Michael Chong: Part Two---More on Parliamentary Reform

In the first part of my conversation with Wellington County Conservative MP Michael Chong, we talked about historical issues---constitutional repatriation, the internal battle in the Liberal party between supporters of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, and, how these issues were influenced by an erosion of the power of MPs versus the office of the party leader. In this second part we discussed more of the theory and practice of Parliament: why---for all their current flaws---political parties are still essential, and compared the Canadian situation to that of both Great Britain and the United States.

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Michael Chong, photo by Tim Allman.

Hulet: On another tangent, I heard an interview with Jody Wilson-Raybould on Canadaland and she said that she found it extremely hard to accomplish much because of the needs of Parliament. She talked about having to interrupt her work at various times to rush off and vote. I don't remember the specific examples she used, but it sounded like tedious and silly procedural issues.

Chong: Yes, there are a lot of silly procedural votes in the house of Commons. This wasn't always the case. It's a result of the fact that the three house leaders---who are responsible for it---are not agreeing upon a house schedule. Normally what should happen is the three of them should be able to work together and compromise for the week, and for the month. Then the house just operates on that schedule and there are no votes about whether you should do that or not. In the last two parliaments since 2011 you have had many procedural votes---which is an inordinate waste of time.  

The second reason why is because the party leaders are so strong that every vote is preordained. There are no votes where the outcome is in question. No Canadian government has lost a vote in decades. And, as you know, we have hundreds of votes every year. By way of a contrast, in a typical calendar year the British government loses about 35% of the votes in the UK House of Commons. 

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I went to the trouble of doing some research and found that someone in Wikipedia had listed the number of votes that the government of the day had lost in the British Parliament since WWII. While I didn't find a number of total votes so I could develop a percentage of the sort that Chong mentioned, there are a substantial number but they varied wildly as per who was the Prime Minister. It also looks like this is more of a recent trend, however, as the numbers have only become quite large since the mid 1970s:

• Clement Attlee 1945-1951, 4 defeats
• Winston Churchill 1951-1955, 1 defeat
• Anthony Eden 1955-1957, none
• Harold MacMillen, 1957-1963, none
• Alec Douglas-Home, 1963-1964, none
• Harold Wilson, 1964-1970, 6 defeats
• Edward Heath, 1970-1974, 6 defeats
• Harold Wilson, 1974-1976, 25 defeats
• James Callaghan, 1976-1979, 34 defeats
• Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990, 4 defeats
• John Major, 1990-1997, 6 defeats
• Tony Blair, 1997-2007, 4 defeats
• Gordon Brown, 2007-2010, 3 defeats
• David Cameron, 2010-2016, 7 defeats
• Theresa May, 2016-2019, 33 defeats
• Boris Johnson, 2019-present, 12 defeats before he was re-elected last December

And the champion is James Callaghan, Labour
Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1976 to 1979.
He led a minority Parliament and lost an astounding 34 votes!
Photo c/o the Parliamentary Archives of the United Kingdom.

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I was listening to a podcast recently that articulated something that's been in the back of my mind for quite a while. A Pulitzer Prize winning ex-journalist with the "Toronto Star" said that after he gave up the job and starting writing books full time he stopped paying attention to most of the news. He suggested that readers make the effort to think about what pieces of news they consume in any given period of time and compare how many of those are really important. He said he did and found out that a huge proportion of what he was reading, listening to, or, watching had no relevance whatsoever to his life---so he just stopped paying attention to it.

What I'm trying to do with this blog is to only write about the stories that are important. Consider this article. Here's a local politician who's spent years and years trying to get people to notice the fact that their democratic traditions are being slowly eroded into nothingness. And yet, think about the major stories that are being covered by the media right now. The people killed in the Iran plane crash are a huge issue for family and friends---but it is just one more disaster in a world filled with them. (I won't get on a soapbox about coverage wasted on the Queen's grandkids.)

That's why I think what I do is important. And if you think it is too, I'd suggest that you make some effort to show that you agree. Support me financially on Patreon or Pay Pal---even a buck a month helps. If you can't afford that, at least tell others about the blog and encourage them to read it. 

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The reason why that's relevant to the procedural shenanigans is that in the UK the whole process of debate in parliament has one purpose: to have a finite amount of time for debate and get the proposed legislation to a vote. But that's because the vote outcomes aren't preordained and the government loses one third of all votes.  And that's because the MPs aren't under a heavy whip, and are more free to vote as they see fit on various issues. This includes members of the governing party. In fact this means that when there is strong opposition to a particular piece of legislation it expresses itself on the actual vote in the floor of the house---in the actual vote of those MPs. 

