Читать книгу Point of View 2-Book Bundle - Douglas L. Bland - Страница 5

The Quest for Responsible Government: From the Magna Carta to Lord Durham

I enjoy speaking to students about my job as a Member of Parliament. Most elementary and junior high school students have little idea what an MP is or does. They do, however, understand what a rule is and are accustomed to rules both at school and at home. When I explain that Parliament makes law and that laws are essentially rules that apply to everyone, the students gain at least some frame of reference.

In contrast, some high-school students are quite politically literate, some even politically active. When I ask them to define “responsible government” however, I am almost always disappointed with the response. Generally, without exception, “responsible government” will be defined as a government that governs responsibly, that is to say, one that makes good decisions.

The obvious problem with the answer is that determining what constitutes good governmental decisions requires a very subjective analysis. A social program, requiring a huge budgetary commitment, would quite likely be met with approval by a socialist. A fiscal conservative, however, might regard the proposal as unnecessary or even wasteful.

There is no objective method to determine what is a “responsible” decision or government initiative. However, in the context of our inherited Westminster system of government, “responsible government” has a very different and specific meaning.

The origins of parliamentary democracy and the quest for responsible government date back eight hundred years. In medieval Europe, a series of bodies developed to act as advisory bodies to the various monarchs. This was partly at the request of the monarchs, who saw value in counsel for affairs of court, and partly in response to the requests of the barons, commoners, and the church, who were all coming of age and believed that they were entitled to a say in governance.

The actual use of the word parliament traces its origins to 1236 and King John of England.[1] King John had, since his coronation, surrounded himself with advisors, trusted men appointed by him to help him make decisions on important matters. This group was called the King’s Council. This tradition has been continued to this day, as the legal community bestows upon worthy members of its profession the designation Queen’s Counsel.

However, the nobles and wealthy men of the time wished to have more say and they put pressure on King John to formalize a sharing of power. Following a period of conflict, John agreed to the principle of common consent, and the rules governing this sharing of power were set down in what is known as the Magna Carta, or Great Charter. As a result, King John had to expand his inner circle to include not only more nobles, i.e., the aristocracy and the landed gentry, but also more commoners. Thereafter, the precedent was established that the king would submit all requests for increased taxation to a newly created body of commoners, i.e., rich merchants and lawyers. Over several centuries the two distinct groups would evolve into the House of Lords and the House of Commons respectively.

This was the genesis of parliamentary governance, crude but appropriate for its time. We inherited this evolving system, at least in principle, on February 10, 1763, when France ceded its North American empire (New France) to Great Britain pursuant to the Treaty of Paris following the Seven Years’ War. The “Royal Proclamation” of the same year established the legal parameters of the new British North America. The British North American colonies were distinct and were known by recognizable names such as Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the islands of Prince Edward and Newfoundland. The mechanism of the “Constitutional Act” (properly known as the Clergy Endowments (Canada) Act) of 1791, divided Quebec into two separate colonies, English Upper Canada and French Lower Canada, with the Ottawa River serving as the border between the two. The terms Upper and Lower refer to the flow of the St. Lawrence River (eastward from the Great Lakes).

In the post–American Revolution period, Great Britain was suspect of too much democracy, which it feared might lead to “mob rule” in its remaining colonies. Accordingly, it deliberately attempted to counter rampant republicanism by strengthening the power and prestige of the governor, the handpicked emissary put in charge of the colony. Colonial decisions would be entrusted to the governor and his unelected executive council (Council of Advisors).

The 1791 Constitutional Act clearly set up the power structure for the colonies of British North America. In charge was the governor, who represented the British Foreign Office. The executive council was appointed by the governor to help him manage and administer the colony. The elected legislative assembly was comprised entirely of male landowners and had no legislative authority; its function could be considered consultative at best.

This attempt at colonial governance created a rather dysfunctional situation. Admittedly, any attempt at running a distant colony would prove challenging. However, having an appointed council oversee an elected assembly was especially awkward. This poor soil somehow nourished the seeds of responsible government; but cultivating those seeds would be difficult process, and would require the extraordinary efforts of reform-minded revolutionaries.

Following the War of 1812, two such reformers emerged: in Lower Canada, the aristocrat Louis-Joseph Papineau; and, in Upper Canada, my personal hero, journalist William Lyon Mackenzie.[2]

The Constitutional Act of 1791 placed the elected assembly under control of the appointed council. Whenever the assembly refused to act as the governor or council desired, the usual “solution” was to dissolve the assembly, call for an election, and hope for a more co-operative assembly. These acts of refusal were the only actions available to the elected assemblies of both Upper and Lower Canada, for they could wield only negative power; they could block the council’s initiatives, but they could not direct them. Because of a tradition that dated back to when King John agreed to submit his budget to Parliament, the governor’s spending plans had to be approved by both the council and the elected assembly. As the assembly could not introduce a budget bill, the assembly’s power was accordingly limited to blocking the executive’s spending plans. The result was frequent gridlock.

