I'm glad that happened, because it's a snippet of the kind of dynamics that happen when we're dealing with issues. We can always rely on Mr. Reid to give us a historical context to provide some guidance or to show where lessons have been learned in the past. Then newer members put forward their ideas.
But mostly, it's about the respect. Chair, I would think anybody watching that short interaction between the four of us got a pretty good example of how we work together, whether the cameras are on or off. I stand to be challenged by anybody. It's interesting, especially when you're working in common cause, which is most of the time on this committee as it is on public accounts, unlike every other committee of the House.
I raise that because I was pointing out how far we have gone in evolutionary moves. Step by step, parliament by parliament, things evolve, and the focus gets changed. I'm reading a book called Blood Oil, and I think we all got a copy of it. I'm about a third of the way through it, and one of the things it does is talk about the British monarchy and about the devolution of power from the crown, ultimately to Parliament, and the civil war in which that got upset, and they got rid of the monarch, and chopped his head off. Then the leader of the government that followed ended up being his own kind of tyrannical monster, and at the end of the day, the monarchy came back. But what was interesting is that it talked about the fundamental power of parliament to control taxation. Having control of taxation limits the power of the crown. The crown now, in our constitutional monarchy, is represented by those who are part of the executive council commonly known as the cabinet.
I was merely pointing out that we have gone so far away, that this relationship used to be so strong between the constituents and the elected person, and that again if they were going to join the cabinet, they had to resign their seat and run and win with the understanding that this was permission by your constituents to allow you to make things other than your constituents the priority, because once you're a minister, your responsibilities under that oath of office have to be your priority. Not that you'd forget about your constituents—quite the contrary—but it's a benefit because you have more opportunity for influence and input into things that affect your riding. But fundamentally when you join cabinet, the business of the government is a greater priority, so going back to its core, you used to have to get permission to no longer make the constituents' business the priority. That's fascinating.
Again, when you take that discussion and put it in the context of where we are now, where does this end up at the end of the day? If you extrapolate this—and every couple of parliaments more and more power, or whatever opportunity for power the opposition has, gets lost. Where does that leave us in another 150 years? It's a bit scary if you think about going back a little over 150 years to the world that Mr. Reid and I just described, and that relationship and what you had to do. When I joined cabinet, all I had to do was say yes. That was it. I signed a paper, took an oath, and, bingo bango, I was a cabinet minister. If that much evolution-devolution has taken place over 150 years unchecked, where will that leave us in another 150 years? How much of the magic of what makes the parliamentary system the best available in the world, in the opinion of many of us, will be left ?
A healthy parliament has to have a healthy, vibrant, and loyal opposition. In the absence of that, it's autocracy at best, and—I suppose—dictatorship at worst. Neither is acceptable or good for the ordinary person.
You'll be pleased to know, Chair, that we have only two more short paragraphs on this editorial. Then we'll be moving to that thing you like the most from me: new stuff, because then I'm not repeating myself.
To continue:
The neutering
—You have to love The Globe and Mail. I haven't read this in a couple of days. I forgot this was coming up. Oh, oh! Isn't that wonderful? It just ties in nicely.
The neutering of MPs has been constant over the past 50 years, and it is the reason so many Canadians find Parliament to be irrelevant.
That's under the current rules, the ones the government believes invest too much power in the hands of the opposition and are becoming a nuisance for the speedy efficiency of sunny ways.
I'll continue:
Opposition filibustering, and a Question Period with the Prime Minister in attendance, are among the last remaining ways our elected representatives can hold a majority government to account.
I will defer to Mr. Reid, who is usually great at picking up these little bits I know and then filling them in with the real stuff, but it seems to me it might have been Nixon. There was a U.S. president who uttered something to the effect, publicly, that they would love to have the power of a majority prime minister in the Canadian parliamentary system, because in terms of absolute direct power—notwithstanding the real nuclear button, and we don't even want to think about that these days—the power of a majority government Canadian prime minister is awesome.
Regardless of the fancy new process that leads to it, the final decision about who sits in the upper chamber is the purview of the Prime Minister. Actually, it's the Queen, then our Governor General, and it's based on recommendation. That's the language, but we all know the reality is—and no one questions it—that it is the Prime Minister who appoints the upper house.
I like to remind people that Putin, at most, appoints governors. He switched this: they used to elect them, but now he appoints them.
Our Prime Minister appoints—it breaks my heart to say this, as a commoner—the upper house, the red chamber, the chamber that represents the crown and vested interests. It was ever thus.
Plus, the Prime Minister appoints the Supreme Court of Canada. Right now, a certain U.S. president—as with most U.S. presidents in the past—would give anything to be able to just say and then sign a paper that dictates who the next member of the U.S. Supreme Court is. But they have to go through that whole hearing process and a vote at the Senate. We don't have any of those “nuisances” here for the Prime Minister to worry about.
It's only recently, and only because we're now creating a convention—over enough time, it will be a convention; I think we're getting close—that the government can unilaterally enter into international treaties.
We now are developing a convention whereby some of these treaties and agreements are being brought to the House for debate and vote. That's good, but let's understand that's not the dictated process. It's the politics of the day bringing that about.
The legal right to enter into a treaty without the approval of Parliament is 100% the constitutional domain of the government of the day, and the government of the day, if it's a majority, is the Prime Minister. This is in addition to all the other powers the Prime Minister has. This is why a U.S. President, whom we often think of as being omnipotent, looks enviously north of the border and only wishes he had some of the power, the added power that a majority Prime Minister in the Canadian parliamentary system has.
That brings us to the last paragraph of the first editorial:
A party truly committed to invigorating democracy would enhance the independence of MPs and allow them to vote freely, rather than as a bloc controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office or that of the Leader of the Opposition. Instead, we have the Trudeau Liberals, whose new rules threaten to make a government less accountable, not more.
That was fromThe Globe and Mail, and it's not exactly a dry, staid, cold, dispassionate analysis. It's just laced with emotion and words that evoke reaction. It goes out of its way to make those choices.
Let's remember, Chair, that as well as I can figure, the government's plan was that as the pundits began to refocus away from the budget, to spend a little time looking at what's going on at the procedure and House affairs committee, and to start to give their opinion, the government hoped that at the point in time when this editorial was made public—and others—they would say something oh so different.
I see my friend Mr. Doherty has rejoined us.
It's good to see you, sir.