I recently published an article in Constitutional Forum that analyses the rules of government formation in Canada. You can find the article here (click where it says pdf):
To address the current debate about who governs after the 21 October election, I’ve updated my tables:
Here is a longer version of a post on the Judicial Power Project symposium on Miller 2:
Executive dominance has been weakened in the United Kingdom over the past decade and a half. While debate will continue about how the Supreme Court found that the prorogation of Parliament was justiciable and unlawful, Cherry/Miller 2 is arguably less remarkable when put in the context of the executive’s waning dominance in Britain’s constitutional order. Put simply, the prorogation judgement reflects a larger parliamentary and judicial effort to dampen the strength of the executive in constitution. This does not take away from the constitutional evolution that the judgement has helped advance, but it does raise questions about how much discretion should be left with the executive in this new equilibrium.
Westminster states are typically known for their dominant executives and relatively weak legislatures –though this may only still apply to one member of the Westminster family, Canada. Thanks to cabinet solidarity, party discipline, a majoritarian electoral system, and parliamentary procedures prioritizing government business, the British executive was once thought to exert significant control over the legislature. The prerogatives of the Crown, moreover, gave ministers discretion over matters of state, such as foreign and military affairs, and the life and cycle of Parliament, through the powers of dissolution and prorogation. The government was held to account in Parliament for the exercise of executive power, and if the House of Commons felt that the ministry was no longer fit to hold its confidence, an election could be held to give voters a chance to express themselves. With the responsibility of governing came an equal measure of accountability to Parliament and the people, though the executive was the dominant actor between elections owing to the advantages and prerogatives it enjoyed.
Calls to curtail the executive’s dominance have been heard for decades in the United Kingdom, but the 2003 Iraq War galvanized reformers. In the years since the war, the British constitution has underdone notable constitutional change aiming to rebalance the relationship between the executive and the legislature in Parliament’s favour. As the title of a 2003-2004 Commons Public Administration Committee report revealed, there has been a movement to ‘tame the Crown’. Facilitated by an increase in backbench rebelliousness and a coalition government, significant reforms were achieved within a decade: placing the civil service and the navy on a statutory footing, subjecting treaties to greater parliamentary scrutiny prior to ratification, a practice of seeking parliamentary approval for combat operations overseas, the election of select committee chairs by secret ballot, the establishment of a backbench business committee, the publication of a cabinet manual, and most importantly, the transfer of the Queen’s power to dissolve Parliament on the advice of the Prime Minister to the House of Commons.
The Supreme Court also contributed to this taming. In Evans, the Supreme Court ruled against the Attorney General’s decision to protect Prince Charles’ ‘spider memos’ from disclosure. Defenders of the government noted that the Court arrived at this outcome through a rather creative interpretation of statute. In Miller 1, the Court denied that prerogative power could be used to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and that an Act of Parliament was required to do so. While champions of parliamentary sovereignty applauded the decision, commentators did observe that the Court’s treatment of the prerogative was surprising.
With Prime Minister Johnson’s commitment to withdraw from the European Union by 31 October 2019, efforts to submit the executive to Commons control took on greater urgency. House of Commons standing order 24 was thus used to take control of the agenda and pass legislation to prevent a ‘no deal’ Brexit. While he may yet manage to force through ‘no deal’, at this stage it appears that the Prime Minister is boxed in: unable to meaningfully hold confidence, checked by parliamentary control of a Brexit agreement, and dependent on his opponents to hold an election. Whether an election is held in the coming months or not, it is not unlikely that standing order 24 will be used to further constrain the executive when the Commons sees fit, while the Prime Minister is left without their previous ability to dissolve Parliament in response. Whatever else this may be, it is not a dominant executive.
In the lead up to Johnson’s premiership is it perhaps not surprising that defenders of the previous constitutional order began musing about how the Crown’s remaining prerogatives might be used to push back against Parliament. Suggestions that the Queen might be advised to withhold royal assent and to prorogue Parliament to ensure an exit from the European Union were two proposal that were floated. For advocates of parliamentary primacy, these ideas represented an abuse of power and evidence that executive discretion required further curtailing. For defenders of the executive, on the other hand, novel uses of the prerogative were justified in light of the Commons’ stifling of the government’s freedom of action.
Ultimately, advice to withhold royal assent was not proffered (yet), but the Queen was advised to prorogue Parliament for an extended period of time. In this symposium, Nick Barber has described this move as a form of constitutional hardball. To use Alison Young’s terminology, we might also see the prorogation as a kind of constitutional counter-counterbalancing. Either way, the executive deployed one of its remaining prerogative authorities to counter parliamentary opposition to Brexit.
In the past, advice to prorogue Parliament would likely have been deemed non-justiciable, as the Divisional Court found. The Supreme Court, however, ensured that its ruling reflected and advanced the rebalancing of power between the executive and Parliament. In so doing, the Court has opened the possibility of further judicial constraints on executive discretion. As Stephen Tierney has argued as part of this symposium, the Court deployed a novel understanding of the judiciary’s role in determining the scope and extent of a prerogative to rule that the prorogation was unlawful. It also elevated the convention of the executive’s accountability to Parliament to the status of a constitutional principle, allowing it to be judicially enforced.
Although the judges held that the ruling was a ‘one off’, it is certainly plausible that other exercises of prerogative authority could be subject to these wider standards of judicial review. A military deployment, for instance, could conceivably be found unlawful if the courts find that its stated purposes were illegitimate, or if a failure to first secure the approval of the House of Commons is found to be contrary to the constitutional principal of executive accountability. In theory, many decisions that might have been considered political questions or matters of ‘high policy’ are now open to judicial override. That said, the judges did not question the existence or legitimacy of the prerogative itself, only how it was used in this instance.
