Electoral Reform (Senate, Commons, & Gov Gen)

[a_majoor]

Some ideas refuse to die (or perhaps more aptly, rise from the grave like Richard III to taunt and fascinate all over again). This could also be in the Election 2015 thread or Liberal Leadership thread, but I can assume that after the 2015 election there will STILL be people in the Progressive ranks trying to float this proposal:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/07/kelly-mcparland-liberal-electoral-plan-shows-an-ongoing-belief-in-their-right-to-rule/

Kelly McParland: Liberal electoral plan shows an ongoing belief in their right to rule

Kelly McParland | Feb 7, 2013 9:47 AM ET
More from Kelly McParland | @KellyMcParland

I received an e-mail this morning from Joyce Murray, one of the candidates for the Liberal Party leadership. (If I hadn’t told you who she was, would you have known?)

I’ve been getting a lot of emails from Liberal candidates, who seem to consider me a potential supporter. Bob Rae, Justin Trudeau, Sarah Coyne… Usually they’re looking for money, but Ms. Murray was, in fact, looking for support.

‘Hands off Justin’ becomes mantra of Liberal leadership race

So it’s not a coronation of Justin Trudeau. It’s a coffee klatch, or a particularly slow episode of Dr. Phil, during which the participants earnestly reaffirm the many points on which they more or less agree, such as that trade is good, and ever-so-gently nibble away at the very few areas where they ostensibly disagree, such as about who should lead the Liberal party. As political theatre, it is beyond dull. It is a contest in name only.

Sadly, we should not expect the “race” to grow any livelier between now and convention time in April, unless Trudeau himself blurts out something impolitic, or deliberately attacks party orthodoxy. Because the rest of the field – all eight, including Martha Hall Findlay, Marc Garneau, Martin Cauchon, George Takach, Joyce Murray, Deborah Coyne, David Bertschi and Karen McCrimmon – appear to have already given up.
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“Want to defeat Stephen Harper?” begins the message.


It’s an exciting time to be a Liberal Member or Supporter! We are rebuilding our party to be the party Canadians look to for leadership in 2015. And you’ve been clear: inspiring Canadians to vote again is a priority for our party.

Renewing democracy and making our political system fair and representative is a goal I share. But it simply won’t happen as long as Stephen Harper remains Prime Minister. I am the only leadership candidate with a plan to defeat Stephen Harper and use the principle of proportional representation to reboot our broken electoral system.

In 2011 we lost in 57 ridings where Conservatives won with less than 50% of the vote. I propose that in those ridings, we cooperate with other parties to run a single progressive candidate who can take the seat from Stephen Harper. Let’s give local riding associations the power to cooperate with other parties and figure out how, riding by riding, we can defeat the Conservatives.
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What’s novel about this is that it represents an actual policy position, of which the Liberal race has been disappointingly short. Unfortunately, this idea of ganging up with the “other parties” (ie the NDP, the Greens having one lousy seat), strikes me as wholly ridiculous.

The idea is to conspire with other “progressives” to put forward a single candidate in each riding, choosing the nominee most capable of defeating the Conservative candidate. Then, once in power (which seems to be taken for granted), they change the electoral system to representation-by-population and hold another election, which will produce a much better result because small parties will have more chance of winning seats. Why that’s good, given the chaos of other rep-by-pop countries like Iceland, Greece or Ireland, is not explained. It’s just presumed to be better, because it’s presumed Stephen Harper will lose, and that seems to be the sole thought Liberals can carry in their minds at the moment.

So why is this a nonsensical idea?

1. It assumes Canadians would elect a government with one task and one task only – to change the system and hold another election. Everything else governments do (and some of it is actually important) would just hold fire while they vote through some new system of choosing MPs. There are many variations on rep-by-pop, some highly convoluted. Which would they choose? Are we supposed to just assume they’ll get it right? Or are we supposed to have a referendum on the result, which would mean two general elections and a referendum, all while Canada drifts along aimlessly. And what happens if the referendum is defeated – more talks, a new proposal, and another referendum? Please, couldn’t we just have another constitutional crisis instead?

2. Murray says that whatever resulted from the first election wouldn’t be a coalition or a merger. “We would still nominate a Liberal in every riding.” So what is it, a co-operative? What happens if they don’t co-operate so well: there is a broad range of political leanings within both parties: is the pro-choice left-wing NDP candidate going to happily stand aside if indications are the anti-abortion Liberal is a better bet? Will federalist Liberals give way to NDP members who support Thomas Mulcair’s plan to axe the Clarity Act?  Who gets to run the economy, the proto-socialists in the co-operative or the free-enterprise Liberals? And who gets to be prime minister: if it’s the party with the most members, there will be a distinct disincentive for either party to withdraw in favour of the other. Can you even have a prime minister if it’s not either a merger or a coalition, but just a co-operative?

3. It presumes everyone will keep their word and happily disband once the new system is installed. But let’s just say Prime Minister Mulcair decides he kind of likes being the boss, and his troops in the co-operative decline to jettison their first ever chance to run the country. Maybe, instead, whichever party gets a majority within the co-operative decides to just prolong the experiment a little longer, say a year or two, while they deal with all the pressing problems that have accumulated while the country was deciding how to elect its governments.  In doing so they can save the taxpayers from yet another costly election. (Where, by the way, are the parties getting the money to fight all these elections?)  To dismiss this possibility you have to believe ambition is absent from politics, and politicians never break their word.