This gridlock was made worse by the fact that near-oligarchies had evolved in all of the colonies, a situation that was especially true in Upper and Lower Canada — the Château Clique in Lower Canada, and in Upper Canada, the Family Compact. It was there that the majority of the European immigrants were settling. The established landowners did not want to share power and were suspicious of extending democracy, since they felt that it would prove a threat to their financial interests.

In Lower Canada, the wealthy merchant families, such as the Montreal-based McGills and Molsons, dominated the ruling Chateau Clique. Opposed to their position of privilege and status was the Parti Patriote, dominated by young, educated men who had been excluded from the council. The Parti Patriote gained control of the elected assembly and drew up the famous “Ninety-Two Resolutions,” outlining their grievances against the governor’s appointed council. In 1834, the elected assembly demanded that it be given control over public finances, and, in a move before its time, further demanded that the executive council be made responsible to the citizens by requiring that the governor select his council from the elected members of the assembly.

It took a distant and largely uninterested London little time to reject each of the Ninety-Two Resolutions. In response, Patriote leaders staged rallies to protest the British rejection of their demands. One of the main leaders was Louis-Joseph Papineau. An enigmatic mix of revolutionary and land-owning aristocrat, he was a passionate orator and he worked disappointed dissidents into frenzy. Papineau preferred oratory to violence, but other Patriote leaders believed that words were not enough to bring about change. When a British army unit was dispatched to disperse a mob protest that had assembled at St. Denis in the Richelieu Valley, it wandered into crossfire, and six of its soldiers were killed. Perhaps because he feared how the event, which became known as the Battle of St. Denis, might turn out, Papineau was not present.

Two days later, re-organized British soldiers attacked nearby St. Charles, killing sixty Patriotes and arresting most of its surviving leadership. Then, at St. Eustache, 1,400 British redcoats attacked and nearly another one hundred Patriotes were sacrificed.

Later, a second, equally unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the British was organized by Patriote leaders who had fled to the United States to avoid capture. The Lower Canada Rebellion had been quelled with little to show for the twenty-seven soldiers and nearly three hundred French Canadians who perished.

An equally unsuccessful, much less violent, but significant rebellion was organized by the newspaper man William Lyon Mackenzie in Upper Canada. The social unrest was directed against the Family Compact, an oligarchy comprised of Tory-Anglican insiders. Mackenzie was especially outraged that three million acres of prime Upper Canada real estate had been dedicated as clergy reserves for the benefit of the Anglican Church.

Mackenzie was elected to the assembly by the citizens of York. Despised by the establishment, he was expelled from the assembly by the governor four times. Each time he was returned by his appreciative constituents.

Stalemate between the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada and Mackenzie-led Reformers in the assembly was frequent. This led to problems in the governing of the colony, especially with regard to the raising of taxes. In 1836, events came to a head. Without funds to continue operating the government, Governor Bond Head dissolved the assembly and called for a fresh election. But he then crossed the line by campaigning for the Conservatives using his vast resources, including land, to gain electoral support. In the election that year, the Reformers were decimated.

Undeterred, Mackenzie used his newspaper to spread the cause of reform against the oligarchic Family Compact. He proposed a rebellion where the Compact would be overthrown and a democratic republic established in its place. Mackenzie organized six hundred men, who met at Montgomery’s Tavern on Yonge Street in York. Armed with only pitchforks, muskets, and clubs, the would-be revolutionaries were deterred and dispersed by a single shot fired by the Toronto sheriff. Later, Governor Bond Head led a group of volunteers up Yonge Street and torched Montgomery’s Tavern.

The Upper Canada Rebellion had been repelled without a single casualty. Subsequent attempts by Mackenzie to organize American-backed border raids from a base near Buffalo in New York State were equally unsuccessful, and its participants when captured were either hanged, imprisoned, or exiled to Australia.

The rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada, although completely without success, set in motion a series of events that would lead to the establishment of responsible government, not only in the Canadian colonies but throughout all of the British Empire.

The British Colonial Office was clearly embarrassed by the rebellions. London did not like to have its authority challenged. Accordingly, the Earl of Durham, a reformer in his own right and champion of Britain’s Reform Act of 1832, was dispatched to British North America and charged to report back on how to keep peace in the colonies. His report, titled the “Report on the Affairs of British North America,” but colloquially referred to as the “Durham Report,” would lead firstly to responsible government in the colonies and then self-government and Confederation a quarter century later.

Although the latter is more significant to most aspects of Canadian history, it is actually the establishment of responsible government that is more critical to an examination of how Canadians currently govern themselves and the current state of Canadian parliamentary democracy.

The 1838, “Durham Report” had three principle recommendations:

 that Upper and Lower Canada be united into a single province or colony, with one government administration and assembly;

 that the governor be required to choose his advisors (council) from amongst the elected members of the assembly; and

 that the colonies be granted jurisdiction over local and internal affairs. Henceforth the governor would only be responsible for colonial matters.

