Pax Canadiana and the tragedy of the 4th of July

With the same calm sense we display on Canada Day, we turn to reflect on the neighbor’s Fourth of July. Typically, our comments are admiring, with only a wry reference to their exuberance and our civility. We note contemporary shortcomings in both federations and generally leave the past alone. But there’s a restless spirit in the land: imagine how better things would be if British North America, rather than the United States of America, led the world.

Here’s Conrad Black, the dream’s most popular voice, in his clearest English:

“If the Americans had just remained within the British Empire, they would have been running it in one long lifetime, would have ruled the world less than a century after Yorktown, would have made short work of any Confederate insurrection, and would have avoided the World Wars. (Not even Germany’s hyperactive Kaiser would have gone to war simultaneously against Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S.) The Declaration of Independence, 239 years ago, defamed poor old George III and even accused him of trying to impose French civil law on Americans.”

Of course. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and all the other defamers of British rule would have (1) left notions of popular liberty to mature within the vast machinery of Britain’s empire and its Parliament or (2) they would have been hung.

Set aside all that the defamers inspired (supremacy of a citizen’s bill of rights, constitutional separation of powers, democratic federalism, a transcontinental political and economic union, the Atlantic Charter, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Abraham Lincoln and Jazz, for starters) that, presumably, for lack of space, Black had to set aside.

Let’s go along with the proposition that the Europeans in the four original Canadian and the 13 original American colonies carried on as loyal British subjects.

Let’s grant that the less vehement and less arrogant voices on the two sides of the Atlantic had held the old heart and the young heart of the 18th-century British Empire intact.

Let Black savor the consequences of choosing “peace, order and good government” rather than “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the management vision for, at least, an economic and security commonwealth of the British colonies.

Imagine the old souls of the Westminster Parliamentary model keeping their grip on the machinery of government from the North Atlantic right down to Bermuda’s cane fields.

But that’s as far as Black’s British North America has the right to rearrange modern history on this continent.

Black suggests that in one “long lifetime” the English-speaking empire would peacefully move its head office and then lead a global talk-shop commonwealth—without, of course, the “gridlock” of America’s decentralized system of popular government. I should live so long.

The assumption that Tory loyalists would have promptly accommodated America’s ruthless, unruly mass immigration and their expansion west or would have promptly paid off their slave-holding aristocrats defies how they played the US Civil War and how they micro-managed the settlement of Western Canada.

Furthermore, would those British loyalists have actually received an offer from Napoleon to purchase the vast Louisiana territories? Without Motor City and the resources, industries and uncouth human capital from there to LA, would the loyal colonies of 1776 have stopped the Germans twice and won a global cold war on behalf of all sides of Westminster’s Parliament?

The implied narrative that the British Empire would, on its own, become less imperial defies precedent, including Britain’s own behavior in India and Africa. It didn’t even surrender unconditional independence to its loyal white dominions until well after WWI.

Great Britain lost the leadership of the English-speaking world before it decided to concentrate on being more civilized and a better listener than America.

There’s nothing wrong with being lucky, if you don’t confuse luck with virtue. The English Channel and the liberal American union, in fact, have helped mightily keep their island free and their liberal influence global.

Rather than "what ifs" to slag each other, it’s time we transcended the trivial insults of the 18th century and congratulate ourselves on the many smart ways both sides of the Atlantic have taken advantage of their dumb luck.

Reform Act: Canada’s way to confuse an effective democracy

There isn’t a Member of Parliament that publicly embraces the 18th-century limited government ambitions of the American Tea Party. Some MPs must be republicans and others must think that Canada’s federation is too centralized. But none of them would say that a fraction of Parliamentarians should see it as their proper place to severely weaken the executive branch of the federal government or that, after each election, the winning caucus should mull over who they want as prime minister.

Not one of them would quote the Tea Party. Nevertheless, a well-intended, reactionary proposal is enjoying a ridiculously gentle reception in the Canadian press and with too many Members of Parliament.

On behalf of a 19th-century precept that puts elected and unelected British parliamentarians in charge of who ran Britain’s government, Conservative MP Michael Chong’s Reform Act proposes that a faction of each party caucus (15% to 20%) should, by statute, have the power to force a leadership review and that a clear majority of each caucus should be sufficient to fire their leader.

Cutting to the chase: Chong’s bill would trim the powers and legitimacy of prime ministers who win majorities. Here’s how a Globe and Mail editorial puts it:

“It’s reasonable to debate the right figure or mechanism; the principle is what’s most important. And that principle is that party leaders, including prime ministers, rise out of the body of MPs, and are something less than the MPs’ lord and master.”

The bill’s core principle, in fact, is the problem.

With all due respect to the wit and intrigues of the Disraeli and Gladstone parliaments, prime ministers in Canada today don’t “rise out of the body of MPs.”

They lead registered national political parties. And because they lead winning national election campaigns, with constituency candidates representing that party, prime ministers stand well above others in Parliament. This isn’t arbitrary or fueled by patronage. It expresses the way the people believe their democracy works; it informs how they vote and drives them to the polls. And, as important, it’s that contract with the person that makes surefooted public administration possible.