4. It assumes a government elected by proportional representation would be better, just because it more closely represents the national voting breakdown. For democratic purists, maybe. But would it be more effective, and better for Canada? There is no particular reason to believe so: Canadians elected a majority government in 2011 to a large degree because they were tired of the endless bickering, infighting and ineffectiveness of the minorities that preceded it. If voters were so enthralled of a weakened government, minorities would be the rule. Europe is fat with governments elected by variations on rep by pop – anyone want to trade places with Italy, which has a system designed to encourage coalitions? Maybe we could have our very own Silvio Berlusconi.

There’s not much danger of any of this happening. There is no chance of Ms. Murray becoming Liberal leader, unless the other candidates all go down in a plane crash, and there is zero chance Canadians would go for a co-operative non-government pledged to spending a year or two holding endless consultations, referenda and elections. It hardly needs pointing out that the Liberals held majority governments for most of the 65 years between 1935 and 2000 without discovering the system was “broken” and other parties needed a better shot at winning seats.

If anything, Ms. Murray’s proposal is evidence of the continuing belief among some party members that Liberals are Canada, and that the only legitimate governments are Liberal governments.  Until they get over that, the odds on them forming another government may remain slim.

National Post

 

[Altair]

And Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight.com (whose poll aggregations I often use when we discuss elections) talks about one of my favourite subjects, Senate Reform, which may not quite be a dead a  :deadhorse: as I thought, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/wildrose-or-pq-senators-welcome-to-an-elected-red-chamber/article8127059/

Bill C-7 does not go nearly as far as I would wish but it is a step in the right direction. I am not worried about the potential chaos ~ professional politicians have ways of working through and around chaos.

In all of the chaos would Canada get into lower house, upper house deathmatches like we see in the US? Granted, all of the senators would be more loyal to the provinces and not exactly loyal to their federal counterparts (Alberta PCs, Quebec Liberals) but what's to stop the senators from stopping legislation that all provinces dislike. Federal healthcare funding as a recent example.

Having the Senate function as more than a highly paid group of party hacks who rubber stamp everything would be nice, but if senators start to truly see themselves as equals to the HoC what's to stop them from causing gridlock like in the US?

 

[dapaterson]

Having the Senate function as more than a highly paid group of party hacks who rubber stamp everything would be nice, but if senators start to truly see themselves as equals to the HoC what's to stop them from causing gridlock like in the US?

Gridlock can be a feature, not a bug.  Making it more difficult for government to interfere is a good thing.

 

[Edward Campbell]

By custom, which is very, very powerful in Constitutional terms, the Senate may neither initiate nor defeat "money" bills. They can delay and recommend changes but, in the Constitutional end, the will of the House of Commons must prevail on money bills. Other bills can be defeated but if the government of the day is careful in defining confidence issues that need not be a great bother.

 

[Altair]

Are omnibus bills "money" bills? Or can they be I guess is a better question.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The recent omnibus bills have all been "budget implementation" bills so they are, indeed, money bills.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Jeffrey Simpson wrote a typically whiney piece in the Globe and Mail telling us why we don't want, don't need and cannot have an elected Senate and now Andrew Coyne responds in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/13/andrew-coyne-rash-of-bad-behaviour-in-the-senate-does-not-make-the-case-for-reform-democracy-does/

Rash of bad behaviour in the Senate does not make the case for reform. Democracy does

Andrew Coyne

Feb 13, 2013

If we did not elect members of Parliament, and it were proposed that we should, I can safely predict the reaction. “Not that old chestnut! You’d never get good people to go into politics if you did that. I mean, they have elected legislatures in the States, and where has that got them? It’s a total circus. Anyway, it can’t be done. You’d have to amend the constitution…”

Somehow I don’t think we would find these arguments compelling. Yet they are considered the height of wisdom when the subject is reforming the Senate. Can’t be done; shouldn’t be done. You’d never get good people to go into — er, hold on. We’re not exactly getting the pick of the litter now, are we?

To be sure, the current rash of expense-account fiddling, constitutional breaches and generally dodgy behaviour on the part of certain Senators — with the odd criminal charge for good luck — does not, by itself, make the case for reform. But neither does it make the case for the status quo. If the argument for appointing senators is that it yields a better quality of upper house, it is belied by 146 years of practical experience.

In any event, even if prime ministers from Macdonald on down had appointed only saints and Nobel Prize winners, and not the parade of party fundraisers, strategists and assorted hangers-on with which the House of Ill Repute is actually populated, they would still have no more democratic right to make our laws than a class of fifth-graders.

I grant that, of the two houses, the Senate is the one least urgently in need of overhaul. The Commons is the next thing to an appointed body — try running for election without the leader’s blessing — and it is the one that’s supposed to exercise real power. But even if the Senate is more an embarrassment than a nuisance, that does not mean we should tolerate it a day longer than we have to.