Here in Canada, the vote outcomes are preordained and when the government wants to get a piece of legislation passed, it will without any question. The only way for strong opposition to build and express itself is not in the vote---because the bills going to be passed no matter what. The opposition parties can only oppose proposed legislation through filibustering. That's the difference. 

So in the UK parliament, if you're strongly opposed to a bill, your whole goal is to get that bill defeated. You try to convince enough members to get it defeated. But in the Canadian system if there's strong opposition to a bill you don't want the vote to happen quickly because you know it's going to pass. So the only way you can voice that opposition is by dragging out that debate through procedural delay. Remember, it's going to pass anyway. But the only way you have to signal that you think that this is a really bad bill is through the filibuster. In contrast, in the UK if you do not want to see legislation pass, you lobby other MPs to vote against the bill. And, one out of three times they do. Whereas in Canada that just can't happen.  You cannot defeat a bill that the government wants passed in a majority government. So what do you do?  

Hulet: So that slows down the work of parliament.

Chong: Yes. It absolutely does.

Hulet: And it creates tribalism too because you don't develop the cross party relationships you do when you are trying to horse trade votes.

Chong: Yes. I tell people that our Parliaments are far more partisan than the US Congress. 

You just have to look at their voting records. In Canada it is rare for a party member to break ranks with their leader on a vote---99% of the time party members vote with their party. In the US Democrats regularly break rank with their party, Republicans break rank with their party---that's how their system works---and the same is true in the UK.  So that's the partisan divide here, it's in our legislature. Not in the population. Frankly, I think that that is indicative of the disconnect between Parliament and the people. The people aren't as divided along partisan lines as Parliament is and I think that it shows how disconnected it is from the people.  

Hulet:  I have to ask this question, it's kind of idiotic, but I'll ask it anyway. I sometimes meet people who say that the way to reform politics is just to get rid of political parties altogether. From what what I can see, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott have decided that that makes sense to them and they are going to run as independents. So I'm going to ask the question "why not get rid of parties altogether and get everyone to run as an independent?"

Chong: I understand that sentiment comes from. But I don't think that it's practical. The better answer is not to get rid of political parties but rather to go back to the system we once had where the party was secondary to the people's elected representative. That's the problem. 

If we get rid of political parties we will create more problems than we've solved. There will be unintended consequences. The perfect case in point has been some of the reforms introduced in the senate this Parliament where a whole number of independent senators were appointed and they have struggled to organize themselves. Now we have something called the "independent senators group" which is in effect a party. Maybe it's a party that is made up of more independently-minded senators and it isn't affiliated with one of the traditional parties in the senate. But it's a party. You can call it a group---but it's still a party.  

Now the point I'm trying to make is that you can't just have a legislature with a hundred independent senators that have no organizing groupings, and you can't have a house of commons with 338 members of parliament with no organizing groupings. That's because it just wouldn't be an efficient place to get things done. So I think you do need parties, but parties need to be reformed and they need to be reformed in a way that returns them to their rightful place in our system. Which is as a secondary to the primacy of the elected member of Parliament. 

At the end of the day people elect members of parliament, they don't elect parties, and they don't elect leaders of parties. That is the whole constitutional order of our system, established in 1867. And what we have done, though, is we've made these elected representatives secondary to the primacy of the political party and that is a subversion of our constitutional order. The constitution never says the word "parties" or "party caucuses" once. It mentions members of Parliament, the election of members of Parliament, dozens of times. So it's clear in our constitutional structure that the primary entity of our whole Parliament is organized around is the elected member of Parliament but what we've done in recent decades is supplant our elected member with the primacy of the political party and party caucus. 

We've done that through a series changes to written rules and the standing orders of the house of commons. We've done it through a series of written changes to Canadian law, the Elections Act and we've done it through unwritten conventions that have governed the house of commons. The solution isn't to get rid of parties, it's to reform political parties so that the elected member plays the primary role and not the party or the party leader. 

Hulet: There's a phrase that is sometimes used in philosophy about things that people try to discard, but are so necessary that they are instantly reinvented in some other guise: "you can chase it out the front door with a pitchfork, but it will just crawl in again through a back window". Banning political parties would be an example of that.  You can't get rid of them, they will manifest themselves one way or another.

Chong: And they've been around for hundreds of years. The difference being is that they were always secondary to the elected member. It's only been in recent decades that we've inverted that system. So that the primary organizing principle is now the political party and also known as the party leader, because party leaders control parties. That's another thing to know, is that two things have happened. Parties have become primary over the elected member of parliament. And secondly, party leaders have taken control of that party. Parties are essentially extensions of the party leader.

Hulet: It used to be that parties would have a president and their leader. They were separate positions. But the position of president just seems to have dissipated into nothingness.

