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Cabinet: A Representative not a Deliberative Body

I grew up in Melville, Saskatchewan, and have always had an interest in local history. Once I became a parliamentarian, I decided to research Melville’s political history.

For almost a half-century, Melville was represented by two high-profile Liberal MPs, both of whom served in the federal cabinet as the minister of agriculture. The second, elected during the Second World War, was former Saskatchewan premier Jimmy Gardiner. His predecessor was a homesteader from the Abernethy district named W.R. Motherwell.

Motherwell was initially elected to represent the riding of Regina. But due to electoral redistribution, Motherwell decided to contest the riding of Melville, for which he was elected to the 16th Parliament on September 14, 1926. However, he promptly resigned the seat on October 11, forcing a by-election for Melville, in which Motherwell was acclaimed on November 2, 1926.

Why were there two elections in six weeks?

According to the Parliament of Canada’s records, Motherwell’s resignation from the House of Commons was necessary because of his “acceptance of [an] emolument under the Crown.” An emolument is simply a salary, fee, or profit from employment or an office. So, Motherwell received employment from the federal Crown necessitating his resignation from Parliament.

What was the federal appointment that constituted a conflict with his role as a member of a Parliament which he was elected to less than a month prior?

On October 11, 1926, Prime Minister Mackenzie King appointed Motherwell to his cabinet as minister of agriculture. The acceptance of this emolument under the Crown necessitated that Motherwell resign his recently acquired seat in the House of Commons. The seemingly strange convention of the day was that a newly appointed minister had to resubmit his candidacy to his constituents in a by-election to determine if he still had their support. And so, Motherwell was forced to resign his seat and run again. He did so and was re-elected.

Today, it would appear inconceivable that a riding would not want to be represented by a powerful cabinet minister. But this interesting parliamentary anecdote is an important reminder of the distinction and potential conflict that exists between being a member of the legislature and being a member of the executive government.

The House of Commons was created to represent and defend the English commoners from the excessive demands and needs of the Crown. The monarch would have to submit his request for taxes to the House of Commons. The House existed to ensure that the king’s requests were reasonable and that the taxpayers were not overly burdened.

The House exists to represent the citizens who elect it. The executive government was disassociated from the elected Parliament. As a result, an MP asked to sit as a cabinet minister would have conflicting roles, a situation requiring him to seek reconfirmation of his legislative role from his constituents.

Remember from Chapter 2 that in British North America the governor in the colonies was appointed by Great Britain; thereafter, the governor appointed his executive council. However, the emolument rule prohibited members of the legislature from becoming cabinet ministers unless and until they resigned and then were re-elected in a by-election. The maintenance of this convention was an express attempt to reduce British executive influence in the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada (which would later become Ontario and Quebec). This convention was carried on and codified after Confederation by the act appropriately named The Independence of Parliament Act, 1867.

This rule, maintained until 1931, members of the Canadian House of Commons were prohibited from serving as cabinet ministers, unless and until they resigned and then were re-elected in a by-election. The convention was an express attempt to reduce British executive influence in the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada. (Remember from Chapter 2 that the governor in the Colonies was appointed by Great Britain and thereafter, the governor appointed his executive council.)

This convention was carried on and codified after Confederation by the act appropriately named “The Independence of Parliament Act, 1867.”

Accordingly, this convention, then codified in statute, represented an attempt to manage the inherent conflict that exists between the ministers of the executive, who spend money appropriated to it by the legislative branch, and the legislative branch itself. It was thought that perhaps the taxpayers in a riding might prefer to be represented by a legislator who was a fiscal hawk rather than by a free-spending minister. Accordingly, that question was put to them in a by-election.

Followers of American politics understand this concept, and conflict, as the American Constitution establishes a complete separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. Accordingly, Barack Obama had to resign his Senate seat upon being elected president, and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry both had to do likewise on being called as successive Secretaries of State.

In Canada, becoming a cabinet minister is the pinnacle of career advancement for most MPs. Cabinet ministers are referred to by a variety of monikers: Minister, Honourable, Privy Councillor, and member of the executive council. However, despite these grand-sounding titles, the reality is that the importance of the position has continually declined as more and more power is concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The decline in ministerial input inside the Ottawa Bubble has been evolving for nearly a half-century and has been commensurate with the growth in size of government and in the size of the cabinet itself. Originally, the Canadian cabinet consisted of twelve ministers. The number of members has ballooned since then. Brian Mulroney had the largest Canadian cabinet with forty ministers. In July 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper increased the size of his cabinet to thirty-nine. Add thirty-one parliamentary secretaries, who are not currently sworn to the Privy Council but serve an executive function (in that they answer for the government in the House in the absence of their respective minister), and the current executive numbers seventy. With a caucus of approximately 160 members, the odds of an MP eventually being promoted to the executive are better than one in three. When one adds the positions of committee chairs and vice chairs, which also come with an emolument, the odds improve to almost one in two. Clearly, the odds of reaching the executive ranks are pretty good for loyal soldiers, i.e., those who serve the interests of the executive rather than hold that executive to account.