That we have in fact tolerated it for 146 years is more than an indictment of our cynical, complacent political culture: it played no small part in creating it. A nation that can abide being governed by a patronage house will learn to abide much else. To then protest that, however tawdry and humiliating it is to be ruled by a bunch of poxy bagmen, it would be too hard to change it, is to justify apathy with laziness. If it mattered enough to us, we’d fix it, whatever obstacles the constitution put in our way.

I suspect that is what explains the current prime minister’s approach to Senate reform, which so many find inexplicable. Yes, it is true, if you started electing senators, they would acquire a certain legitimacy, and yes, it is true, if all else about the Senate remained as it is, we’d have a terrible mess on our hands: an upper house of which nearly one-third of the members were from Atlantic Canada and the territories, wielding powers that are, on paper, almost equal to the Commons’. That’s the point. It would be so awful we really would have to fix it. The Senate’s impotence has served to excuse our own. It would no more.

But then we run into yet a third group, for whom reform is not so much undesirable or impossible, as a distraction: the abolitionists. Why have a senate at all, they ask? Even if we could agree on how to reform it, all we would be letting ourselves in for is gridlock and aggravation. If seats were apportioned by population, as in the Commons, it would be redundant; if by something other than population, it would be undemocratic.

This does not seem to have troubled the many other countries around the world with elected upper houses, among them not only the U.S. but such tolerably well governed places as Australia, Switzerland and Japan. Bicameralism, indeed, is all but universal among federations, for the same reason they are federations: because of the historic divisions amongst their peoples. Were we to abolish the Senate, we should very soon hear demands for its restoration, to protect regional and other minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

Absent reform of the Commons, moreover, it would leave power even more concentrated in the hands of the prime minister than it is now. Of all the objections to an elected Senate, the concern that it would make life more difficult for the government seems the most quaint. Yes, it would: democracy is like that. So, too, for the complaint, if it can be called that, that an elected Senate would take the place of the premiers as the voice of the regions. That, too, is the point.

Still, abolition has one thing to recommend it: it may be the shortest route to reform. By my reading at least, the same general amending formula — seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the population — applies in either case. But the politics might well be easier. As long as there is a Senate in place, there will be provinces with entrenched interests to defend, meaning the usual childish hairpulling. By starting from scratch we might be able to have a saner conversation.

And while it would take seven and fifty to abolish the Senate, it’s not so clear what formula would apply once it was gone. It would depend, I suppose, on how abolition was effected. For example, in its recent reference to the Supreme Court, the government suggests it could be done by “abolishing the powers of the Senate and eliminating the representation of provinces,” or “by amending or repealing some or all of the references to the Senate in the Constitution of Canada.” [Emphasis added.]

Well now. Section 44 of the Constitution Act, 1982 stipulates that, with certain exceptions, ”Parliament may exclusively make laws amending the Constitution of Canada in relation to the executive government of Canada or the Senate and House of Commons.” Could the whole thing be done by simple act of Parliament?

Now, Im not sure about Coyne's §44 argument but I continue to maintain that Prime Minister Harper can persuade provinces to elect senators with a formal Constitutional amendment and he can, equally, persuade senators to adhere to strict term limits, too. It would be an evolutionary process relying upon Constitutional convention but it would be more powerful for that.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail is a look at who might benefit from a proportional representation scheme:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/even-with-proportional-representation-some-mps-just-wouldnt-fit-in/article10477908/

Even with proportional representation, some MPs just wouldn’t fit in

John Ibbitson
The Globe and Mail

Published Thursday, Mar. 28 2013

Mark Warawa, Joyce Murray and Thomas Mulcair should sit down and have a drink – or whatever – some time. All three appear bent on destroying their political parties.

Mr. Warawa, a Conservative MP, is angry with Stephen Harper because the Prime Minister is stifling his attempts to provoke a parliamentary debate on abortion, going so far as to strike the Member for Langley’s name from the list of people entitled to speak during members’ statements.

Although the cracks were mostly papered over at caucus Wednesday, Mr. Warawa is the latest rebel within the Tory ranks to chafe at ironclad discipline that the Centre seeks to impose on the rank and file.

Ms. Murray is a Liberal MP and leadership candidate who wants to co-operate with the NDP to defeat the Conservatives in the next election. And Mr. Mulcair is, of course, the leader of the NDP, which has vowed to introduce a form of proportional representation for electing MPs if it forms a government, replacing the current first-past-the-post system.

If the Conservatives were to lose the election in 2015, and an NDP-dominated government changed the electoral method, what would happen?

“I expect we’d see some shuffling around of political parties, because Canadian political parties are all coalitions,” said Harold Jansen, a political scientist at University of Lethbridge who studies political parties. In other words, the Conservative, New Democratic and Liberal parties would likely dissolve.

For example, the Conservative coalition consists of, among others, Christian conservatives, social moderates, libertarians, Red Tories, Western nationalists and people who just hate Liberals.

The imperative of co-operation brought them together to form the new Conservative Party in 2004. But in a system where every party was represented in the House based on its share of the national popular vote, there would be no need to hang together.