Where does this leave the executive? Certainly, the prorogation has reinforced the sense that the royal prerogative is open to abuse and that efforts to ‘tame the Crown’ should continue. Prorogation’s days as a prerogative exercised on the advice of ministers may be numbered, as a result. Yet the past decade and a half of reform, the troubles of the Johnson government, and Cherry/Miller 2 suggests that efforts to constrain the executive have essentially succeeded. Perhaps the issue now is what discretionary powers and prerogatives the executive should be preserved, not how many more must be curtailed.
Granted, this is not a discussion that is likely to be dispassionate in the context of Brexit. But once Brexit is settled, it may be worth asking what kind of powers and discretion should properly belong with the executive in the British constitution. As the Supreme Court itself emphasized, the British constitution operates with a separation of powers and according to the principle of responsible government. This then leads one to ponder: what powers and responsibilities should belong with the executive as a separate, if submissive, organ of the state?
Parliamentary privilege has now become a point of contention in the SNC Lavalin controversy.
Over at Maclean’s, I’ve argued that Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott could use parliamentary privilege to speak about matters that still remain under cabinet confidentiality, but that the issues would have to rise to the level of unconstitutional behaviour on the part of the executive to justify a violation of their privy councillors’ oath and of the deference Parliament should almost always show cabinet confidences.
James Kelly has noted that, while the privilege of free speech exists, it wouldn’t be easy for the two members to find a way to exercise their privilege without the consent of their party or flexibility from the Speaker. Over on Twitter, a few of us have argued that points of privilege, points of order, and other creative mechanisms would almost certainly allow them to speak. The counter-counterargument is that none of these mechanisms would afford Wilson-Raybould and Philpott enough time to say what needs to be said, and that the onus should still be on the Prime Minister to issue a wider waiver.
This is a healthy and important debate, but it needs a bit more clarity, since many of the contentions hinge on nuances and possibilities, rather than concrete and actual happenings.
Above all, I think it’s worth spelling out the institutional question, then outlining what it means for the various positions.
Wilson-Raybould and Philpott could use parliamentary privilege to expose cabinet confidentialities. That does not mean they should. Privilege is absolute and has to be exercised with careful consideration of other principles.
If they shouldn’t violate cabinet confidentiality, that doesn’t mean we want the parties and Speaker finding reasons to ensure they couldn’t. The privilege of free parliamentary speech is an essential constitutional safeguard that merits protection and promotion.
The best course of action would be for Wilson-Raybould to testify before a parliamentary committee with a wider waiver from the Prime Minister. That doesn’t negate the fact that privilege and procedure offer other ways of expressing herself if the wider waiver never comes and she has something absolutely essential to say.
Liberals who argue that Wilson-Raybould and Philpott can simply speak should recognize that the wider waiver and committee testimony are far, far preferable ways to for them to do so. If there’s a way for them to speak without violating their privy councillor oaths, then that’s the way to go.
Conservatives and New Democrats who argue that Wilson-Raybould and Philpott should be given the opportunity to speak under a wider waiver can nonetheless acknowledge that privilege and procedure offer a means for them to do so if the wider waiver and additional testimony aren’t on offer. In fact, the Conservatives and New Democrats could do a lot to help the two members exercise their privilege of free speech if it came to that.
Parliamentarians from all sides should acknowledge and promote the principle that they have free speech and mechanisms to use it when necessary. They do no service to themselves as parliamentarians, or to Parliament as an institution, by suggesting that members can or should be easily silenced by their parties or the Speaker.
We should acknowledge the importance of cabinet confidentiality as a core constitutional principle that should be respected in almost all cases, while noting that parliamentary privilege must be paramount over confidence in very exceptional circumstances if Parliament is to function as a self-governing body equipped to hold the government to account. The fundamental constitutional point here is that the executive does not get to decide what’s said in Parliament.
We can stress that individual oaths should almost always be respected, but that people may be faced with an equally, if not more compelling, ethical principle or obligation that pushes them to act contrary to their oath.
Finally, there should be no question that the correct course of action is to allow Wilson-Raybould and Philpott to speak without violating cabinet confidentiality. Our system works best when constitutional functions and principles are reconciled, not in conflict. As Speaker Milliken ruled in the case of the Afghan detainee documents:
The Chair must conclude that it is within the powers of the House of Commons to ask for the documents sought in the December 10 Order it adopted. Now it seems to me that the issue before us is this: Is it possible to put in place a mechanism by which these documents could be made available to the House without compromising the security and confidentiality of the information they contain? In other words, is it possible for the two sides, working together in the best interests of the Canadians they serve, to devise a means where both their concerns are met? Surely that is not too much to hope for.
Surely it is not too much to hope for here either.
The office of Governor General has attracted a fair bit of attention recently –at least as compared with how often it’s usually discussed. In the past few months, we’ve heard that Rideau Hall is undertaking a review the Governor General’s non-official commitments, seen the government withdraw support for a former Governor General seeking to renew her appointment as head of the Francophonie, and had controversy over the expenses of a retired vice-regal representative. To my mind, these stories highlight a couple of the sticky issues that surround the office, including the expectations placed on Governors General, what comes after a governor generalship, and the public funds available to former vice-regals. In particular, these stories highlight ambiguity about the patronage work performed by Governors General.
What do we expect Governors General to do? In answering this question, it strikes me that the constitutional and head of state functions of the office are paramount. Here we’re talking about the dissolution of Parliament, appointing and possibly dismissing the prime minister, giving the throne speech, swearing in Cabinet, signing orders-in-council, and so forth. The honours function is also important, since we want to keep politicians away from it to the extent that we can. So, the Governor General should bestow the Order of Canada, Order of Military Merit, and other honours.