Chong: That's right. The president is quite secondary to the party leader and that's through a series of written rule changes. I'll give you one example. For most of our history candidates for elections didn't get approved or vetoed by the party leader. Well, since the 1970s the party leader is the exclusive decider of who gets to be a party candidate. So from 1758 when the first elected legislatures were established in what we now call Canada until 1972 or 1974---1972 I believe---for that essentially 200 and 15 year period party leaders did not have a veto over a party candidate in an election. Since the early 1970s party leaders do have a veto. So there's an example of how parties existed before 1970 but were not controlled by the party leader---like they are today.

Hulet: Prior to that change was there some other central mechanism for approving or vetoing a candidate, or was it just up to the Electoral District Association (EDA)?

Chong: It was just based on the local EDA. 

Hulet: So you had to have very good EDAs in place.

Chong: Well, they were. And I would argue that before the 1972 election we didn't elect Parliaments who were filled with crazy people who were unable to get things done. In fact I've argued that some of the greatest Parliaments that we've ever seen predate the 1970s. Those were the ones that took us through the First and Second World Wars. The parliaments that before 1867 got together to establish our 1867 constitution, which bye-the-way has endured for over 150 years. A constitutional document that allowed us to go from a gaggle of three colonies--Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick---to a Canada that goes from sea to sea, that encompasses a territory far vaster than the fathers of confederation knew at that time. So that constitutional document was a visionary document that endures to this day. It sets up our judicial system, our government through democracy, our provincial governments, that created a division of powers and all these structures that define our society. Those were some of the greatest Parliaments we've ever seen in this country. And they were not made up by parties that were primary over the elected members. And they were not Parliaments where leaders controlled the parties. In fact, 

often you will hear members of parties as being "trained seals"---in other words being under the control of the party leader. In John A. MacDonald's day MPs were called "loose fish"---uncontrollable. But those loose fish who were not under the control of the party leader produced some of the most enduring, foundational structures of this country.  

Hulet: When I meet politicians I throw this at them once in a while---. It's from military science:  "Amateurs talk tactics and generals talk logistics".  I find that people like to talk about policy but what I want to hear from someone in a party is organization. How are they going to build the party? I wonder how much of what you are discussing flows from the decline in importance of the EDAs. Nowadays the head office with national media---it used to be television ads---is far more important than the local "connections" and the local media. I know in Guelph we don't have the Mercury anymore, no daily newspaper. It's got to be harder for a politician to get the word out to the general public. We have social media, but that's a whole rat's nest to deal with too. Again that's probably better organized on the national level than through local EDAs. Is that part of the reason why we have trained seals instead of loose fish?

Chong: You're asking if the erosion of local power is the change in the media landscape?

Hulet:  Yeah. The national media fixate about something they call a "Bozo Eruption". That's what happens when you have some lunatic candidate in Hog's Guts Saskatchewan say something idiotic. And before you know it, that's all the media will talk about.

Chong: I think the media coverage reflects where the power is, so they don't focus on local campaigns and EDAs. That's not where the power lies for these things. It rests with the national party office. I think if power was restored to the local grassroots EDAs you'd see a much greater media focus on them. 

Why do I know that? Because in the US where local associations have the power to nominate party candidates that's where the news is focused. 

I tell people Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would never be elected in Canada---she would never get the nomination to run. In the primary, she took on a long-time, senior member of the Democratic Caucus---a Congressman from New York city---and that would never be allowed here. That would be like somebody taking out Chrystia Freeland in Toronto in a party nomination, or, taking out another cabinet minister in Vancouver at a party nomination. The central party would never allow that to happen. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could never get the nomination in
Canada because the party leader would veto her!
Photo by nrkbeta, c/o Wiki Commons. 

That's because the power to nomination a candidate rests with the central party and the party leader, and not the local EDA. In fact "Samara" just came out with an empirical study of this about a week ago. I think that you'd have to look it up, it's actually a good study. From the numbers I recall they reviewed some 6000 party nominations over the past several years and only 17% were decided by local RA members. The other 83% were decided by the head office.  

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The "Samara" that Chong is referring to is the Samara Centre for Democracy. It's a Canadian non-profit that is devoted to analyzing the health of Canadian democracy and making suggestions about where it can be improved. I think the report he is referring to is something called Party Favours. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that the report suggests that 83% were "decided by the head office". That's because the report says that 70% percent of candidates ran unopposed for their party nomination.