The same would happen to the NDP and Liberals. Social activists, trade protectionists, environmentalists, Quebec federalists, union supporters, Blue Liberals and others might all spin off in different directions.

Would the result be paralysis and discord? Probably not, Prof. Jansen believes.

For one thing, PR punishes regionally-based parties. The Bloc Québécois, because it was able to concentrate its vote, elected 49 MPs in the 2008 election, 16 per cent of the total, despite having earned only 10 per cent of the national vote. Even if the Bloc makes a comeback, it wouldn’t be much of a comeback under PR.

Ideologically based parties do better, because their vote is often spread evenly across the country. The Greens would have had 12 seats in the current House, under proportional representation, rather than one.

But in the grand scheme, Prof Jansen believes, Canada would not be governed much differently than it is today.

“The research shows that you do end up with coalition governments and those coalition governments tend to govern very close to what we call the median voter,” he observed.

Mr. Warawa might get elected to Parliament as a member of a Christian conservative party. But that party would be small, and it would be, at best, a minor player in a conservative coalition government.

Such a coalition would be dominated by a moderately conservative party, propped up either by smaller conservative parties or by a moderately progressive party.

That doesn’t mean that PR is without flaws: It can be difficult for coalitions governments to act when tough and unpopular decisions need to be made, such as cutting spending to balance the books or imposing a carbon tax.

But in the broader scheme of things, PR would probably not lead to a Canada governed very differently from how it is governed today.

No matter what the system, Mark Warawa would not be happy in it.

While Ibbitson may be right in suggesting that the coalitions that would result from a simple PR system would, very likely, be centrist - as a Harper/CPC government is and a Trudeau/LPC government might be - there is one big difference: locals lose their own, local representative, elected by them from amongst local candidates selected by them, party riding association by party riding association.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And here is another on one specific type of PR by Éric Grenier, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from threeHundredEight.com:

http://www.threehundredeight.com/2013/03/preferential-ballot-poll.html

Preferential ballot poll

THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2013

I had a thought a little while ago, and asked David Coletto at Abacus Data whether he had ever considered running a poll that would mimic a preferential ballot. He thought it was a good idea, so last week he added it to his regular polling. And he provided me with the results.

I wrote about them for The Globe and Mail. I'm going to go over some of the results here, but the main pieces of information gleaned from the poll are presented in the article.

A little bit about the methodology: Abacus asked respondents to rank seven parties from 1 to 7, adding the Christian Heritage, Libertarian, and Pirate parties to the mix to provide a little variety, and to see whether anyone would rank these parties highly if given the chance.

Unfortunately, respondents were not given the option to stop ranking the parties at any point, which is what a preferential ballot does allow. 'Second choice' polling suggests that Conservative supporters are most likely to say that they have no second choice. However, this should have little effect on the seat distributions I calculated with the preferential ballot, as in only 83 of 338 ridings did the Conservative candidate drop-off the ballot before the 50% threshold was reached - and 53 of those were in Quebec, where Conservatives are probably less likely to not have a second choice.

The Globe article has the national breakdown of how supporters of each party would rank their ballots, but since I have unlimited room here let's go through the results region-by-region. Note that, outside of Ontario and Quebec (and even in those two provinces to some extent), the samples for each party are quite small. I have not included the Greens in some of the regional breakdowns below because it was based on 10 or fewer respondents.

We'll start in British Columbia. You can see the strength of the Greens here - they are the consensus second choice for New Democrats and third choice for Liberals, while they garner decent down ballot support across the board. But you also see that the Conservatives do surprisingly well as a second choice for Liberals in B.C., which could potentially back-fire if the party ever co-operates with the New Democrats.

In Alberta and the Prairies (I combined them as the samples were just too small), the Liberals are the consensus second choice for New Democrats, while Liberals are more likely to go to the NDP as their second choice than they are in British Columbia.

Things break down a little more normally in Ontario, with Conservatives choosing the Liberals second, the NDP third, and the Greens fourth. New Democrats choose the Liberals second, the Greens third, and then split their ballot on their fourth choice.

Liberals are a little more mixed, giving the NDP their second choice and the Greens their fourth, but splitting between the three parties on the third ballot.

Quebec has the most interesting result. Conservatives split between the Liberals and NDP, and very few go over to the Bloc. The Liberals split between the NDP and Conservatives, and very few go to the Bloc.

For the New Democrats, though, more than two-thirds list the Bloc Québécois as their second or third choice. Another large portion go over to the Liberals as their second choice and the Greens as their third, but the Bloc only really has room for growth down ballot from NDP supporters. The problem with that is that in most ridings the race is between the NDP and the Bloc.

The Bloc goes over to the NDP in massive numbers. It is interesting to note that only 2% of Bloc voters list the Liberals as their second choice - though that grows considerably for the third and fourth rankings. They are also the party least likely to rank one of the three fringe parties among their top four.

I include Atlantic Canada in order to complete the region-by-region breakdown, but the samples are very small. Nevertheless, their is nothing too unusual in the results despite the small number of respondents.

In terms of seats, I used the first choices to distribute support across ridings as I would do with a normal poll.