What about the head of nation role? As with honours, we want to Governor General to represent Canadians to themselves, rather than having a partisan politician. Similarly, as Commander-in-Chief we want the Governor General honouring the military and being the symbol of the armed forces’ loyalty to the state as the Queen’s representative. Accordingly, the Governor General should be present at commemorations, major military celebrations and events, and other occasions when we require a non-partisan personification of Canada.
Governments occasionally send Governors General on state visits overseas. The purpose of these trip is soft diplomacy and relationship building. Although it’s hard to measure, I suspect that these visits bear fruit, either by building networks for the Canadian businesspeople and academics who travel with the Governor General, or by demonstrating Canada’s interest in building ties with the countries that are on the itinerary.
What about patronage? To my mind, there’s more flexible here. Some Governors General will want to commit themselves to numerous charitable events and maintain ties with all sorts of organizations. Others will be less inclined, and that’s okay. Not every Governor General will be as enthusiastic about this part of the job and we might turn away good appointees if we insist on it, or at least if we insist that every Governor General approach this aspect of the role with the same gusto. If there are opportunity costs between the Governor General’s constitutional, honours, head of nation, international duties and these patronage roles, I’d give far greater weight to the first four.
When Governors General leave office, their role in Canadian society becomes murkier. There’s a program in place to help former Governors General establish an organization that spearheads a cause of their choosing. This program gives former Governors General a chance to use their profile and statute for the public good. Former Governors General can also choose to find some other high-profile office or role. Governors General who leave office at a relatively young age may be especially drawn to these new opportunities. As we saw with Michaelle Jean’s efforts to remain at the head of the Francophonie, though, this is a tricky path for former Governors General, since there are few positions out there that properly balance the prestigious, but largely ceremonial, role of the Queen’s representative in Canada.
Indeed, this is one reason that the office of Governor General is better suited to older appointees who are nearing or are at the age of retirement. They can retire quietly if they so choose, rather than crafting a second, third, or fourth career after holding the second highest office of the Canadian state. At the very least, younger appointees should have a clear answer to the question: “so what do you do after being GG?”
Aside from the personal organization they found, or any other office they hold, however, most of the public activities of former Governors General fall squarely in the patronage category. While they may have some involvement with the government as Privy Councillors, or hold honourary positions with the military, retired vice-regals will have little involvement with their previous constitutional, honours, head of nation, or international functions. As a result, the patronage duties that are arguably the least essential to the vice-regal role become the primary ‘official’ function of former Governors General.
Controversy surrounding the publicly funded expenses of former Governors General, in turn, are tied to ambiguity that surrounds the patronage function. Most critics have rightly pointed out that the lack of transparency surrounding the expenses of retired Governors General is problematic and will have to change. I’m fairly certain that these expense accounts will soon be reported in detail. Once they are, though, questions will be raised about how much former Governors General should be able to charge for patronage work after they’ve left office. Both Adrienne Clarkson and her critics, for instance, have made this to focus of their responses to the recent controversy. Clarkson points out that she is invited to give hundreds of speeches, sit on boards, write forwards to books, etc., and therefore requires staff and resources to fulfil her continuing public service. Christie Blatchford thinks that just part of being a public figure and “In fact, this is life, period.”
From my perspective, deciding who’s right about these expenses, or how much retired vice-regals should be allowed to charge, will require a discussion about the importance we place on the Governor General’s patronage function overall. If we expect Governors General to be fully engaged with patronage work and to make it a central part of their role, then we should probably be willing to help them do that kind of work after they leave office. If, on the other hand, we think that patronage should be a smaller part of the Governor General’s workload and that they should focus on their primary duties above all, then there’s a strong case for limiting their official expenses in retirement to a narrow set of activities that pertain to their former head of state functions.
In that sense, I’d argue that this summer’s controversy about the Governor General’s schedule, and this fall’s controversy about the expenses of former Governors General, touch on the lack of clarity around patronage duties that developed over time and that are difficult to attach to the essential role of the vice-regal representative.
Jamais deux sans trois, as they say. Here’s a third post on Mikisew, focusing on how it reflects the evolution of the Westminster system in the UK and Canada.
The 17th Century was a critical time in the evolution of the relationship between the Crown and Parliament. We tend to focus on the Civil War, but let’s leave that aside and focus on where the struggle landed: the Bill of Rights 1688.
The Bill of Rights settled a number of issues that lingered after the Civil War and into the Restoration. Among these were parliament’s authority over the Crown’s prerogative and the Crown’s efforts to invalidate statutes.
As well, the Bill of Rights addressed the Crown’s efforts to use the courts to go after parliamentarians and mess with Parliament’s affairs.
So, what do we find in the Bill: the Crown can no longer dispense and suspend laws of Parliament; the Court of the King’s bench can’t prosecute “Matters and Causes cognizable onely in Parlyament and by diverse other Arbitrary and Illegall Courses.”
What else? “That the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.”
What matters for our purposes is that the Crown can’t nix parliamentary laws and the courts can’t be used to muck around in parliamentary debates and procedures.
In the context of Mikisew, the heritage of the Bill of Rights matters because: a) the Crown can’t invalidate laws of Parliament, even if it has duties that will be affected by those laws; b) the courts shouldn’t involve themselves in parliamentary affairs.
Fast forward to the 18th Century. The British Crown conquers French Canada. As a result of military conquest and now a British colony, the Canadas are under the sovereignty of the Crown. We see this with the Royal Proclamation of 1763. This derived from royal authority.
