robertj@garfield.UUCP (Robert Janes) (04/26/85)
In follow up to Donald Actons comments on Divine Right of Kings Donald Acton makes several interesting comments about M. Trudeau exercising the Divine Right of Kings in his actions as Prime Minister. While I am not quite in agreement with Mr.Acton as seeing this as a flaw of M. Trudeau I do feel that it us a flaw of our Parliament as we have created it. The parliament we have today is supposedly descended from that of Great Britian. The Parliament of Great Britian and Canada ( as we well know ) is made up of three co-equal units: The two Houses of Parliament (yes they really are equal in power) and the Reigning Monarch. The first two bodies evolved as the Crown found it increasingly difficult to force its will upon unwilling barons and bishops and later when these two bodies found it difficult to enforce their will upon the growing middle class, merchants and guildsmen. Meanwhile, parallel to the growth of the Parliament which held supreme law making power grew the executive embodied in the Privy Council and much later in the Cabinet and the Prime Ministers. The important point about this whole dissertation is that the two (the executive and the Parliament) historically were two distinct bodies often in conflict with each other. It wasn't until the mid 1700's that it became firmly established that the head of the executive should also be members of Parliament, later it also became practice that this person should always lead the largest faction in the House of Commons. It wasn't until the 1920's that it was firmly established that the PM should be a member of the Commons and not the Lords or the Senate. The effects of this in Canada were taken to their logical extreme. Canada traditionally has elected majority governments and the Canadaian people have also seemed preffered to elect members who wil follow their party leadership come hell or high water. This has had two major results: 1) It has (as Trudeau said) reduced MPs to nobodies. Essentially all they are is Cabinet material at best, voting machines at worst. Members who run against this can expect to suffer, for example see Yurko for the PC's and W. Allmand for the Liberals. 2) If we consider the PM as the true succesor to the Plantagenant, Tudor and Stuart Kings (which he is) we can see that the 700 year old battle between the Crown and the Houses of Parliament has been decisively settled, in favour of the Crown. Thus to my mind we have managed to get the worst of both the American and British systems of government. Here in Canada we have an extremely strong and centralized executive which rules by Order in Council (fancy phrase for "by decree.." ) much the same as in the U.S. yet without the countervailing power of an independent Congress as exists in the U.S. (this is not an endorsement of the U.S. system). We also get the problems of the Rights of the Crown from Great Britian without having the intelligent and free thinking members which are often attracted to the British Commons. Who wants to be an MP for long when all they're really expected to do is vote the way the Party Whip tells them to. Further- more there is no way for us to hold an individual member responsible for his actions without also punishing the party or vice-versa. Thus Trudeau in a sense did rule by divine right of Kings 20th century style that is. There is nothing in our system of government which forces the Cabinent to be responsive to Parliament nor to the thoughts of individual MP's, indeed the system works almost in the opposite fashion forcing members to parrot the party line, reducing the role of Opposition to calling down government policy rather than playing a positive role. This is most obviously manifested in the way the House of Commons now works. It becomes packed at the opening of each sitting when Question Period occurs and the chance for high profile embarrassement for the government or opposition is maximal and empties for the debates when members present their ideas (or lack thereof). Who really cares when it's all just a game since everyone knows how the vote is going to go anyways. The PM ( KING ) has decided it all..... There are solutions (partial mind you ) but I'll express my views on possible solutions later....... Robert Janes Memorial University