In a number of seats, a candidate has majority support right off the bat. In total, the Conservatives win 60 seats before the instant run-off begins (27 in Alberta, 15 on the Prairies, 13 in Ontario, and five in B.C.). The New Democrats have majorities in 23 seats (14 in Ontario, three in B.C., two each in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, and one each in Alberta and the Priaires), while the Liberals have 11 majorities (six in Atlantic Canada, three in Quebec, and one each in B.C. and the Prairies). The Greens also win a majority in Elizabeth May's riding with first choice support.

This chart shows the number of ridings in which each party leads with first choice support only. The Green leads in Atlantic Canada and the North are just a statistical fluke of the poll. You can see that these results are relatively standard, based on what other polls have been showing.

But the results are radically different once the preferential ballots are distributed to give each riding an MP with majority support.

The Conservatives lose one seat in the north, two each in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia, six in the Prairies (all the seats in which they led but did not have a majority), and 16 in Ontario. The Liberals lose one seat in Quebec in which they led on first choice ballots, while the NDP loses two (both in Ontario). The Bloc loses all four, while the Greens lose the one in the north.

That means that the NDP comes from behind to win one seat in British Columbia, four on the Prairies, seven in Quebec, and eight in Ontario. The Liberals win one seat each in British Columbia and Quebec, two each on the Prairies, in Atlantic Canada, and the north, and 10 in Ontario in which they trailed on first choice balloting. That is a huge and important difference, and is primarily due to the inability for the Conservatives to grow after the first choice ballots are counted. In many cases, they lose ridings in which 40% to even 42% listed the Tories as their first choice.

Small parties are rarely included in polls, so it is interesting to see what happens when they are added to the pile. It didn't change much, though. Only 1% listed Christian Heritage as their first choice, 0.9% listed the Libertarians, and 0.7% listed the Pirate Party. These parties never run full slates, so even these levels of support would be hard to achieve.

But which fringe party found the most favour with supporters of each of the main parties? Christian Heritage was the most preferred fringe party of Conservatives, with 11% of them ranking the CHP as either their second, third, or fourth choice. The Libertarians were the most popular choice of Liberals, with 7% listing them in the top four (it may have to do with the similarity in their names). The Pirate Party was the favourite of the Bloc (7% listed it in their top four), the NDP (9%), and the Greens (14%).

Overall, 30% of the ranking slots in the top four on Green ballots were occupied by one of the three fringe parties. Conservative supporters reserved 24% of their slots for these parties, while that dropped to 18% among New Democrats, 16% among Liberals, and only 12% for the Bloc. It is perhaps not too surprising that supporters of the Greens, the fringiest of the main parties, are most likely to consider the other parties highly. For the Conservatives, it may have been a proxy "none of the above" response.

An interesting poll to say the least.

It is an interesting poll, BUT, I have some doubts.

In a proper preferential system one votes, locally, for each candidate, so many factors beyond just (current) party preference influence the outcome: obviously, the strength of the local and national campaigns, views about the capabilities of the national leaders, and views about the local candidates will all have major influences.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, is procedural rather than electoral reform but, even though it is about accounting  :  it is important:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/12/pressure-mounts-to-reform-opaque-financial-system/

Pressure mounts to reform opaque financial system

John Ivison

13/05/12

Tony Clement’s jaw apparently hit the ground when he was told by Treasury Board officials that there was no way to track the $3.1-billion in anti-terrorism funding “lost” somewhere in the system.

There are 2200 people in the Treasury Board whose sole job is to follow the money, he reasoned, not to mention 5000 financial managers across the rest of the federal government.

But the problem is not with the competence of the bureaucracy. Rather it is the opaqueness of a system that would stump students of Byzantium; a parliamentary anachronism that has been allowed to survive because it suits the desire of both the public service and the government of the day to keep the public and parliamentarians in the dark.

I spent an hour I’ll never get back being schooled in the intricacies of the budget process by Treasury Board officials. One example offered up suggests how easy it is to lose track of spending under the existing system.

In the blind panic thatfollowed 9/11/2001, the Liberal government of the day drew up a budget heavy with $7.7-billion of public safety and anti-terror measures. The Department of National Defence was allocated $535-million in the budget but it was only when the supplementary estimates were released the following October that its detailed spending plans were revealed – in this case new anti-terror measures that were estimated to cost $481-million. The only way we know the money was earmarked for the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative is that this is how it was tagged in the document.

There is no legal obligation to link spending to programs in any of the estimates documents — money is merely identified as being for operations, capital spending or grants and contributions (to be distributed to third parties). There may be some details in the Estimates (or more likely in a companion document called the departmental Report on Plans and Priorities) but there is no legally-binding commitment to spend money on particular programs — cash can be moved around by ministers without any scrutiny or consent.

This means that the remaining $54-million (the difference between the $535-million in the budget and the $481-million in the supplementary estimates) is likely part of the $3.1-billion for which the Auditor-General was unable to account. It was probably “re-profiled” — used for something else and simply not tagged as being for anti-terror spending.

The Treasury Board folks assured me that, when a new submission was made to them to spend the $54-million it would have been well scrutinized. As Mr. Clement has been at pains to point out in Parliament, no-one is suggesting any laws were broken or even rules bent.