Why does this matter? The Royal Proclamation would enshrine the honour of the Crown and duty to consult First Nations. But it is not a *parliamentary statute*. It is a declaration of royal authority, of Crown power.
The treaties that were later negotiated with First Nations in Canada were also with the Crown, not Parliament.
Why does this matter for Mikisew? From the outset, the honour of the Crown is tied to the royal authority of the Crown as a conquering power with sovereignty over these lands, not the legislative authority of Parliament.
Stated differently, the honour of the Crown belong to the imperial, conquering Crown, not the legislating Parliament.
Fast forward to 1867. The British North America Act states that Canada has a constitution similar in principle to the UK. That alludes to the Bill of Rights, etc. The Act also make a clear distinction between the Crown as the executive power and the Parliament as the legislative power.
This matters because the distinct executive and legislative capacities of the Crown are found in the Act. Similarly the distinction between the Privy Council (Cabinet) and parliamentarians is found here, even though by convention the former is tied to the latter.
Courts in the UK and Canada would increasingly treat the Crown as the executive alone. It’s lazy, it’s wrong, but it’s practical.
Narrowing the Crown to the executive means that when the Crown acts as the sovereign authority, the state, it is largely understood to do so in its executive capacity.
So the Crown acts on the advice of the executive council when declaring war, deploying troops, ratifying treaties, issuing pardons, conducting foreign affairs, and other matters of state, etc.
It even gets to the point where the argument is made that the Crown acts on the advice of the executive council when granting royal assent to legislation.
In Haida, moreover, the SCC ties the duty to consult and honour of the Crown to the government, the executive.
In 1981, furthermore, the English Court of Appeal made clear that we can break the Crown apart into different capacities to specify *which* Crown bears the honour. They determined it was the Crown in right of Canada, not the Crown in right of the UK.
To bring it all together: the SCC is Mikisew ends up adhering to the relationship between the Crown, Parliaments, and courts as exemplified by the Bill of Rights 1688. They stick with the Crown’s sovereignty and duty acting through the executive.
Brown, however, breathes new life into the legislative capacities of the Crown, notably in terms of royal recommendation, assent, and consent. That’s a canny move, since it acknowledges the Crown in Parliament, but also cuts it off from historic notions of duty as executive.
Finally, Mikisew doesn’t weaken the executive’s duty to consult when engaging in governing conduct. And it seems clear to me that the duty would still apply to crafting regulations by the executive. All it does it build a wall around legislation until it becomes law.
The Supreme Court’s judgement in Mikisew sheds more light on the institutions of the Canadian state than we might imagine. Although the case dealt with the Crown’s duty to consult with First Nations, it also provides insights into the separation of powers, parliamentary privilege, and as I discussed yesterday, the Crown’s distinct capacities.
One aspect of the judgement that I found especially interesting was Brown’s opinion on ministers and the legislative process. His discussion draws clear lines between law, constitutional convention, and parliamentary practice that are rarely acknowledged, but that remain significant (see the question of first ministers’ tenure, for instance.)
The Mikisew Cree First Nation argued that ministers were exercising an executive function when developing legislation that affected them. Drawing on ministers’ statutory authority, they noted that ministers and their departments were involved in crafting the legislation that would be presented to Parliament, hence the executive was part of the law-making process. This was a vital point for their case, since as the Court would find, the duty to consult is understood to belong with the Crown in an executive capacity and the separation of powers keeps judicial review away from parliamentary deliberations. Indeed, establishing a role for ministers of the Crown in the legislative process was likely the only way to extend to duty to consult into law-making.
By convention and practice, there is little doubt that the Mikisew Cree First Nation were correct: the executive is deeply involved in the legislative process. In fact, the executive is arguably the primary actor in crafting legislation. Departments and central agencies, purely executive bodies, develop bills that will be presented to Parliament based on direction and policies from Cabinet. Parliamentary procedure recognises the priority of bills from the executive and ministers typically present governments bills owing to the executive office they hold outside of Parliament. Party discipline ensures that government bills will pass the House of Commons if the governing party has a majority. A majority party will also face little resistance from most standing committees. For all these reasons and more, it is difficult to describe parliamentarians, and especially backbenchers, as ‘law-makers’ since they’re effectively secondary actors in the process of crafting legislation. They can scrutinise and recommend changes, but most bills are developed by the executive and get through the Commons in more or less the same shape that they arrived. The Senate may give bills a harder look, but if the government refuses to accept the upper chamber’s amendments, senators will almost always pass them. Simply put, while Parliament legislates, usually does so at the government’s behest, thanks to convention and parliamentary practice.
Brown, however, focused on the legal formalities of the issue. Nothing in statute provides that ministers and their departments are involved in the legislative process (para 112). The Constitution Act, 1867 clearly states that Parliament is the legislative power, not the Queen as the executive power or her Privy Council (ie Cabinet). Strictly speaking, moreover, when ministers present government bills, they do so as parliamentarians, not as executive office-holders. Although they happen to also be ministers, when they are in Parliament, they are acting as parliamentarians (para 113).
Drawing on a strict (some might say American) distinction between the executive and legislature, Brown notes that the “making of “policy choices” is a legislative function, while the implementation and administration of those choices is an executive function” (para 117.) Even though the legislative process in this instance began within the executive from a practical point of view, and purely executive actors such as public servants were evidently involved, it was constitutionally a parliamentary effort from the outset. As set out in paragraphs 120 and 121:
As a matter of applying this Court’s jurisprudence, then, the legislative process begins with a bill’s formative stages, even where the bill is developed by ministers of the Crown. While a minister acts in an executive capacity when exercising statutory powers to advance government policy, that is not what happened here. The named Ministers took a set of policy decisions that eventually led to the drafting of a legislative proposal which was submitted to Cabinet. This ultimately led to the formulation and introduction of the omnibus bills in the House of Commons. All of the impugned actions form part of the legislative process of introducing bills in Parliament and were taken by the Ministers acting in a legislative capacity.
