to heart the interests
of residents of smaller states.
With two senators from Alaska (with
approximately 534,000 residents) and two
from California (with 29.3 million residents),
the American Senate is seen as providing
political clout to states that lack weight
in the House of Representatives.
There the large states dominate
because its composition is based merely
on population.
Not so in the Senate:
long-serving Senator Quinten Burdick
from tiny North Dakota, for example, is
chairman of an important legislative committee
and is seen as someone who fights effectively
for his voters every day of the year.
It is also important to note that
on issues involving inter-state rights,
U.S. senators promote the interests of
their voters, not those of their state's
governments.
Congressmen, representing single member geographical districts
after 1842, became important vehicles for
injecting local interests into their national
government in both its administrative and
legislative branches.
The first loyalty of every congressman
is to his or her district just as that of
senators is to their state.
In the words of one political analyst,
"The first concern of every congressman
seems to be how to get as much as he can
out of the nation for his own state."
Such an assertion could hardly be
made of Canadian Members of Parliament.
The constitutional separation of powers between the executive
and legislative branches and the weakness
of party discipline in congressional voting
behaviour greatly enhance effective regional
representation in Washington.
Presidents and congressmen are elected
for fixed terms and none resign if a particular
measure is voted down in the Senate or House
of Representatives.
The congressional system also provides
the freedom for effective territorial representation
when an issue has clear state implications.
Congressmen depart frequently from
party lines to represent state interests;
elected persons in the American capital
don't hesitate to place their state or district
interests ahead of their respective party
line when voting.
Party Discipline
Canada has probably the most severe
party discipline among all parliamentary
democracies.
A study on confidence votes by Eugene
Forsey and Graham Eglinton points out that
in earlier years government MPs in Canada
were permitted to vote against cabinet measures.
For example, between 1867 and 1872
their study lists fully 18 pages of cases
in which Conservative MPs voted against
measures of John A. Macdonald's government.
The sky did not fall; Macdonald's
government was able to function effectively;
government MPs could keep both their self‑respect
and membership in the government caucus.
Today, virtually all parliamentarians operate effectively
with far less Draconian levels of party
discipline than we have.
In West Germany, a provision of their
1949 Constitution even attempted to guarantee
that members of their Bundestag must be
guided only by their conscious in voting.
In Britain, some government MPs vote regularly against
important measures.
For example, none of the 31 (I believe)
Tory MPs who voted against Margaret Thatcher's
outrageous poll tax were expelled or even
penalized by the prime minister.
In Canadian legislatures virtually every vote is considered
potentially one of non-confidence in a government.
Even a frivolous opposition motion
to adjourn for the day can be deemed by
a cabinet, if lost, to have been one of
non-confidence.
The whips of government parties have
for decades used the possibility of an early
election to push their members into voting
the respective party line.
My own experience with our House of Commons since 1979
is that MPs from all three parties vote
in solid blocs on almost every issue. Government members do so from fear that a lost vote on a measure
will be deemed by their prime minister as
a loss of confidence.
This stems from the early to mid-nineteenth
century British concept that a government
falls if it loses the support of a majority
in the Commons on any vote.
It has now been largely abandoned
in the UK and other Commonwealth countries.
The constituents of both provincial
and federal legislators would be the real
winners if party discipline is loosened.
Private members from both government
and opposition benches could then take positions
on government bills and other matters based
on pleasing constituents instead of their
respective party hierarchies.
A key recommendation of the all-party McGrath report on
House of Commons reform favoured more free
votes by calling for the inclusion in any
opposition motion intended to bring down
a government an explicit provision that
its passage would constitute a vote of non-confidence.
Another solution to excessive party
discipline is the "positive non-confidence
rule" used in the West German Bundestag.
It prescribes that an administration
is only defeated if a successful opposition
non-confidence motion also names a new chancellor.
In the case of the defeat of the
minority Clark government in 1979 on its
budget, for example, the West German rule
would have left Clark in office unless the
Liberals, New Democrats and Social Credit
MPs had agreed simultaneously on a new prime
minister who could hold the confidence of
a majority of MPs.
A study of the Thirty-Second Assembly of Ontario (1981-1985)
indicated legislators voted in uniform party
blocs about 95 per cent of the time. The same basic pattern applies in the present and at least
the previous two House of Commons elected
in Ottawa. This record suggests the various party leaders could cast a
proxy on behalf of all their followers without
bothering to have them physically present
for votes.
It also overlooks that a majority
or even minority government can function
effectively without stratospheric levels
of party solidarity.
In the American Congress, where admittedly there is a strict
separation of powers between the executive
and legislative branches of government,
legislation does get passed with far less
party loyalty.
So different are the practices in
our two countries that The Congressional
Quarterly defines party unity votes
as ones in which at least 51 per cent of
members of one party vote against 51 per
cent of the other party.
Under thsi definition, itself astonishing
to Canadian legislators, the Quarterly
notes that for the years 1975-1982 party
unity votes occurred in only 44.2 per cent
of 4,417 recorded Senate votes and in only
39.8 per cent of ones in the House of Representatives.
This sample, moreover, includes the
years 1976-1980 when the Democrats controlled
the White House and both branches of Congress.
If party discipline in Canada is relaxed, it would be easier
for, say, Atlantic MPs to defy their three
party establishments, if need be, in support
of Maritime issues.
Coalitions composed of members from
all parties could exist for the purpose
of working together on matters of common
regional or other concern.
The adversarial attitudes and structures
now entrenched in Parliament and our legislatures
by which opposition parties oppose virtually
anything a government proposes might well
change in the direction of all parties working
together in the national interest.
