Canadian Study of Parliament Group Seminar

From backbenchers, to cabinet ministers to first ministers, parliamentarians rely on the assistance of political staff to fulfill their role’s many responsibilities. Yet staffers’ roles in parliamentary democracy are not well understood. Noting the growing number of ministerial staffers and a similar growth in the perception of their influence over government decision-making, on March 18, 2016, the Canadian Study of Parliament Group convened a seminar featuring two panels of current and former political staff, public servants and academics to examine the role of staffers and their interactions with the public service. Panelists were also asked if they believed reforms were required to address the unique position that political staff hold in relation to parliamentary government.

First Panel

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Has the Senate Changed?

Article 4 / 12 , Vol 39 No.1 (Spring)

Has the Senate Changed?

With the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada reference making transformative reform or abolition of the Senate unlikely in the near future, the author asks if informal or incremental reforms have occurred in the past 30 years. Using quantitative data, he finds that the upper chamber has become more representative of aspects of Canadian diversity in the sociological sense. Women, Aboriginal people and official-language minorities are represented in greater numbers in the Senate than in the House of Commons. The data concerning the Senate’s effect on legislative business in Parliament reveals a somewhat uneven record.

Despite the absence of major constitutional amendments in recent decades, the Senate of Canada has changed in certain respects; however, these changes have not improved Canadians’ generally negative view of the Senate.

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Some Suggestions for Incremental Reform of the Senate

Article 5 / 12 , Vol 39 No.1 (Spring)

Some Suggestions for Incremental Reform of the Senate

The provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867 respecting the qualification and disqualification of Senators are outdated. They can be modernized without controversy and early action to accomplish that could be the impetus for Parliament and the Legislatures to address more significant aspects of Senate reform.

*Subsequent to the acceptance of this article for publication and immediately prior to publication, on March 10, 2016 Senator Dennis Glen Patterson introduced Bill S-221 and gave notice of a constitutional amendment resolution the combined effect of which, if adopted, will be to substantially effect the first three changes suggested by the author. Continue reading “Some Suggestions for Incremental Reform of the Senate”

Interest Groups and Parliamentary Committees: Leveling the Playing Field

Article 6 / 12 , Vol 39 No.1 (Spring)

Interest Groups and Parliamentary Committees: Leveling the Playing Field

Parliamentary committees in Canada are undeniably important resources for interest groups – particularly in terms of gaining information, articulating one’s message on public record, and establishing oneself as a legitimate stakeholder in the eyes of politicians, government and the public. However, one of the intended functions of standing committees — to serve as a venue for non-governmental influence on policy — has largely proved to be a canard in Canada’s House of Commons. The first part of this article prioritizes the challenges facing non-governmental actors who wish to exert policy influence through parliamentary committees. It asserts that standing committees’ function of carrying out studies has more surmountable challenges than the function of legislative reviews. The second part of the article emphasizes that two developments are imperative in order to realize the potential committee studies hold: first, the open-ended nature of studies and the inadequacy of follow-up mechanisms should be addressed (with the scope of questions designed to feed into a pipeline of future legislative activity wherever feasible), and second, long-overdue accountability mechanisms should be introduced to ensure that the government responds to committee reports upon request.

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Rule by Regulation: Revitalizing Parliament’s Supervisory Role in the Making of Subordinate Legislation

Article 7 / 12 , Vol 39 No.1 (Spring)

Rule by Regulation: Revitalizing Parliament’s Supervisory Role in the Making of Subordinate Legislation

This article highlights the increasing use of regulations, or subordinate legislation, as a source of federal law. Notably, the Supreme Court of Canada has observed the importance of regulations in ascertaining a legislature’s intent with regard to a certain matter even though it is the executive and not Parliament that makes regulations. The author explains the current process in place to provide parliamentary oversight to regulations and suggests that Canada may want to adapt the UK model by dividing the existing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations into two separate committees. Methodologically screening new regulations under the proposed committee system would play an important role in supporting transparency in government by helping to publicize the exercise of legislative power by the executive, alleviating concern over governments using the regulation-making process to shield important public policy choices from public scrutiny.