Moreover, the impugned actions in this case did not become “executive” as opposed to “legislative” simply because they were carried out by, or with the assistance of, public servants. Public servants making policy recommendations prior to the formulation and introduction of a bill are not “executing” existing legislative policy or direction. Their actions, rather, are directed to informing potential changes to legislative policy and are squarely legislative in nature.
In this formal understanding, therefore, the Constitution Act, 1867 provides strict boundaries between executive and legislative activities, even though these lines are crossed as a matter of course owing to the conventions of responsible government.
Brown’s analysis offers a spirited defence of the formal constitution and of the importance of not getting caught in the realities of responsible government when discussing the roles and powers of the Crown and Parliament. In particular, it should encourage us to be careful when engaging in tropish discussions of the ‘fusion’ of the executive and legislature in the Westminster tradition.
Finally, Brown’s opinion belongs to what I see as the ‘Revenge of the 1867 Constitution’ in Canada. After 1982, the study of constitutional law became focused on the new Constitution Act, 1982, which includes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the amending formula. While students of federalism still paid attention to the division of powers in the 1867 act, the historic relationship between the Crown and Parliament, and the importance of delineating between the executive and legislative powers, garnered less attention. A slew of recent cases have brought the Constitution Act, 1867 back to the fore and reminded us that there’s a lot more to the constitution than the Charter. Mikisew reinforces this point, even when section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 is at issue.
The Supreme Court of Canada touched on one of my favourite topics today: the various capacities of the Crown. Brown J., in particular, offered a strong defence and explanation of the Crown’s distinct capacities and how the courts must differentiate them.
The Crown serves many functions in the Westminster system. The Crown serves as the concept of the state. It can mean the Sovereign or the monarch. The Crown can also refer to the executive generally and sometimes Cabinet. In other cases, the Crown can refer to one part of Parliament. And the Crown has a role in the courts, too. Many of these functions seem to overlap and appreciating their differences can be especially difficult because the Crown is personified by a single person, the Queen. But understanding how they are differ is vital to grasping how Westminster states operate.
Take the Crown as the state. Since the both the United Kingdom and Canada have Queen Elizabeth II as their Sovereign, we might conclude that they are under the same Crown and are part of the same state. The Crown’s distinct capacities avoids this confusion. The Queen has many different capacities. One of those capacities is as the Queen of the United Kingdom. Another is as the Queen of Canada. These are distinct capacities. The Crown as the state mirrors these capacities as well. Thus, we have the Crown of the United Kingdom as the concept of the British state and the Crown of Canada as the concept of the Canadian state.
Within Canada, the Crown has distinct capacities as the personification of the federal government and the provincial governments. The Crown also has distinct capacities with respect to the organs of the state. The Crown as the executive power acts in a governing capacity. The Crown-in-Parliament is the Crown acting in a legislative capacity. And the Crown in the courts is the Crown acting in a judicial capacity.
One of the questions before the SCC in Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada was whether the duty to consult First Nations under the honour of the Crown applies to the Crown writ large or to the Crown in a specific capacity. A majority of the court found that the duty to consult First Nations is attached to the Crown in an executive capacity, rather than the Crown in a legislative capacity as part of Parliament. The honour of the Crown toward First Nations belongs to the Crown as the executive power, not the Crown-in-Parliament. The majority further found that the separation of powers and parliamentary sovereignty meant that the courts should not review the legislative process to ensure that the honour of the Crown had been respected. The duty to consult and the honour of the Crown are tied to executive actions and actors, not legislative ones.
Brown J. adopted a particularly strong view of these distinctions in his opinion. He notes, for instance, that the duty to consult binds ministers of the Crown in their executive capacity. It does not bind them in their legislative capacity:
“While Cabinet ministers are members of the executive, they participate in this process –for example by presenting a government bill– not in an executive capacity, but in a legislative capacity.” (113)
Brown further clarifies that, under the separation of powers and parliamentary privilege, the constitutional duty to consult First Nations must be “understood as excluding the parliamentary (and, indeed judicial) functions of the Canadian state” (128). This, in turn, implies that the honour of the Crown does not pertain to the Crown’s legislative functions and capacities as one part of Parliament, alongside the Senate and House of Commons. When the Crown acts in a legislative capacity, granting assent or consent to legislation, and recommending bills, the Crown is not involved in conduct that is bound by the duty to consult:
“This description of the various and distinct aspect of Crown authority (and also, it follows, Crown conduct) affirms that the exercise of Crown authority in enacting legislation (“assenting, refusing to assent to, or reserving legislative or parliamentary bills”) is legislative. It is not an instance of ” Crown conduct” –that is, executive conduct– which can trigger the duty to consult.” (133)
One take-away from today’s ruling is the importance of being specific about which capacities are in play when discussing institutions and actors who have more than one. An individual may be both an MP and a minister, but they can fulfill distinct functions and exercise unique powers in their separate capacities. Similarly, the Crown as the executive power is not the same thing as the Crown-in-Parliament. While we often speak of the ‘fusion’ of the executive and legislature in the Westminster system, that link is primarily one based on constitutional convention and parliamentary practices, rather than law.