It is breached by MPs in dire circumstances, but it isn’t a corruption of the way things should normally work. It only offends a bygone era of serial governments and powerful scheming backbenches.

For the opposition, Chong’s bill offers another dandy opportunity to fuel their ballot question: Do you believe we still need to be bossed around by Stephen Harper? For numerous Conservative backbenches, it helps separate them from Harper and identifies them with "grass-roots democrats" who believe representative democracy was once actually more accountable to the people.

The alliance that could pass this bill — like most political alliances — is fragile. Opposition party leaders Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau will live with it if they think it will get them closer to power. After all, destroying a popular prime minister would be inconceivable for Liberals, and having a popular prime minister is hardly a disciplining objective for New Democrats.

So, like making promises to balance a budget in seven years or to cut the emission of greenhouse gases in 10 years, what’s the harm? It doesn’t force me to do anything. For a moment, for fun, however, let’s imagine hiring and firing prime ministers became normal caucus business.

In the "dysfunctional" American legislative system, Congress can block, amend, and defeat the president’s legislation, budgets, treaties, and executive appointments. A super majority can throw the president out. And none of these powers requires that US legislators secure the consent of the voters who sent them to Washington.

However, in return for all that power over the Executive, they must deliberate and vote in public and respect the written terms of their constitution. And unless he’s impeached, he keeps his job and all the awful power and legitimacy that that office provides to help him fight back.

Does Chong envision Canada’s Parliamentary caucuses holding these revolts and exercising their new statutory powers in public, or in the grand ol' fashion of colorful leaks to CTV’s Craig Oliver and the Post’s John Iverson?

For conservatives who want to implement controversial changes, for liberals who are concerned that the Executive maintains fiscal powers and the flexibility necessary to manage the economy in emergencies, and for social democrats who wish to legislate comprehensive new national programs, the bill makes zero sense.

Even for no-name democrats who want to encourage more people to vote in federal elections, the bill makes no sense.

American election data provides decisive evidence about what happens in national elections that elect legislators and not also the president. US voter turnout shows that approximately another 15% of eligible voters don’t bother to turn out. Indeed, having the presidency at stake in the 2012 election pulled out 40 million voters who didn’t bother to vote in the 2010 midterm elections.

Mr. Chong may believe he pulled his vote, won his election, and represents his voters. Those notions may inspire him to be a superior MP. But they are not and have not been true for nearly a hundred years. His prime minister also won in his vote and is privileged and obliged as well to try to represent them.   

Thomas Mulcair’s Language Problem

Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair is a classic parliamentarian. He’s not out on the road pitching for the leadership of the Liberal Party or, like Stephen Harper, half-listening for trouble and half-thinking about a fascinating file on his desk. He’s a "House of Commons man"—and that, if he doesn’t give himself a good shake, is going to be his political epitaph.

Numerate pundits who look in both directions note that the Harper Government has reached that tricky midpoint. Harper is now almost exactly as far away from his last appeal for re-election as, necessarily, his next. This is a time when people with power are most tempted to relax, to feel at home in Ottawa and in offices full of clever, civil, and tenured professionals.

The dangers for Harper are being thoroughly spelled out.

This, however, is also a dangerous midpoint for the House of Commons, a time when it also gets a little high—when its sense proportion, its language, and its obsessions make sense to its members, social network followers, and ravenous journalists—and less and less to us.

The danger of going a little crazy about not being in the team going a little crazy with power, of course, is concentrated in the Official Opposition, with Thomas Mulcair and the very people who treat Parliament as their primary job.

Mulcair’s language problems in Washington recently are symptomatic.

Critics in Ottawa easily refer to the Harper Government with terms like “gutting” environmental laws, “politicizing” regulatory processes, and “ignoring” the provinces and First Nations—and as easily they promise to “restore” democracy, transparency, heart, and “evidence-based” decision-making to Canada.

If you were visiting from Milwaukee and hadn’t been briefed on Canada’s constitutional safeguards and temperate traditions, you’d think that Venezuela —not Canada—was the reliable ally with dirty oil.

Within Ottawa and on political networks, there’s a "truthiness" to extravagant opposition insults that slips into the vocabulary of normal, intelligent people. It doesn’t destroy their careers—it just doesn’t play that well out of town.

Mulcair’s simply performed as a “House of Commons man” when telling Washington audiences that Canada’s government was “making a fool of Canadians" and was “gutting” environmental laws. He was being himself in a friendly city.

Setting aside the unvarnished untimeliness of arming one side of a pending decision that could restrict Canada’s competence to make its own decisions—to meet obligations that Americans insist on meeting on their own terms—he used language that will soon limit his reach within Canada.

Mulcair and fellow Parliamentarians have at least 2 years to start talking credibly to the rest of us.

Harper’s government isn’t really that radical. His opponents don’t have to invent a new vocabulary. There are plenty of quieter accusations that worked in the past: "secretive," "out of touch," "centrist," "tired," "academic," and "divisive," for instance. Try promising to “do better” and “renew” interest in the future.