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The Great Fire of 1916 on Parliament Hill

Article 8 / 12 , Vol 39 No.1 (Spring)

The Great Fire of 1916 on Parliament Hill

On a bitterly cold evening on February 3, 1916, Members of Parliament were in the House of Commons to participate in an evening session when a fire started on one of the lower shelves in a Reading Room at 8:55 p.m. Four minutes later the first fire engine arrived on the Hill as flames engulfed the roof of Centre Block. At 9 p.m., the Chief Doorkeeper of the House of Commons alerted MPs by yelling, “There is a big fire in the Reading Room; everybody get out quickly!” Quick thinking by Librarian Michael Connolly MacCormac saved the structure from complete destruction when he dispatched a messenger to close its iron doors. At the stroke of midnight the bell in the Victoria Tower came crashing down. The fire raged towards the Senate by 12:45 a.m., but firefighters’ efforts to contain it allowed many pieces of art to be saved from the Senate side. It was 2:00 a.m. before firefighters had it under control (though it continued to smolder for much of the next day and flared up twice more). Seven people lost their lives in the Great Fire of 1916 and the Centre Block was in ruins. Reconstruction, which began later that year, and was completed in 1922 (with the Peace Tower being completed in 1927).

Sources:
Library of Parliament
Library and Archives Canada
Senate of Canada

Members’ Assistance Program: Working in a Job Like No Other

Article 2 / 13 , Vol 38 No.4 (Winter)

Members’ Assistance Program: Working in a Job Like No Other

It’s sometimes easy to forget that politicians are people too and must deal with many types of personal issues while serving the public in a job with particular stresses on them and their families. Members’ assistance programs offer support to parliamentarians and their families and it would be a good practise for legislatures to routinely review them to ensure they are effective.

Parliamentarians don’t often speak about the personal costs that a political life can have, or what we can or should do about it. In all our legislatures, Members devote a lot of time and energy to our jobs as we desire to make positive changes and are passionate to make the world a better place for our people and their children and grandchildren.

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Campaign School for Women: Sharing Political Knowledge Across the North

Article 3 / 13 , Vol 38 No.4 (Winter)

Campaign School for Women: Sharing Political Knowledge Across the North

The Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) – Canadian Region has been engaged in a number of outreach projects to foster interest among women in the political process, including campaign schools for women. The authors outline their participation in a recent Northwest Territories’ campaign school and note that despite differing styles of government (consensus versus party system) across Canada’s territories and northern areas of provinces, there are many similarities in the kinds of relationships parliamentarians create with constituents in largely rural northern communities.

As members of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians’ Canadian Region steering committee, we were delighted to take part in a recent campaign school for aspiring women parliamentarians in the Northwest Territories.

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Grandfathers and Grandchildren in the Parliament of Canada

Article 5 / 13 , Vol 38 No.4 (Winter)

Grandfathers and Grandchildren in the Parliament of Canada

Building on an earlier study of Canadian parliamentarians who were part of the same nuclear families, the author explores grandfathers and grandchildren who served as parliamentarians.

In an earlier article, I presented a comparative study of Canadian parliamentarians who lived under the same roof (spouses, parents–children, brothers).¹ In this study, I looked at grandfather–grandchild relationships in Parliament. When reporters ask Justin Trudeau how his father influenced his own political career, he tells them that they should not overlook the influence of his maternal grandfather, James Sinclair. Born in Scotland in 1908, Sinclair was a trained civil engineer. He served as a squadron leader in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, and he was elected as the Liberal Member for Vancouver North in 1940 and then for Coast-Capilano in 1949. From 1949 to 1952 he was the Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Finance, and then from 1952 to 1957 he served as the Minister of Fisheries. His political career ended nine months later with the second election of John D. Diefenbaker’s Conservative government. He died in 1984 at the age of 75.²

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Proportional Representation: The Scottish Model Applied to the 2015 Canadian Election

Article 6 / 13 , Vol 38 No.4 (Winter)

Proportional Representation: The Scottish Model Applied to the 2015 Canadian Election

The purpose of this paper is to calculate what the results of the 2015 federal election in Canada might have been using a system of proportional representation based on the system in use for elections to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish model was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada in its March 2004 report¹. This paper does not attempt to deal in any depth with the implications of a proportional representation system, such as the tendency for it to result in a minority government, or with the relative merits of the various possible systems for proportional representation. Those matters are canvassed more fully in the Law Commission report. Continue reading “Proportional Representation: The Scottish Model Applied to the 2015 Canadian Election”