Obligatory mention of proportional representation, which is the most important improvement that we could make to our democracy, but this article describes another issue - that the Prime Minister most likely has too much power in this country.
Canadian prime ministerial powers fall into two main categories. The first is the ability of the prime minister, backed by their staff in the Prime Minister’s Office—the PMO—and the Privy Council Office—the PCO—to direct and control what happens in government and in Parliament. The second is the astonishing unchecked power of patronage Canadians give their prime minister to appoint all the leading figures in the country’s public life, judiciary, and administration.
Backbenchers in the House of Commons no longer see themselves primarily as representatives of the people who elected them and therefore owing prime loyalty to the interests of their constituents. Canadian MPs see loyalty to their party and its leader as their duty beyond any other. A 2020 study by the Samara Centre for Democracy found that Canadian MPs vote as they are instructed by their party whips 99.6 percent of the time.
I have become convinced that the key to unlocking the barriers to repairing our democracy is to dismantle this electoral system that revolves around the celebrity and curb appeal of a handful of individuals. If Ottawa worked as it should—if it worked as a representative system based on discussion and resolution of communal issues—then the other problems with the Canadian polity and federation can be overcome. In a country of immense diversity, no other democratic model will work. Fundamentally, the overriding problem for Canadian democracy is the unaccountable power that has gathered into the hands of the prime minister. Until that problem is addressed and redressed, until a sustainable working relationship between the prime minister and Parliament is restored, no tinkering with the other levels of our institutions will work.
While I agree that our FPTP system is archaic and the PM may have too much power, I’m not necessarily convinced that the alternatives would make the country much better.
The longer I watch governments at home and abroad, the more I see that all democratic systems of government depend on a set of unwritten rules of honourable behaviour, respect for compromise, and fair-dealing. If those norms of behavior are ignored, the written rules won’t save us. In short, good people can make a bad system work, and corrupt people can corrupt any system. The US constitution was famously designed as a system of checks and balances specifically intended to prevent too much power from resting in the hands of one man, and yet look what they’ve done to themselves in the last couple of decades.
That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t try to continuously make the system better. But I’m less inclined than I used to be to think that the specific structure we implement is overly important.
