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How we are governed is political custom

André argues democratic accountability is stronger under a consensus government

What PIerre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper, and Justin Trudeau all have in common is that they entered the Office of Prime Minister welcomed as altruistic benefactors, only to leave it a few years later accused of being self-centered malefactors.

Their trajectories differed in details, but they all progressed from protagonist, promising solutions to all the nation’s problems, to antagonist, the cause of all the nation’s problems.

Pierre Poilievre will likely follow in their footsteps.

Justin Trudeau resigned from two offices, that of Prime Minister and that of leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party controls the process by which it will have named a new leader by March 9. Whoever the party selects to replace Mr. Trudeau as leader will be sworn in as our next prime minister. This succession is not written in law, it is not decreed in our constitution; it is a political custom.

The Constitution does not establish an electoral system, nor does it provide a procedure by which a prime minister or provincial first minister and cabinet ministers are to be chosen. A prime minister’s career trajectory is neither accidental nor coincidental.

That the leader of the political party having elected the most members to Parliament or a legislative assembly should serve as first minister by this virtue alone is an arrangement endorsed by political parties to serve their power interests. We have allowed government leadership, a position of paramount democratic responsibility, to be contaminated by narrow, self-serving partisan interests.

Political parties are formed to promote policy and program ideas, to assert how government should operate and how it should be managed, but their focus is on power. Political parties share broadly defined social, economic and security goals and objectives.

Where they differ, often holding to conflicting ideas and priorities, is on how to achieve these goals and objectives. The nation’s interests are of concern to political parties, but the reverse does not hold, the interests of political parties are of no concern to the nation.

A democratic government’s essential responsibility should be to forge a viable consensus from conflicting political visions, to map a path allowing society’s many factions and fractions to pursue their respective dreams. Assigning leadership responsibilities to forge that consensus to an individual who already holds leadership responsibilities to advance one political party’s partisan interests creates a conflict of loyalties.

It erodes ethics and weakens government accountability to the legislative assembly. It does not have to be that way.

In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut partisan political leadership is isolated from the leadership of responsible government. Following an election, MLAs in these territories meet to select a first minister from among the elected members. Next, they select ministers to form a cabinet. The first minister then assigns portfolios. The cabinet governs by consensus and determines priorities based on issues raised during the election. All ministers, first minister included, are accountable to the legislative assembly.

Unlike our prime minister’s staff, a consensus government leader’s staff cannot issue partisan political directives to ministers and to legislative assembly members. Democratic accountability is stronger under a consensus government.

Political parties are neither excluded nor precluded in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. What distinguishes their consensus system from the partisan system prevailing in all other Canadian jurisdictions is that consensus-first ministers wear only one hat; they are not troubled by conflicting loyalties.