It’s just that this, and the 400 other anti-terror submissions made by 35 departments and agencies, are the proverbial needles in a mountain of haystacks and effectively untraceable.

The upside of the “$3-billion boondoggle” is that it may persuade Canada to join the rest of the developed world in tracking money by programs, which would make it much easier for the public and parliamentarians to see what the government is up to.

As Pat Martin, the veteran NDP MP, put it: “Most MPs would require a Sherpa guide, four men of stout heart and the blessing of the Almighty to mount an expedition required to comprehend these figures [the Estimates].”

The Government Operations parliamentary committee, which Mr. Martin chairs, released a report last June that contained a number of recommendations to make the task of understanding government spending less Herculean. The government has adopted some of those suggestions, including the launch of a searchable online database to help track departmental spending.

Yet Mr. Clement was cool on one of the committee’s main recommendations — linking spending plans to programs, for example First Nations housing, and expected outcomes — citing $70-million in new technology costs as a potential stumbling block.

The bureaucracy will doubtless resist any attempts to add transparency to a murky system which only they understand — they have already pointed out how many more votes in Parliament would be needed as a result of linking spending plans to programs.

But the political ground is shifting. Mr. Clement’s comments came before he fell victim to the missing $3-billion. This is a gift that keeps on giving for Thomas Mulcair and the NDP in the House of Commons, who have painted the Conservatives as a kind of Stopwatch Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

The $70-million figure may have been rich when it was merely to improve the efficiency of government for all Canadians; it probably looks like a snip now it could help save the Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes.

National Post

The core responsibility of Parliament, its very raison d'être in fact, is to control the public purse: to decide on both taxes and spending. It is, in our constitutional system, how we control our sovereign. It is what makes us different from our American neighbours: there the executive and the legislature and, indeed, even parts of the judiciary are responsible to the people through periodic, scheduled, elections; here the executive, the Queen and her Privy Council, is always responsible to the legislature (parliament) which is, in turn, periodically answerable to the people.

Pat Martin is right about needing "a Sherpa guide, four men of stout heart and the blessing of the Almighty" to understand the Estimates ~ even the process is overly complicated. We have, each of us, contributed to electing a Member of Parliament to enforce our will, to control Her Majesty's Government by managing both revenue and expenditures. Most MPs are, fortunately, not in the cabinet: they (most MPs) are charged with the core responsibility of Parliament and we need to insist that they have the basic tools to do the job.

 

[Edward Campbell]

And, back to one of my favourite topics:a regency, thanks to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Postmedia's Canada.com:

http://o.canada.com/2013/05/13/charles-as-prince-regent-would-send-canadian-crown-into-uncharted-waters-experts/

Charles as ‘Prince Regent’ would send Canadian Crown into uncharted waters: experts

Randy Boswell

Published: May 13, 2013

Legal experts say Canada would be headed into uncharted constitutional waters if — as widely rumoured last week in Britain — the Royal Family is considering the designation of Prince Charles as “regent” should a need arise to relieve his 87-year-old mother, Queen Elizabeth, of the onerous duties of being monarch.

While the Queen is believed to be allergic to the idea of outright abdication and dedicated to serving as titular head of all Commonwealth states — including Canada — until her death, her surprise decision not to travel to Sri Lanka to attend this year’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting and several other recent developments have prompted speculation that if illness or infirmity ever prevent Elizabeth from carrying out her duties, Prince Charles could effectively step into the role in what would be the British monarchy’s first regency in more than 200 years — going back to the so-called “madness” of King George III from 1811-20.

Despite denials from Buckingham Palace that such an option is even being tentatively explored, an official statement that royal advisers are “reviewing the amount of long-haul travel that is taken by the Queen,” along with Charles’ unexpected appearance last week alongside his mother for a Parliamentary address, have only stoked regency speculation that began in March — when Elizabeth was forced to cancel a planned trip to Italy after being hospitalized with gastroenteritis.

Such a move would make Charles — as “Prince Regent” — Canada’s de facto head of state, perhaps 10 or more years before formally fulfilling his destiny as heir to the throne. It’s an idea that some royal watchers say the Queen might find a more desirable option than abdication — the path chosen this year by Pope Benedict and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands — because of the trauma suffered by the British Royal Family when King Edward VIII scandalously surrendered the crown in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, putting Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, on the throne.

“If, as is understood, the word ‘abdication’ is not in the Queen’s lexicon, then a ‘co-head’ arrangement may be a solution to the practical challenges of an aging sovereign,” The Guardian newspaper reported. “The question then, however, is if that is likely to continue on an informal basis, or to be placed on a more formal footing. The word ‘regency’ may also not be part of the Queen’s vocabulary, and certainly she can hardly be said to be incapacitated.”

Yet the Guardian report, like others in Britain in recent days, noted that “Wednesday’s image of Charles and Camilla, attired in full ceremonial and sitting within feet of the thrones in the House of Lords, is momentous and symbolic.”

But a regency, say several of Canada’s top experts on the monarchy, could pose potential constitutional wrinkles in this country. Unlike Australia or New Zealand, Canada does not have legislation explicitly setting out legal procedures for the advent of a regent.