Over time, increasingly large cabinets have proven themselves too unwieldy. Anyone who has ever tried to have a board meeting with thirty-nine people seated at the table appreciates the frustration. Decision-making requires units of a workable size, and as a result, a secretariat and cabinet committee system have developed. The secretariat for the cabinet and its committees is provided by the Privy Council Office, which reports to the prime minister.

The most powerful cabinet committees are the Treasury Board and the Priorities and Planning Committee of Cabinet. Senior non-elected public servants participate in cabinet committee meetings but are generally excluded from actual cabinet meetings. Given the increased size of the cabinet, the reliance on committees attended by senior public servants has facilitated the transfer of power from the cabinet to the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister’s Office.

There is rarely a more anticipated event in Ottawa then the day a new cabinet is unveiled at Rideau Hall. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that in choosing a ministry the first minister is cognizant of many factors unrelated to merit. Every region, and ideally every province, requires representation. Linguistic and ethnic considerations are also taken into account. The number of women in cabinet is important as is the number of francophone individuals; Aboriginal representation and the presence of visible minorities are all matters of great interest to those respective communities. Given the desire to include as diverse a group as possible around the cabinet table, it is hardly surprising that talent is not always the most prominent consideration and that cabinets have grown dramatically in size.

Compare how Canada’s government is chosen to how Canada’s national hockey team is chosen. On January 7, 2014, Hockey Canada announced the lineup for the 2014 men’s Olympic hockey team. Not a single member of the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames, or Toronto Maple Leafs was named to the roster. This choice stands in marked contrast to that made for the All-Star team, where great care is taken to attempt to assure that all NHL teams have at least one representative. Of course, the NHL All-Star game is a show game — there is no hitting and little defence, it’s just a glitzy performance. In contrast, the Olympic hockey team represents the best of Canadian hockey, with its members chosen on the basis of merit and individual talent and the contribution a member can bring to the team. At the Olympics, a gold medal is on the line; the All-Star game is mostly for show.

For those in charge of the political system, a Canadian cabinet will ideally be a microcosm of Canadian society, with as many identifiable groups as possible represented. This priority has been the largest contributing factor to the increase in the size of Canadian cabinets. A survey of the current Canadian ministry will reveal ministers of Chinese, Sikh, Métis, and Inuit backgrounds. Meanwhile, there are parliamentary secretaries who hail from the South Asian, African, Taiwanese and Greek communities.

Although Canada’s government is becoming more inclusive, this reality reinforces the ever-decreasing significance of the cabinet and the merit of those chosen to sit inside it. As power has been continually transferred from the cabinet to cabinet committees and from those to the PMO, the quality of cabinet ministers has come to matter less and less. Identity has become more important than talent, and so there has been a general decline in the latter — a decline proportionate to the cabinet’s diminishing influence.

In recent years, cabinets, ceasing to be deliberative bodies, have become increasingly merely ornamental. The members are chosen because of the demographic they represent and their role is reduced to the equivalent of the prime minister’s cipher. The growing trend is to have policies, priorities, legislative initiatives, and even budgetary plans developed in the Prime Minister’s Office and by its unelected staffers. The cabinet has, for some time now, been a representative body not dissimilar to an NHL All-Star team, existing largely for show, but devoid of the power and significance it once had and still deserves.

The growing imbalance between the legislative and executive branches of government is exacerbated by the use of the government’s discretionary power, allowing the cabinet to govern by Order-in-Council or by ministerial order. These are delegated powers, authorized by statute, which allow the cabinet to govern by regulation, authorized by the cabinet but never ratified by Parliament (which authorized the delegated authority in the statute).

Not only is Parliament being effectively bypassed as a result of rule by decree, cabinet is also being shut out of the decision-making process. Observers and former ministers confirm that PMO decisions and plans are distributed at cabinet meetings for perfunctory approval or rubber stamping. In the current Harper government, many minsters are unable to speak to the media or make departmental announcements without first having the communication cleared by the minions inside the Prime Minister’s Office. A minister who cannot hire or fire either his chief of staff or his deputy minister is less a head of a government department than a conduit between the PMO and the department.

So diluted is the role and efficacy of the individual cabinet minister now that the time-honoured convention of ministerial responsibility has all but disappeared. Under responsible government, all ministers are jointly responsible for the decisions of the entire government and each minister is responsible for the performance of his or her individual department.

