The Written Word
for June 23, 1999

I want to expand today a bit on a point I’ve made elsewhere but one which is critical to understanding why the House of Commons has become the servant of the Prime Minister instead of the other way around.

Under the so-called "responsible government" system, the executive, which is to say the premier and the cabinet, are "responsible" in the sense of answerable to the House of Commons. In theory, the Prime Minister and Cabinet hold power on sufferance from Parliament.

We all know that this is no longer the case. For a variety of reasons, the Prime Minister exercises dictatorial power and simply cannot, for practical reasons, be held to account. If the House of Commons were to censure the Prime Minister, meaning that a majority of the Commons did this, the Prime Minister would have to resign. This is not a situation any Prime Minister will permit to happen.

One of the ways – and perhaps the most effective way – that the Commons can hold the Prime Minister’s feet to the fire is through the Committee system. Like all parliaments, there are committees covering most key ministries of the government – a finance committee, a foreign affairs committee, a fisheries committee and so on. These committees have the power to deal with such issues as they please and can subpoena witnesses including cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister himself. Sounds like a pretty effective weapon, doesn’t it?

Except it’s no weapon at all because the Prime Minister gets to name the members of the committee from his party, which has a majority on each committee, and dictate to his members who will be the chair and thus set the agenda. Pretty neat, huh? All the trappings of democracy and checks and balances yet in practice as independent as the members of Saddam Hussein’s parliament.

There are two recent instances of where the Prime Minister in one case and Premier Clark on the other have exercised clout to bring a committee into line. In 1998 the federal Fisheries Committee chair, a Newfoundland Liberal named George Baker, permitted the committee to ask some pretty awkward questions about the Newfoundland fishery of Fisheries Minister David Anderson. Mr Anderson objected to this lese majeste and before you knew it, George Baker was out of there. Poof! Now you see him, now you don’t.

A few days ago the Public Accounts Committee in British Columbia, which is chaired by the opposition in this province, heard from George Morfitt, the auditor-general concerning the "fudge-it budget" of May 1996 and decided that, as a follow-up to ask that Tom Gunton, the NDP civil servant eminent grise, be called to give evidence before them and Premier Clark put an end to it by instructing his members of the committee to nix the idea.

What this means, of course, is that committees simply don’t bother asking hard questions because they know that the majority hand picked by the leader will make sure that nothing to embarrass the premier (or prime minister) or the cabinet will be allowed to happen.

Thus, with the power to select all people in power of consequence in the country, very much including the cabinet, and with the power to shut off any meaningful dissent in the parliament, Canadian prime ministers and premiers have absolute dictatorial powers. And, as we’ve seen with Bill Vander Zalm and Glen Clark, no matter how bad it gets, once in power, the leader only leaves when he’s damned good and ready.