Durham was recommending that those living in the colonies be given the same parliamentary rights that had been enjoyed for centuries by citizens of Britain. The Foreign Office initially rejected Lord Durham’s call for responsible government in the not-yet-mature colonies, but it did pass the 1840 Act of Union, uniting Upper and Lower Canada under a single administration and assembly.

A united Canada brought moderate reformers from Canada West and Canada East (the names for the two parts of the colony — what were, formerly, Upper Canada and Lower Canada) together to fight for a common cause. Moderate reformers Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin became instant friends, and worked together advocating a common cause. In the 1848 election, the Reformers overwhelmingly took control of the assembly. On March 10, 1848, a new progressive governor, Lord Elgin, asked LaFontaine to lead the government.

The next year, the assembly passed the contentious Rebellion Losses Bill, indemnifying Patriotes, who had lost property in the 1837 Rebellion in Lower Canada. English-speaking Tories in Montreal were outraged; they lobbied Lord Elgin that the traitors not be compensated, and they demanded that he not sign the bill.

However, Elgin, a progressive, signed the bill. According to him, it was an internal matter duly considered by an assembly that had been elected to make such decisions. Although Anglo-Tories rioted in Montreal, Lord Elgin gave royal assent to the Rebellion Losses Bill on April 25, 1849. Responsible government had been won in the united Canadas!

It should be noted that some months earlier, prospering Nova Scotia had already received responsible government, having done so without any of the drama or violence that preceded its arrival in the United Canada. In 1847, the reformers there, led by Joseph Howe, won a majority in the Nova Scotia assembly. In February 1848, they were asked to take control of the administration, forming the first responsible government in British North America and in the entire British Empire.

Although responsible government was, in part, a product of waning interest in mercantilism in London, the achievement cannot be overvalued.* By 1855, all of Britain’s North American colonies had won responsible government (Newfoundland was the last). Henceforth, all of the colonies would be governed only according to the desires of their own inhabitants.

So, why is this protracted history lesson important or relevant to an examination of the current state of democracy in Canada? It is the hard-fought-for principle of responsible government that guarantees that it is the elected assemblies that control the executive branch of government and not the other way around. Responsible government is the constitutionally enshrined convention that governments are responsible and accountable to the democratically elected assemblies. Responsible government ensures that if the elected assembly loses confidence in the government, or if the government loses the support of the assembly, the government can govern no more.

Under the British parliamentary system, we do not elect our governments, we elect our legislatures. This is a fundamental and frequently misunderstood concept. It is still the prerogative of the governor general (or lieutenant-governor of a province) to ask an appropriate leader if he or she is able to form a government. By both convention and practical reality, the individual chosen will be the leader of the party in the assembly who has the confidence and support of the majority of the members of the assembly.[3]

When one party has a majority of seats in the assembly, the choice becomes obvious. However, when no party has a clear majority of seats in the assembly, that matter becomes more complicated. The queen’s representative’s first and most important constitutional function is to ensure that at all times Her Majesty has a government in place. In a situation where no party has a clear majority of members in the assembly, the person chosen will be the individual who has the support of the majority of assembly members, not necessarily the leader of the party with the most members.

Technically speaking, the person chosen to serve need not even be a member of the assembly, provided that he or she has the support and confidence of the majority of the members.

Twice, Christy Clark has been asked to form a government in British Columbia notwithstanding the fact that she was not a member of the legislative assembly at the time. In 2011, she became the leader of the B.C. Liberal Party but was not an MLA. She formed a government, chose a cabinet, and governed from the gallery of the Victoria assembly for several months before obtaining a seat in a by-election. Then, in the 2013 B.C. general election, her Liberals retained a majority of the seats, but she lost her own. She was still the premier and she chose a new cabinet. Within months she was able to win a seat, again in a by-election.

The point is that one can lead a government as long as, but only as long as, one has the support of the Legislature or Parliament, as the case may be.

Media often refer to governments as serving terms; technically this is incorrect. Although legislative assemblies and legislators serve terms, governments are elected without term. Governing is a continuous process, as there must at all times be a government in place. Accordingly, once sworn in, a first minister (prime minister or premier) remains so until he or she resigns from office and is replaced by a new leader who has the support and confidence of the assembly.

My political science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, David Smith, explained responsible government in a simple but profound way: those who advise the Crown must command the support of the popularly elected chamber. Lose the confidence of the House and you must resign.

Canadian voters elect legislators; they do not select governments — that is the responsibility of the queen’s representative. Accordingly, if democracy is to be maintained, the legislative branch must remain supreme and the government accountable and responsible to it.

When the government of the day ceases to be responsible to Parliament, responsible government is lost and democracy is imperilled. As we shall explore in the following chapters, that is exactly what is occurring in Canada today, and the product of this lack of accountability is questionable decisions made by governments that are not responsible in either meaning of the term.

* Mercantalism was the main economic system used in the period from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Its main goal was to increase a nation’s wealth by imposing government regulation on all of the nation’s commercial interests. It was believed that national strength could be maximized by limiting imports via tariffs and maximizing exports.