Finally, if we follow Brown’s reasoning, we may have an answer to a lingering question about the Crown in Canada: does the Crown act on the advice of ministers or the houses of Parliament when granting royal assent? If we focus solely on the conventions of responsible government as they pertain to the executive, we might argue that ministers could advise the Crown to withhold assent, effective giving ministers a veto over legislation. If, as Brown argues, however, the Crown grants royal assent in a legislative capacity, then assent it granted on the advice of the house of Parliament, meaning that there is no ministerial veto in Canada.
(Ok, one last thought: Maitland was wrong.)
The recent election in New Brunswick highlighted a rare and poorly understood aspect of government formation in Canada: a first minister (FM) can remain in office and test the confidence of the legislature first, regardless of the election results.
New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant has chosen to remain in office, despite the fact that the Liberals were elected with 21 seats, compared with 22 seats for the Progressive Conservatives. Gallant is hoping to secure an agreement with either the Green Party or People’s Alliance, each of which won three seats, in order to secure the confidence of the legislature and stay in power. In addition to reminding us that governments are formed and not elected in Canada, Gallant’s decision provides us a new precedent of a FM bucking the Canadian tendency to resign if their party does not carry most ridings.
Why is Gallant able to remain FM? A common explanation is that this is a constitutional convention, an unwritten political rule that guides how powers are exercised and decisions made in Westminster systems. While this explanation is popular, it’s not quite right. Although there are constitutional conventions at play in a FM’s ability to test confidence first, it isn’t a convention that they can. Rather, the FM can test confidence first because of the office they hold and the rules that govern how they hold that office.
How do we identify constitutional conventions? In Canada, the Supreme Court has endorsed the ‘Jennings test’. The test tells us that rules must meet three conditions to count as constitutional conventions. First, there must be precedents; second, political actors must believe that there is a binding rule; and, third, there must be a reason for the rule.
The ability of a FM to test confidence first only meets one of these conditions: there are precedents. Perhaps the best known of these is William Lyon Mackenzie King’s decision to remain Prime Minister following the 1925 federal election, where his Liberal party won 100 seats compared with the 115 seats won by the Conservatives.
What about the second condition? There’s no longer a general agreement on the fairness or legitimacy of a FM testing the legislature first. In fact, the leader of the party that wins the most seats usually disagrees with this notion quite viscerally. Equally important, it’s unclear how we can say that this is a binding rule. The FM isn’t bound to test confidence first; it’s their choice. The other members of the legislature are bound to accept it, but those from other parties are prone to questioning the decision. This further suggests that that there isn’t a convention at play here, but something else.
Turning to the third condition, it is difficult to see what rationale would underpin a convention here. The democratic logic of having the FM test confidence first, regardless of the election results, is hard to discern. Proponents of direct democracy want to link the selection of the FM to the voter’s choice (see, for instance, those who declare that elections are actually about who the voters want as FM), while advocates of parliamentary democracy would probably want the legislature to vote for the FM, as happens in Scotland. In addition, other Westminster-inspired states have done away with the FM’s right to stay on, since it seems to run contrary to democratic propriety.
Stability of government might be another rationale, but this doesn’t hold either. When a FM stays on, and their ability to secure confidence is unclear, the government is constrained by caretaker conventions that weigh against non-routine decisions by ministers. Instead of bringing stability to government, allowing the FM to stay on before to test confidence, sometimes for months before the legislature sits, fosters uncertainty. Simply put, there is no reason for this rule, at least not one that that would meet the standards of a constitutional convention.
So, if it isn’t a convention that the FM gets to test confidence first, then what is it? The answer lies in the nature of responsible government in Westminster constitutional monarchies.
The office of First Minister is bestowed by the Crown. It’s legally independent of the legislature and the electoral process. The first principle of responsible government is that ministers advise and take responsibility for the Crown and all affairs of government. Since the 18th Century, this principle has evolved such that a FM advises the Crown and takes responsibility for all acts of the Crown and all affairs of government. Consequently, the appointment of a FM cannot be directly tied to electoral outcomes or the make-up of the legislature at a given time. The Crown needs to ensure that there’s a FM, even during elections, and during the period between election day and when the legislature is recalled. Over time, the necessity of always having a FM has developed to ensure that FMs remain in office until they resign or are dismissed.
Resignations are fairly common. FMs often indicate their intent to resign if their party fails to win the most seats on election night or if their opponents win a majority of seats. FMs can also resign if they lose a confidence vote, though they’ll usually do so after a request to dissolve the legislature is refused by the Crown. The dismissal of a FM, by contrast, is very rare –so rare that it hasn’t happened in some time in Canada. Dismissal is effectively an emergency power. The Crown should only exercise it if a FM is refusing to recall the legislature, acting in an unconstitutional manner, under criminal investigation, or no longer has the mental capacities to serve. In most normal circumstances, the FM will remain FM until they resign, usually following an election that has been unfavourable to their party, after the Crown has refused their request for dissolution, if they have lost a confidence vote, or if they are making way for a new leader from their party.
Accordingly, FMs can test confidence first because the Crown must have a FM at all times and the Crown will not dismiss the FM unless they are involved in unconstitutional or criminal activity. Put differently, the FM can test confidence first because they remain in office until they resign or are dismissed. Convention dictates that they resign if they lose a confidence vote and cannot secure a dissolution from the Crown. But they are not required to resign before that confidence vote is held, and the Crown will not dismiss them if they are planning to recall the legislature to test confidence. In extreme circumstances, the Crown could dismiss a FM who is refusing to recall the legislature to avoid a confidence vote. But in nearly all cases, the Crown should allow the legislature to sit and express itself before acting, especially if the issue is the dismissal of a FM who might not hold confidence and the appointment of an alternative FM who might not hold confidence, either. Whenever possible, the Crown should allow the legislature to express itself first.
