Please contact me with questions or comments on Parliamentum, or on any academic or professional matter. I will return your e-mail.
Parliamentum's Popularity
- 51,412 hits
Posts By Subject
- Constitution (Conventional)
- Constitution (Written)
- Crown (Powers and Office)
- History of British North America
- Loyal Opposition
- Monarchism v Republicanism
- Parliament
- Parliamentarism v Presidentialism
- Political Parties
- Reform
- Responsible Government
- Reviews and Critiques
- The Personal Union
- Uncategorized
- Whigs v Tories
Posts By Month
Blogroll
Tags by Subject
Andrew Coyne Anne Twomey Balanced Constitution bipartisanship Charles I Christopher Moore coalition government Dalton McGuinty David Starkey Democratizing the Constitution dissolution Duff Conacher English Bill of Rights Eugene Forsey First Federal Republic of Canada identity politics inter-institutional opposition intra-institutional opposition James I James II Jean Chretien John A. Macdonald Letters Patent 1947 liberal-constitutionalism Lord Dufferin Manual of Official Procedure of the Government of Canada Michael Bliss Nicholas A. MacDonald Patriation Reference Paul Benoit Peter Russell Philippe Lagassé prorogation Robert Macgregor Dawson Romanticism royal infallibility s.41(a) Sir John George Bourinot Statute of Westminister Stephen Harper The Glorious Revolution Vernon Bogdanor Walter Bagehot William III Your Canada Your Constitution
The article by James Bowden and Nicholas Macdonald “Onley provides a needed education” (Citizen February 28) is a well intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to buoy up our beleaguered system of responsible government, the most recent example of which was Premier McGuinty’s request for prorogation in face of a contempt vote against one of his ministers.
The authors claim that, as with the Harper case, the Lieutenant Governor had no discretion to refuse the request. The nub of their argument is that in responsible government “ministers of the Crown take responsibility for all acts of the Crown.” This is simply another way of saying the majority can do whatever it likes. I am sure if they reflect upon it they will admit that is a perversion of parliamentary government. Essential to our system are officials, one of whom is the Lieutenant Governor, whose responsibility is to see that we are not simply governed by the tyranny of the majority.
Mr. McGuinty’s request to prorogue parliament to save a minister (and his administration) from a finding of contempt was a clear abuse of power. The sanction for abuse of power is dismissal. Had Mr. McGuinty not resigned at the same time he requested prorogation the Lieutenant Governor would have been entitled to refuse. That would have led to a defeat of the government.
Mr. McGuinty, to his credit, realized that his request was a gross abuse of power and spared the Lieutenant Governor any unpleasantness by resigning. Having paid the price for abusing power there was no longer any need to refuse prorogation and, correctly, Mr. Onley did not.
But imagine the new Premier follows the same tactic and asks for prorogation to avoid another motion of censure. Under the Bowden-MacDonald theory of responsible government this would be granted and presumably could be repeated for up to five years until an election would have to be called.
In fact, long before that would happen, the Lieutenant Governor would refuse a request for prorogation and the House would decide the fate of the government. To argue that a Lieutenant Governor has the power to dismiss a Premier or to refuse a dissolution but not to refuse prorogation in certain circumstances is to miss the forest for the trees. It is not helping us move toward a more healthy understanding of the fundamentals of our form of parliamentary government.
What does this have to do with the contact page??? You don’t need to talk about me in the third person; I am right here, after all.