Accordingly, a minister of the Crown must resign from cabinet if he cannot publically support a decision of the government. The last time this occurred was in 2006, when Michael Chong resigned his cabinet seat over a disagreement with the prime minister about declaring Quebec a nation within Canada. This was proper and honourable, and it is perhaps the last time we will ever see it.

More recently, we have witnessed the senior minister from Quebec, Denis Lebel, publically endorse the then government of Quebec’s position regarding separation — that a bare majority (50 percent + 1) of support is all that is required to allow Quebec to commence proceedings to put Canada asunder.[1] This is in contrast with the official policy of the Government of Canada, which mandates that a “clear majority on a clear question” is a prerequisite for commencing separation proceedings. However, Minister Lebel faced no sanctions or discipline.

Most ministers do not openly challenge the government’s position. However, it has become common practice for ministers who are opposed to its position on a matter to absent themselves from a vote in the House, rather than resign from the cabinet or support the government’s position despite their opposition. This was quite apparent during the vote on C-377, a bill dealing with trade union disclosure (this bill would, ironically, have made trade unions much more transparent than the federal government). Several ministers, who saw either the hypocrisy or the inconsistent application of this proposal, including the then–minister of natural resources and the associate minister of defence, left the Commons just prior to the recorded vote.

Then there are the many ministerial mistakes and misdeeds for which there is no longer any accounting. Historically, a finance minister who attempted to intervene or even speculate on financial markets would find himself in breach of sworn duty. However, the current government’s preoccupation with politicizing everything has allowed the late Jim Flaherty to speculate that interest rates would rise and that the Canadian dollar would decline in value.[2] These comments not only raised confusion and action inside financial markets, they also raised concerns about the independence of the Bank of Canada. However, the government defended these actions. So, we should not be surprised when some former minister lobbies Bay Street bankers not to lower interest rates or allow certain groups to take on more household debt.

Not only are such misdeeds free from repercussions, colossal screw-ups within departments have also not resulted in ministers tendering their resignations. Underestimating the cost of CF-35s by over $30 billion (over 300 percent), gross losses of Canadians’ personal information, and diverting millions of dollars earmarked for security to pay for tourist gazebos in the minister’s own riding should have, but did not, cost the minister responsible his or her job.

And even apparent, overt acts of malfeasance escape the taking of any ministerial responsibility let alone ministerial resignation. When the word “not” is inserted before the word “recommended” on a CIDA funding document, or when a minister uses a military helicopter to pick him up from a private fishing vacation and deliver him to a government funding announcement, the offending minister should have earned an exit from the cabinet. However, nothing happened. I suppose that it is difficult to hold the minister responsible when he or she is merely carrying out the wishes or orders of the Prime Minister’s Office.

It appears that negligent operation of a file, negligent supervision of a department, needless meddling, and even malfeasance no longer have any real consequences for cabinet ministers. Ministerial responsibility has been replaced by rationalization of one’s actions and conduct. Rationalization and spin is all that is required in the eyes of the government … as long as, but only as long as, the minister has the support of the Prime Minister`s Office.

And what, besides representing a particular demographic, determines if a cabinet minister is worth supporting and defending in the all-important viewpoint of the Prime Minister’s Office?

Once somebody becomes a political liability, under the bus he goes. But as long as he can effectively communicate the government’s message, and any foibles or problems can be handled with spin, the minister is considered a valued member of the team. In fact, effective communications skills have displaced superior management and leadership skills as the qualities of primary importance, as the cabinet has been reduced to the most important asset in the government’s communications arsenal.

It is the difference between statesmanship and salesmanship. A statesman will tell you the truth; a salesman will tell you want you want to hear. A statesman will acknowledge good points in opponents and their arguments. A salesman will embellish the product he is trying to sell and be dismissive of alternatives. A statesman will point out both sides of an argument; a salesman will show you the beautiful backyard and hope you don’t notice the cracks in the foundation. A statesman will tell you how much it will cost to fix the faulty foundation. A salesman will try to convince you can fix it with silicon filler and a coat of paint.

We have far too many salesman and far too few statesmen amongst our political elites. But if you accept the premise that even the cabinet ministers are largely removed from a centrally controlled decision-making structure, it is clear that there is no other role for them other than that of pitchman for their bosses at the PMO.

Notable exceptions exist, but the predominant role of the present-day Canadian cabinet minister is less that of policy maker and administrator than party loyalist and front-line communications messenger. To the list of ministerial monikers (Minister, Honourable, Privy Councillor) should also be added the rapidly developing predominant role of “Communister.”