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COMMENTARY
March 30, 2011
On sufferance
For those of my readers who are Catholic, or Protestant -- or even pretending to be -- the Canadian election comes as a much-needed penance in the heart of this Lenten season. Mercifully short as our campaign season may be (weeks, compared to years south of the border), it will unfortunately still run a week into Easter. But then, the interesting part of an election -- the genuine carnival atmosphere -- is usually in the final week.I want, gentle reader, to dwell on this. Americans have interminable campaigns because they have fixed terms. Our governments may run out of time, but the way in which this one fell should bring an undulation of smug pleasure to every Canadian heart. Bang, it went down on the confidence vote. Bang, they were out the gates. Bang, new Parliament in 38 days. 32, if the politicians would shut up on Sundays. The people who want to "reform" this -to impose fixed terms on a British parliamentary system that was not designed for them -are trading on the big unspoken lie that the government always chooses the election date. We have just witnessed an extremely clear example of how this is not so. Moreover, fixed election dates give a government the opportunity to prepare for the next election from the moment the writs are returned from the last one. It gives them leisure to manage their whole agenda towards a comfortably fixed point. Note also the blather about "coalitions." On this curious issue, party leaders are accusing each other of lying, and, of course, they're all correct. Minority governments must seek missing votes one place or another. They will horse-trade; we have to be real. But we have every reason to prefer a flexible system in which a government horse-trades openly and in earnest, with parties that will oblige them only case by case. The alternative, if the "proportional representation" drones get their way, is the Continental European model, in which the politicians are permanently beholden to one another, and the people beholden to the politicians because, no matter how they vote, they will get another coalition of the usual suspects. Until they go crazy, and start voting en masse for some scary party, truly "outside the box." No, the Anglo-American tradition is to cultivate the adversary dialectic, in our courts and in our Parliaments. It is because, in our system, the opposition has not only a duty to oppose, but also the duty to be ready to form a new government, that we have some chance of breaking a false consensus. If we don't like a government, we can throw the bastards out, as we do from time to time, and enjoy doing. If we are in the mood, we can annihilate an unpopular government; we can make every cabinet minister into the political equivalent of canary feed, without delivering ourselves into the hands of some Antichrist. And that is a beautiful thing. We do not have sinecures in our politics. We do not have top members of a party list who are sure to return to their respective offices and to continue living off the fat of the land until removed by death, voluntary retirement or a major criminal conviction. Observe, in this election, every member of Parliament is fighting for his political life. Many have relatively safe seats, absent an electoral tsunami. But in a major swing, no seat is safe. It is good for politicians to know they hold office on sufferance, and not by right of some "proportional" hocus-pocus, that they are in a position to rig. Enjoy it while it lasts. I grieve for the future because I don't think it will last. This is because the people who should be defending it have forgotten what they are defending. They grasp at notions that are merely plausible. In the last week, for instance, I have read several prominent Canadian political journalists, casually asserting or explaining on blogs that Stephen Harper ceased to be prime minister and became merely Conservative party leader upon defeat in the Commons. In one such item, the proviso was added, that he mysteriously becomes prime minister again if there is an emergency. Of course he remains prime minister until his successor is sworn in. And he campaigns as prime minister, which is the opposite of an advantage. Opposition leaders, not yet hamstrung with prime ministerial responsibilities, campaign to replace him. That is how the system works; if the people who specialize in following this game can't even understand that, where are we? Nota bene. A game in which the basic rules are constantly changing, is not a nice game. It is a game in which victory is sought by the most devious means. To prevent that, we need a serious national refresher course in basic Canadian civics. We have five weeks. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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