The ability of an FM to test confidence first, therefore, is a function of the office they legally hold by virtue of the Crown’s appointment and of the conventions that surround the duty of the Crown to have a first minister, and the grounds for the resignation or dismissal of a first minister. Constitutional convention is involved here, but it isn’t a convention that says that the FM gets to test confidence first. Rather, what’s at play is that the FM is FM until they resign or are dismissed, as per constitutional convention.
In conclusion, it’s worth asking why this privilege of Canadian FMs seems so strange. Basically, it strikes us as odd because it reflects the monarchical origins of our system of government, rather than our contemporary democratic mores.
Talk of government ‘mandates’ is damaging our politics and undermining our institutions. The concept doesn’t hold up in our system of government and it’s worsening our debates and disagreements. We should stop talking about how elections give governments mandates or that governments should hold elections to secure new mandates.
Politicians and commentators use mandates to mean the following: if a political party has a policy proposal in their electoral platform, and they get elected with a majority of seats, then then voters have endorsed this policy proposal. Put simply, the government has a ‘mandate’ from voters to pursue that policy. Conversely, if a government pursues a policy that wasn’t part of their electoral platform, then we can say they lack a popular mandate to enact it, particularly if the initiative is controversial. We can also use mandate to mean the underlying democratic legitimacy of a government. For example, if a government has been in power for a while and it needs to enact new policies or engage in difficult negotiations with provinces, other states, or some other powerful actor, then we can speak of the government seeking a new mandate from voters to do so.
What are the problems with this concept? Let’s start with our electoral system and constitutional structure.
Governments aren’t elected in Canada. They are appointed. The Crown appoints a first minister to lead a government based on their ability to hold the confidence of the elected house of the legislature. When a first minister’s party has a majority of seats in the elected house, they’re pretty much guaranteed to hold its confidence. When they hold a minority of seats, they need to negotiate with another party to hold confidence. In either situation, though, government formation and duration revolves around the first minister and the elected house. Voters don’t directly elect their governments, let alone their first ministers. They elect members of their legislature who then provide or withdraw confidence in a government.
Canadians elect members of the legislature by plurality, rather than majority. This means that the person elected to sit in the legislature needs the most votes of all the candidates, not a majority of votes. As a result, members are often elected with less than 50% of the votes in an election. Members routinely represent ridings where more than 50% of those who voted didn’t vote for them or their party’s platform. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Many members do get more than 50% of the votes in their riding. But they have no more standing or status than members who got less than 50%.
Parties, moreover, often win a majority of seats in the legislature with less than 50% of the popular vote. Roughly speaking, parties can win a majority of seats in the federal Parliament with somewhere above 37% of the popular vote. This doesn’t affect the formal power they’ll hold in government. A majority is a majority, regardless of what percentage of people voted for individual governing party members at the riding level or as a percentage of the aggregated popular vote. The key point here is that the composition of the legislature, and hence the government’s ability to hold confidence, doesn’t depend on securing the support of a majority of voters, only a plurality of voters in each riding, in a majority of ridings.
What does this tell us about mandates? Well, it tells us that majority governments can be formed without the support of a majority of voters in each riding. We can and often do have majority governments where a majority of voters have not endorsed their platform or their members. In what sense, then, can we speak of these governments having a mandate? Only in the sense of having a mandate from a plurality of voters, not a majority of them. This then raises the question: what good is the idea of a plural mandate if it necessarily implies that the mandate was not supported, and in fact rejected, by the majority? Not much, in my view.
Does this mean our governments our illegitimate? No. It simply means that it doesn’t make much sense to speak about popular mandates under an electoral system that relies on pluralities and on governments that are appointed based on their ability to hold the confidence of the legislature. Rather than speaking about mandates, we should speak about what actually matters in terms of the government’s authority: the number of seats it has in the legislature. Removing popular mandates from the discussion avoids the often erroneous conflation of a majority of seats and a majority of votes, and it focuses our attention on the tangible source of a government’s democratic legitimacy, the support of the legislature. It restores the elected house of the legislature to its proper place as our principle democratic forum and source of governing legitimacy.
Equally important, it would prevent our governments from equating their majority standing in the legislature with a majority of support from voters that that they may not actually have. Similarly, it would prevent opposition parties from pointing to the government’s lack of a majority in the popular vote as some kind of argument against the legitimacy of a ministry that holds the confidence of the elected house. In both cases, it would cool bad, distorting rhetoric.
The second problem with mandate-talk is the assumption is makes about voters.
Mandate-talk assumes that people vote rationally, coherently, and with perfect information. Specifically, it assumes that voters are aware of all the proposals in all party platforms, that in voting for one party over another the voter is endorsing all of the chosen party’s proposals, and that the absence or inclusion of a particular proposal could have a demonstrable effect on an electoral outcome.
Unfortunately, the literature doesn’t support the idea of the rational, coherent, and perfectly informed voter. People’s voting choices are driven by myriad factors, some of which aren’t rational or thought out. Some of these factors aren’t even conscious! In some cases, voters are voting against one party, rather than for another vote. They may be voting because they like only one proposal being offered by a party. They might be loyalists who will vote for their preferred party no matter what they propose in their platform. Who knows. In fact, that’s the key point: we simply don’t know why every voter voted the way they did. Nor can we say with confidence that the result would have been different if we added or subtracted a proprosal from a platform after the fact.
The problems for mandate-talk should be evident. We don’t know if voters knew about all the proposals in a party’s platform, whether they endorsed all of them or some of them, whether they voted for the party in spite of them, or whether they still support them. Mandate-talk assumes that we can glean information about voters and their intentions that are incredibly difficult to accurately capture. When we speak about the relationship between party platforms, voting behaviour, and mandates, we’re engaging in gross simplifications in order to tell a story. It may be a good story. It may be a compelling story. It may even be a useful story. But it’s still storytelling.
