This article was originally published in The Hill Times.
By Donald Savoie, May 21, 2024
Canada’s national institutions are confronting deep-seated problems. Members of Parliament from different parties are voicing concerns, recently retired federal public servants have become increasingly critical of their old workplaces, former cabinet ministers who write memoirs are identifying important shortcomings; and public opinion surveys reveal that Canadians are losing trust in their national institutions. The problem speaks to democratic backsliding throughout the Western world, and Canada is not immune from it.
The way ahead is to embrace an ambitious reform agenda designed to breathe new life in our institutions. We need to start with Parliament because MPs are the ultimate guardians of Canada’s representative democracy, and because it is the one institution that ties Canadians and their communities together. If Parliament cannot hold the government to account for its policies and spending, no one can. Therein lies the problem. Governments govern and oppositions oppose. While party discipline is necessary in a parliamentary system, Canada has taken it further than other countries operating under a Westminster parliamentary system. If you sit on the government side, you applaud whatever the government is doing, no questions asked, and if you sit on the opposition benches, you oppose whatever the government is doing, no questions asked. MPs are not equipped to ask penetrating questions about the government’s expenditure budget and government operations. Parliament’s expenditure review process has become an empty ritual carried out on an annual basis with zero impact on government spending, and not much more in holding the government to account. The government, no matter the party in power, prefers it that way.
What to do? First, Canadians should appreciate that being an MP is a demanding and thankless job. There are few rewards. Constituency work is draining, and time spent in airports and on airplanes is exhausting. Online abuse is rampant since the arrival of social media. Pay is modest, at least compared to judges and government executives. Family life is extremely difficult and, to become an MP, one has to put other career aspirations on hold. MPs need respect and resources to do their job. Respect because we need to attract highly qualified individuals to serve in Parliament. Resources, because MPs do not currently have access to the resources they need to hold the government to account.
How, then, can MPs become somebody in Ottawa and in their constituencies? There is a need to lessen the constant jockeying for positions before party leaders to make it to cabinet. Being an MP should be its own reward, and provide opportunities to make meaningful contributions. We can substantially strengthen the hand of MPs in their dealings with party leaders by giving party caucuses the authority to initiate a formal leadership review. In the United Kingdom, four prime ministers were removed from office over the past 35 years not by voters, Parliament, or party members, but by their parliamentary party (caucus). In introducing the approach to Canada, we could ensure stability by requiring that at least one third of MPs in a caucus sign a letter requesting a leadership review before going to a vote.
The chairs of parliamentary committees should enjoy the same salary benefits, resources, staff, and perks as cabinet ministers so that making it as chair of a parliamentary committee should be nearly as rewarding as making it to cabinet. Clerks of House committees should enjoy the same salaries and benefits as deputy ministers. It would attract public servants currently in the executive with an intimate knowledge of how government operates. This can be done at no cost to taxpayers by reallocating resources from the executive to Parliament.
The imbalance between the House and the executive is completely out of sync. The executive—depending on how one counts—is home to anywhere between 150 to 300 organizations, and a staff complement anywhere between 350,000 to 500,000 employees. This is not to suggest that Parliament should have anywhere near the same level of human resources as the executive, for obvious reasons. But a very small rebalancing is in order. The House of Commons has a staff complement of 1,737; the Library of Parliament only has 423 employees and MPs have a staff complement of six to eight staffers between their Ottawa and constituency offices. The constituency office has come to dominate since the role of MP is now more akin to a social worker dealing with immigration, employment insurance, passport applications and the like, and less about being lawmakers and holding the government to account.
MPs do not have access to the expertise to do the job because, willingly or not, they have delegated much of their responsibility for holding the government to account to officers of Parliament. These officers operate independently from the government and, for the most part, even from Parliament. The Office of the Auditor General (OAG), for example, has an annual budget of about $130-million, a staff complement of 780, and numerous consultant contracts. It is a large and costly bureaucracy to do what it does, typically producing a few reports a year. Are the reports and the office worth the expense? I do not think so. The OAG, however, gets a free pass from both MPs and the media. Contrary to years past, when the office limited its work to financial audits, the OAG now carries out value-for-money reviews. These reviews are more subjective than strict financial audits, and they vary in terms of quality, substance and impact. Parliament, through one of its committees, should call for an independent review of these audits. It should also hold hearings on the role of OAG, and ask whether Parliament should limit its mandate to carrying out only financial audits.
Many in government do not want to give Parliament more resources, arguing that nothing positive would come out of it. They argue that Parliament is little more than a stage for partisan political theatre. Parliament is political theatre in part because MPs have a limited capacity to do much else. This line of reasoning, carried to its logical conclusion, means government by the non-elected working with a handful of powerful politicians and their partisan advisors running the government at will, with a highly limited capacity to hold them accountable. Equip MPs with the knowledge and access to expertise, and they may well be better able to pursue one of their more important responsibilities: holding the government to account. If you want MPs to be somebody, then give them the resources to be somebody and to make a meaningful contribution. If you want MPs to remain nobodies and to see Parliament unable to attract highly qualified individuals, the status quo will do just fine.
Cabinet government is on life support system. I wrote 25 years ago that cabinet was no longer a decision-making body having been turned into a “focus group” for the prime minister. Cabinet has continued to lose standing in recent years. Those who still believe that we have cabinet government need to square the following with how cabinet government should operate: two key decisions regarding Canada’s deployment in Afghanistan, one by a Liberal government, one by a Conservative government, were made in the Prime Minister’s Office with the help of a handful of political advisers and civilian and military officials. The relevant ministers of national defence and foreign affairs were not even in the room. These are not isolated cases.
Cabinet is now a deliberative body, a focus group, because a 39-member committee can be little else. It will be recalled that then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a 15-member cabinet in 1942 to deal with the war effort and to run the government, in a unitary state, where there were no provinces to deal with education, health care and other responsibilities. A 39-member cabinet may make for good partisan politics, but not for good government. It creates make-work for an army of partisan political advisers roaming wherever they want inside government placing a burden on the public service to meet requests for information. Cabinet ministers require an elaborative and costly infrastructure of partisan resources and parliamentary secretaries simply because they are cabinet ministers.
Canadians should ask aspiring prime ministers, as they develop their electoral platforms, to commit to limit the size of cabinet to 20, and to bring all important government decisions before cabinet. This would help to bring cabinet government back and reallocate some of the savings to MPs and parliamentary committees.
Donald J. Savoie, a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance (Tier 1) at the Université de Moncton, and is the author of several award-winning books. This column is based on his forthcoming book Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service.