Another feature of the congressional system in the U.S.
that fosters effective regional input in
national policy making is territorial bloc-voting
something quite unknown in Canada's
House of Commons. The weakness of party discipline
in Congress is one of several factors encouraging
the formation of regional voting blocs that
cross party lines.
Thus legislation detrimental to regional
interests can be opposed without fear of
the government being defeated, and an early
election being called.
Representatives from the two political
parties of the Mountain states, Sun Belt
states, New England states and others vote
en bloc or work together in committees to
advance common constituency interests.
A good example of how regional representatives
can influence the geographic location of
federal government procurement, which affects
the geographic distribution of the manufacturing
sector, is the Southern congressional influence.
It played a major role in the post-war
concentration of federal military and space
expenditures in the South and in the general
economic revivial and growth of the Sun
Belt.
If bloc-voting occurred in our House
of Commons, possibly through the enactment
of a fixed four year term in office, we
might see some measures detrimental to Outer
Canadians voted down when MPs would cross
party lines to put the interests of their
regions first.
A related feature of the congressional system in the U.S.
is the committee system.
Congressional committees and their
investigative staffs, together with congressional
control over departmental programs and budgets
allow Congressmen to fulfil their responsibility
of supervising the executive branch with
a vigour that is virtually unknown in Canada.
Canadian parliamentary committees
are, in practice, mostly still dominated
by party whips and the committee chairmen
mostly government-chosen for their obedience
rather than for any ability or special knowledge
as independent policy-makers.
Approximately 300 American House,
Senate and Joint House-Senate committees
and sub-committees provide real clout to
their members.
It is really at committee meetings rather than on the floor
of the House or Senate that American legislators
play major political roles. Full regional representation is also provided directly in the
composition of committees because on the
House side almost 40 per cent of committee
seats are reserved for members of specific
states. In the discharge of their important oversight role over the
executive branch, Congressmen and Senators
have numerous tools some say too many to
promote regional and local causes, including
large personal staffs and large numbers
of investigative personnel who work directly
for committees.
American public officials can be
summoned to committees on short notice and
in practice must reply to most questions.
Their federal counterparts in Canada
can be called through subpoena, but are
still not compelled to provide information
which came to them in their official capacity.
In theory, at least, a Canadian Deputy
Minister can still refuse to say anything
of substance to a Commons or Senate committee.
The House of Commons in Ottawa correctly reflects the nation's
majority will on a representation by population
basis.
Yet few members of Parliament have
provided effective regional voices in it
since the dawn of the twentieth century
when voting in party blocs became de rigeur
for all MPs.
In our present political culture,
if a government or opposition MP's loyalty
to his province clashes with the instructions
of his party whip, putting constituents'
or regional considerations first in his
way of voting implies considerable risk
to his prospects for party advancement.
Regional or state cross-party voting,
as exists in the American Congress, is virtually
non-existent in our House of Commons.
The situation is only a little better
in House committees because they are too
weak and too much lacking in publicity to
have any real impact on policy.
That the committees are essentially
impotent in policy-making is illustrated
by the fact that, since 1969 to the best
of my knowledge, only one $10,000 item of
proposed Ottawa spending has ever been deleted
by any of numerous committees considering
the annual budgetary estimates.
The sum in issue had reportedly already
been spent when the committee rejected it.
In short, Canadian MPs, in Leon Epstein's devastating phrase,
today "function in effect as members
of an electoral college that is in more
or less continuous session between general
elections."
The respective party leaders require
only the brute votes of their MPs; in consequence
they are essentially passive observers in
the formulation and administration of most
national policy.
Backbench MPs in Canada are far less
able to represent regional interest effectively
than are their counterparts in Washington
where the congressional system provides
the freedom for effective regional representation
when an issue has clear regional implications.
The heretical but serious question
is whether a model closer to the congressional
one would not serve Canadians generally
better at the end of the twentieth century.
Defenders of "British Parliamentary
Democracy" have been numerous over
the years:
suggestions that the model itself
might be part of the problems of Outer Canada
have rarely even been made.
There are, of course, major flaws in American Congressional
government, including unnecessary log-rolling,
mammoth delays in committees, and vast costs
associated with enhancing interregional
harmony. The best solution to problems of representative democracy in
Canada might be to adopt attractive features
from various systems.
In Britain, the matter of Parliament
itself has evolved significantly away from
some of its earlier twentieth century practices
still followed slavishing in Canada.
As the Regina political scientist,
John Courtney, points out, backbench government
members since the mid-1960s have shown an
increasing willingness to defy their party
whips.
Between 1974 and 1978, for example,
the government of the day was defeated 123
times on its own legislation, an average
of one defeat per government bill.
Courtney attributes this trend to
a changed sociological mix in the British
Parliamentary parties.
"The older, largely subservient
backbenchers of the past have gradually
been replaced by younger, more independent-minded
MPs .... The goals and political ambitions
of these new members in the parliamentary
system were soon matched by their frustrations
with Parliament, and they have defied their
party's leadership in increasing numbers.
The change has been welcomed because
it introduced a healthy tension into British
parliamentary politics and gave new credibility
to the role of the parliamentary backbencher."
Canadian MPs have represented, on average, about 87,000
individuals since the 1988 election.
In practice, few of them have any
real opportunity to put their constituents'
interests first in votes in the House of
Commons.
Real power is concentrated in the
hands of the three party leaderships.
Canadian democracy in a perestroika
age itself would benefit substantially if
we put our present mind-numbing party discipline
where it belongs- in the history books.
-30-
|
