We developed, really from Pierre Trudeau's time—and he really began the process—a very large and very powerful Prime Minister's Office.
Most Canadians are unaware that it's much bigger and more powerful than in London, England, than in Canberra, than in Wellington and other Westminster democracies. It became, I think, the elephant in our democratic room when unelected people, whose main purpose is the re-election of the government, have so much power over policy and even begin to interfere with cabinet government and parliamentary government, telling cabinet ministers what they can say and when they can speak, “helping”—that's a nice word for it—MPs during question time to give the right answers.
An international study of the centralization of power in parliamentary democracies done 10 years ago—it's quoted in my book and it was very carefully done—found Canada was much the most centralized. I should add, all that research was done before 2006. I mention that because some say that was just a characteristic of Mr. Harper's way of governing. But no, it had come in under the Liberals and had been carried on by Conservatives and intensified.
I say to my friend, Patrice, Canadians don't go out in the streets saying, “Damn it, let's bring down.... Let's throw stones. We've got unelected people telling cabinet ministers and MPs what to do”. We are a quiet people. We put up with awful situations.
I'll just give you one example. It almost made me weep. The book, Tragedy in the Commons, is of interviews with members of Parliament of all parties and their experience over 10 years, not quite the last 10 years but 10 years in this century. They were miserable years.
I say to Patrice, sure, we can live with that. We can still be a great country and we are a terrific country, but I just think, democratically, we can do better. We can do a lot better and we should try to do better.