Why does all this matter? It matters because mandate-talk tries to draw a direct connection between voters and governments at the expense of legislatures that have already been weakened by party discipline and an inability of caucuses to select their own party leaders. It matters because it further distorts our understanding of how our system of government works, leaving us vulnerable to manipulative rhetoric and dishonest characterizations. It matters because the logic of mandates can’t stand up to simple scrutiny. It matters because it’s not necessary.
Unable to focus on writing owing to Ottawa’s heat wave, I spent a couple of hours debating a British journalist about whether or not the Queen is taxpayer funded in the UK. (Ok, I procrastinated.)
His argument was essentially that the Queen’s annual Sovereign Grant is paid by the Treasury, therefore the Queen is taxpayer funded. Since the Treasury uses taxes to pay for the expenses of the British state, it follows that Queen is being funded by taxpayers because she receives an annual sum of money from the Treasury.
My counterargument is that the Queen is given the Sovereign Grant in exchange for surrendering to the Treasury the profits of the Crown Estate, property owned by the Queen in her legal capacity but managed by independent trustees. This arrangement dates back to 1760, when the money the monarch accrued from Crown lands were insufficient to fulfil the Sovereign’s government responsibilities. Parliament agreed to fund the monarch through an annual Civil List payment in exchange for the revenue generated by certain Crown lands. Since that time, the British government has grown significantly, and the Sovereign is no longer directly involved in governing. Taxes and other revenue collected by the state now pay for most of the expenditures of the British state. In the mid-twentieth century, the Crown lands whose profits had been surrendered in exchange for the Civil List were reconstituted as the Crown Estate to “avoid confusion between Government property and Crown land”. Finally, in 2011, the Civil List was abandoned in favour of the Sovereign Grant, which provides the monarch with an annual disbursement from the Treasury indexed at a certain percentage of the profits the Crown Estate provides the Treasury per year. The purpose of the Sovereign Grant is to pay for expenditures related to the Queen’s remaining official duties as head of state. In 2011, the Sovereign Grant was indexed at 15% of the Crown Estate’s profits and in 2017-2018 it is indexed at 25%.
To my mind, the relationship between the Crown Estate and Sovereign Grant is reciprocal. The Queen is paid a portion of the Crown Estate profits to fulfil her duties, while the Treasury gets to keep the rest. Having the Crown Estate profits go to the Treasury and having the Sovereign Grant disbursed by the Treasury, moreover, ensures that Parliament can scrutinize both the management of the Crown Estate and the disbursement of the Sovereign Grant more effectively.
For the British journalist and those who agree with him, however, this is all a mirage. The Crown Estate has essentially been absorbed by the British state and it belongs to the monarch in name only. Indeed, saying that the Queen owns the Crown Estate in a legal capacity simply means that the property is now publicly owned, since the Queen’s legal capacity is the concept of the state in the United Kingdom. As a result, the Crown Estate’s profits are public funds, like taxes the British government collects from its citizens, and the Sovereign Grant is therefore taxpayer money that Parliament has told the Treasury to give the Queen. The fact that the money comes from the Treasury and not from the Crown Estate directly proves that the Queen is taxpayer funded, regardless of what historical arrangements surround the Estate and Grant.
In the end, this is a conceptual debate. I think the history and nature of the arrangement matter; it isn’t accidental that the Estate and Grant are almost always presented as intimately linked. The Treasury serves to make the transfer of funds more transparent, open to parliamentary scrutiny, and it simplifies the government’s ability to keep most of the Estate’s profits while paying the Queen the percentage required in a given year. My interlocutors believe that the money found in the Treasury’s consolidated fund comes from the taxpayer, broadly defined.
To help make my case, I’ll conclude by offering an analogy. The Sovereign Grant is like an annuity you can buy from an insurance company. The way an annuity works is as follows: you pay an insurance company a lump sum in exchange for an annual pension. The insurance company bets that it can make more money off interest and people dying before the total of the lump sum is paid out, and you get the security of having an annual pension if you live past what your lump sum would have provided in your dying years. The thing with annuities, though, is that you can’t get your lump sum back after you pay it. Nor it is in a protected account. The insurance company uses the money to do whatever it needs to do in a given year, paying out claims, etc. Similarly, the money you get can come from whatever other sources of revenue the insurance company has, such as premiums paid by other clients. But it doesn’t matter, since the insurance company has agreed to pay you a set amount.
The question then is this: who pays for your annuity? We know it’s the insurance company. But when we ask where the money comes from, we can either say from the lump sum we paid the company or from the premiums that the company collects from other clients. Put differently, did your lump sum buy you your annuity or are you living off the premiums paid for by other clients? I’d say your annuity comes from your lump sum agreement.
In the case of the Sovereign Grant, the agreement to surrender the profits of the Crown Estate is like an annual lump sum paid by the Queen for a yearly annuity. She agrees to give the profits in exchange for a guarantee that she receives an annual disbursement to cover her official expenses. The Treasury is like the insurance company in the sense that it places the Estate profits in a consolidated fund and uses them as needed. Taxes paid by citizens are like the premiums the company’s other clients pay. The one big difference here is that the company, the Treasury, always comes out on top, since the annuity is only a percentage of the annual lump sum. But what happens if the Treasury spends more than it takes in? Does that mean that the Treasury’s other clients, the taxpayer, are on the hook for the Queen’s Grant? Only if you also think that an insurance company’s other clients are paying for your annuity with their premiums.
Philippe Lagassé 