The constitutional scholars acknowledge a significant degree of uncertainty and disagreement over what Canada’s role and rights might be in the transition to a regency period during the waning years of Elizabeth’s reign.

“The creation of a regency for the Canadian monarch it is not covered by the Statute of Westminster,” said University of Regina constitutional expert John Whyte. “Whether a Canadian jurisdiction over regency has been created by the amending formula in the 1982 Constitution Act I do not know for sure, but I think that it probably has.”

Simon Fraser University political scientist Andrew Heard told Postmedia News that “the whole regency issue is an interesting question, and one on which my views have changed over the years” — highlighting how Canada’s response to a potential regency would be shaped by interpretations of law rather than precisely prescribed rules.

“There is a line of thought that the Regency Acts do not apply to Canada, because Canada never gave their consent to them,” said Heard, referring to a key 1937 bill in the U.K. and its amended forms, which provide for a regent (typically the heir to the throne) to take on the functions of the monarch “in the event of the incapacity of the Sovereign through illness,” as the main provision states.

“But I feel the changes in royal succession and to regency are intended to apply within the U.K. rather than Canada, and therefore don’t need Canadian approval,” said Heard.

“If Charles were to be named Prince Regent, I feel he would have the authority to appoint a new Governor General and perform the other few powers still personally exercised by the Queen for Canada.”

But Whyte, Saskatchewan’s chief legal adviser during the drive to patriate the Constitution and enshrine the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, sees things differently.

“If a surrogate must be created, I would think that Canada would need to be part of the creation of that surrogate,” he said, suggesting the need for a process similar to one that recently saw all Commonwealth countries involved in changing the rules of succession to give women and men equal status in the line to the throne.

“Some believe that the designation of monarch, or monarch’s surrogate, in Canada is a question of British law,” said Whyte, referring to Heard’s perspective. “I believe this view is wrong and, as I have said, the Canadian head of state is a matter of Canadian constitutionalism, not a matter of dictation from another nation.”

University of Ottawa professor Philippe Lagassé, an expert on the Canadian Crown, said a “do nothing” option that presumes a British decision on a regency would apply automatically to Canada is “highly problematic for a number of legal and constitutional reasons.”

Canada could, instead, pass its own version of the Regency Act to accommodate the power shift, but Lagassé suggests that opens the door to a future federal government deciding to make Canada’s Governor General a regent, and “you become a de facto republic — without consulting the provinces.”

Lagassé said it could be argued that a move to a regency would, for Canada, require “a constitutional amendment at the extreme or, at the very least, you would need to consult the provinces.”

Given the lack of a clear legal path to initiate a regency in Canada, said Lagassé, any government dealing with the issue would “really have difficult situation ahead of them.”

Another constitutional expert from the University of Regina, David E. Smith, said he felt “uneasy” about commenting on the issue because “I think until we actually see the event and the facts around the event, it’s always hard to predict” how things should unfold.

His general view, however, is that even if consulting Canada about a possible regency isn’t “constitutionally required” under existing laws, then “at least constitutional etiquette” should see the British government seek Canada’s consent — and that of the other Commonwealth countries — to name Charles as Prince Regent.

He said Canada would have no means to block a plan pursued by Britain, but a case in which Canada didn’t support a proposed British action “would create a constitutional question.”

rboswell@postmedia.com

I agree with Prof Philippe Lagassé: there is nothing wrong with a regency but if our, Canadian, monarchy is to be affected then we must have a "made-in-Canada" system - a law, if necessary.

I was troubled by the use of the Preamble to the Statutes of Westminster rather than §41.a of the Constitution  Act of 1982 for the "Royal Baby Bill," because I don't share the government's view that it doesn't affect the "office of the Crown as defined in the Constitution, but that's a quibble. The definition of a Canadian Regent, however, does affect the crown, I think it must be dealt with in Canada and §41.a says it must be approved by unanimous consent.

There is nothing to stop the Brits from making Charles their Prince Regent but, in my opinion he cannot hold that office in Canada without our explicit consent.

 

[dapaterson]

Senator Duffy repaid his housing allowance after receiving $90 000 from the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff.  Flacks from the PMO assure us that this wasn't taxpayers money, and the Conservative Party has stated that it wasn't their either.

So who did the money come from?  Did a humble public servant, working for the PM, just fork out $90 000 out of the goodness of his heart to help out an overweight wannabe Prince Edward Islander?

Note to the Conservatives:  When even the National Post finds your story implausible, you're in trouble.


http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/15/ctv-mike-duffy/

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mike-duffy-made-secret-deal-with-harper-s-chief-of-staff-during-audit-1.1282015

 

[PuckChaser]

He's the former Managing Director of Onex Corp, an equity firm. I find it entirely plausible he had $90,000 to loan out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_S._Wright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onex_Corporation

 

[Scott]

I honeymooned on the Magdalene Islands, can I be the Senator for them?

 

[Old Sweat]

Rex Murphy, writing with at least part of his tongue in cheek in The National Post, suggests that this is all part of Harper's hidden agenda to abolish the Senate by allowing it to self-destruct. His column is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act.