How that number breaks down is where the real issue lies. As the Samara document points out, nomination races are very much internal party business. And how you structure a nomination race makes all the difference in how open they are to potential candidates. Some seats are "safe" for a political party, and whomever gets the nomination in that riding has an excellent---if not overwhelming---chance of getting a seat in Parliament. That means that, in effect, the real race for Ottawa takes place when the candidate is nominated. Others ridings have "forlorn hope" races in the general election where short of a total miracle, no candidate of a particular party will have a chance of winning. In the former case, getting the nomination is a prized plum that gets awarded to someone. In the latter, running is an onerous duty that someone has to take on "for the good of the team".

Even in a riding where someone has a good chance of getting elected, there are often incumbents who are so popular that it is ridiculous for someone to try to replace them. In Wellington county, for example, someone would have to have rocks in their head to run against Michael Chong for the nomination---simply because he is immensely popular with voters. Similarly, in Guelph no one with any sense is going to challenge Mike Schreiner for the Green nomination. 

But having said that, there are still a lot of situations where the party head office has had a heavy-handed influence on the nomination process. Unfortunately, when I tried to find some evidence, I couldn't find any as most parties go to great lengths to "hush up" this sort of thing because it causes ill will among the membership.  

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Hulet: Wow!

Chong: So that would never be allowed to happen in the United States. In the US the law is clear, the constitution is clear. 100% of local party candidates are to be decided by the local party members. And that's the system we once had. In fact there have been changes in the last 20 years---in law---that have essentially made local riding associations  extensions of the leader's office. 

Riding associations today exist at the pleasure of the party leader. The party leader at any moment of time with his or her signature, and one or two signatures of their designates, can de-register a local EDA and re-register immediately another one made up of new members---new executive members of the leader's own choosing. And the leader has the power to do that ad infinitum. There's no restriction to that power. And leaders do that all the time. In fact, before the last election Mr. Trudeau deregistered and reregistered some 150 liberal EDAs---about half of them in the country---overnight with the stroke of a pen. Mr. Harper did the same thing---not 150 of them---when EDAs were not compliant with what the Conservative party of Canada head office, or he, wanted. He would on occasion deregister and register the RA with members that he wanted to support what he wanted to do.  So that's a change that was made to the law about 20 years ago, less than 20 years ago that allows party leader that power. That's another example of the written part of our system that has changed and given party leaders even more power and diminished the role of the elected member of parliament and the grassroots member of party associations. 

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These are pretty serious allegations, but unfortunately they are also the sort of thing that most mainstream editors would consider "too boring" for a reporters to spend time digging up info about. In addition, it's not the sort of thing that any party is going to broadcast far and wide on press releases. I briefly looked at the Elections Canada website and couldn't find anything to support Chong's assertions.

However, I did find a copy of the National Rules for the Selection of Candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada, as amended in December 17th, 2013. I think the most relevant part for Chong's points is the second clause:

1.2
Designation of Candidate by Leader. The Leader has the authority to designate a person to be the Candidate in any election, without the need for the conduct of a Meeting as otherwise contemplated by these Rules. Notwithstanding anything in these Rules, after consultation as set out in this Rule, the Leader may decide that a Meeting shall not be held in an Electoral District and may designate a person who will be the Candidate for an Electoral District in any Election upon the Candidate executing and filing with the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair such forms, undertakings and agreements otherwise provided for under these Rules as may be required by the National Campaign Chair. Except when there has been a declaration of electoral urgency pursuant to Rule 13 in respect of the relevant EDA, before designating a Candidate under this Rule, the Leader shall consult with the Provincial or Territorial Campaign Chair, who shall consult with, but need not obtain the consent of, the relevant EDA President.

In other words, the leader of the Liberal Party---Justin Trudeau---has the right to completely over-ride the will of the local EDA in choosing a candidate.

I also found another document, the Liberal Party of Canada Party By-law 2: ELECTORAL DISTRICT ASSOCIATIONS dated January 1, 2017. It has the following clause:

2.2 The National Board may revoke the recognition of any EDA that ceases to serve the purposes of an EDA or meet the criteria to be recognized or that engages in actions that are harmful to the Party. The revocation will be performed after notice is given to the EDA Board of Directors, who will be entitled to a hearing.

This is a very broad statement that gives the leaders of the party enormous power over the local EDA. So it would seem that Chong is right in saying that at least the Liberal Party of Canada has given itself the power to do the things that he says it does---even if I couldn't find any quotable evidence that it has actually done so. (As for the other parties, I'll just accept his assertion that the Conservatives do the same thing. And in the past I've spent a fair amount of time "in deep, dark jungle" that are both the NDP and Green Party constitutions. I won't bother going on that sort of safari unless their is a darn good reason for doing so---and I don't think that this article counts.) 

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This article is getting a bit long, so I'll stop here and finish the rest in a third one. That's where I'll dig down into some of the legislation that Chong has spear-headed to try to reform Parliament.

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Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!