Since the U.S, unlike Canada, is blessed with a system of checks and balances, thus ensuring that no president, no matter how popular he might be, can impose his agenda on the nation without the consent of both Houses of Congress. Our neighbors would really have something to shout about if they had to contend with a Canadian style government where there is nothing to stop a prime minister, when he heads a majority government, from ramming through whatever bill he pleases.
For an American president to wield this kind of power, he would have to be able to order every member of his party in both the Senate and the House to vote his way. Take for instance, the phony three-way face-off between Ottawa. Queen’s Park and Toronto City-Hall over the funding, or should that be the de-funding, of the TTC. This is a classic example of the nonsense that passes for leadership in our system of government. If our MPs had independent votes and had to answer to their constituents, as their U.S. counterparts must do, we’d have a lot less of this grandstanding.
The real danger in all this buck-passing by our politicians is the serious flaw in our political system that permits prime ministers and premiers to behave like banana-republic dictators. In fact, Canadians are so fed up with smarmy politicians talking out of both sides of their mouths, in both English and French yet, that millions of us don’t bother to vote at all. Canada is in dire need of politicians who believe in government of, for and by the people, but we won’t get it so long as we allow our leaders to wield dictatorial powers. And we certainly won’t get good government from politicians who regard governance as a business.
If running the country was that simple, we could abolish elections altogether, and call on the top business and bank CEOs to take over. And looking at the current economic meltdown they‘ve caused, it’s easy to see the mess that would leave us in. It's said that power tends to corrupt, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, just take a look at a few of the awesome powers that a Canadian prime minister wields: The right to appoint provincial lieutenant governors, Governors General, ambassadors and supreme court judges.
The right to call an election whenever he finds the polls are favorable. The right to ram through any bill, no matter how unpopular it may be. The good news is the growing public realization that some form of U.S, style checks and balances is required if we are to curb the powers of our political leaders. Maybe we should also require politicians to swear a kind of Hippocratic oath, especially the part about doing no harm. For a few years Canada was known far-and-wide as a country that worked.
Now, we have a demoralized civil service, turmoil in our schools and hospitals, crumbling infrastructures and a growing number of homeless people. These problems are mainly the fault, directly or indirectly, of incompetent politicians. We should quit gloating over how complicated and expensive the U.S. system of governance is, and get to work on adapting some of its checks-and-balances to our own antiquated system. We could start by cutting back on the number of politicians we allow to represent us. (If the U.S. had the same number of federal politicians per capita that we do, they’d be saddled with over 1,000 senators and more than 4,000 congressional representatives).
We should either abolish the Senate or elect its members. We should replace our first-past-the-post system to proportional representation. Set a fixed term of office for prime ministers and allow more free votes by ordinary MPs. A few years ago, the New Brunswick Liberals, under Premier Frank McKenna, captured all the seats in the provincial election, thereby allowing them to govern without any opposition at all.
If that political nightmare ever occurs in Ottawa (and it’s bound to happen, sooner or later) before we reform our political system, we’re all going to find out what it’s like to be stranded in that putrid stream without any means of propulsion.
William Bedford——
Bio and Archives
CFP “Poet in Residence” William Bedford was born in Dublin, Ireland, but has lived in Toronto for most of his life. His poems and articles have been published in many Canadian journals and in some American publications.