Rex Murphy: The hidden agenda, revealed

It was what Sherlock Holmes would have called a four-pipe problem. Whenever faced with a real puzzler, Sherlock would take the pipe from the mantelpiece, stuff it with shag tobacco, furrow that mighty brow, and smoke his way, all night if need be, to an answer. Some mysteries, I believe The Giant Rat of Sumatra is an example, took only two pipes. A real snorter took four.

Well, I’m Holmes this week, and I think I’ve decoded one of the great mysteries of Canadian politics. Most know of it under the stubborn and enduring heading of Stephen Harper’s Secret Agenda. What is it?

Now, I’ve got to be honest here. From the very beginning, I personally have never bought into the idea of some concealed and sinister plot hived in the great dome of Mr. Harper’s superbrain.

Even recently, reflecting that he was now near seven years in power, the idea of a “secret agenda” looked to me quite ridiculous. After seven years, I reasoned, if it’s still secret, maybe there’s not a agenda at all.

Mr. Duffy was chosen not as a “representative” but as a “weapon.” It is all so clear now
Like many a supersluth before me, I was deceived. Such is the labyrinthine guile of the unsmiling man in the Prime Minister’s Office. He had taken me off the track. Waiting was part of his cool genius.

In other words I was wrong, really wrong. Wronger than a pundit listening to a pollster on the B.C. election. Harper’s most fervid critics were right.

He indeed has a secret agenda. And he has misled all as to its substance. It is not about abortion. It is not about placing soldiers, with guns, on every street in every town. It is not about about forever displacing the Liberal party, or — as some of his more nervous foes have speculated, dissolving Parliament and declaring himself Grand Ruler and Sullen Master for Life.

It is instead  about the total destruction and unstoppable ruin of the Canadian Senate, once and for ever. This has been the idée fixe of the finest political thinking machine ever to stride the Canadian stage — destroy the Senate. Turn it into a shameless shambles, to stir up a tornado-force whirlwind of animosity against it, and put it forever underground and beyond recall by any power, be it God, John Baird or Pierre Poilievre.

My reasoning here (as usual) is impeccable, and follows the celebrated principle of the great consulting detective Holmes himself, as set out in his most famous axiom: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. What I propose as solution is improbable, but, like Sherlock, having eliminated all other scenarios as strictly impossible, it has to be the only truth.

The great secret agenda has been the elimination of the Canadian Senate, a plot finally put in play only in the PM’s sixth year, with the singular appointment of the one-time TV host and noted bon vivant Michael Duffy.

Mr. Duffy was chosen not as a “representative” but as a “weapon.” It is all so clear now.

It may be a blast furious enough to send the anachronistic and unaccountable body unwept into Eternity
The climax of the enigmatic manoeuvre was worthy of that monster arch-villian, Moriarity himself. The Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister made a gift of $90,000 so that Mr. Duffy could pay back expenses he should never have received, and also thereby amputating the inquiry into those expenses, by pre-emptive restitution. This was done in the name of protecting the taxpayers, of course. The final twist in the subtle charade was the claim that the Chief of Staff did not tell the Prime Minister about the gift — the great schemer should remain aloof and beyond the scene of his work.

All of these pieces of the puzzle, when brought together into their full and proper form, produced the tidal backlash against the Senate as a whole, which we have been witness to over these last few days and week.

It may just be the tempest at the end of the Senate’s parliamentary world, a blast furious enough to send the anachronistic and unaccountable body unwept into Eternity.

There then is the Harper secret agenda fully at last revealed. The pipe is resting again on the mantlepiece, the mystery anatomized and exposed.

 

[observor 69]

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/18/rex-murphy-the-hidden-agenda-revealed/

Rex Murphy: The hidden agenda, revealed

 

[Edward Campbell]

In his televised speech to his caucus the prime minister mentioned abolishing the Senate. It's not a good idea - for reasons I have explained before - and it looks to be a practical impossibility, too, according to several scholars quoted in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/21/despite-stephen-harpers-rhetoric-abolishing-the-senate-is-practically-impossible/

Despite Stephen Harper’s rhetoric, abolishing the Senate is practically impossible

Joseph Brean

Last Updated: 13/05/22

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper told his caucus Tuesday that he “did not get into politics to defend the Senate,” and is keen for the Supreme Court of Canada “to rule on options for abolishing the Senate completely,” he elevated abolition from pipe dream to plausible option.

“We have heard from Canadians loud and clear. They want us to continue our efforts. They are asking us to accelerate those efforts. The Senate status quo is not acceptable,” Mr. Harper said.

To raise the prospect of Senate abolition in response to an expenses scandal that threatens his own office, however, suggests the goal was to distract an angry public with a proposal guaranteed never to come true, experts say.

“He knows that the abolition of the Senate is not possible,” said Errol Mendes, editor-in-chief of the National Journal of Constitutional Law. “You have to ask what’s the agenda there. He’s probably the most brilliant tactician and strategist Canada has seen. So what’s the strategy? I’m starting to wonder whether he knew from the very outset that all these plans [for reform or abolition] would be a no go.”

Long a key plank of the Tory platform, the federal government first asked the Supreme Court this year for guidance on Senate reform. The questions, for which oral arguments will be held this year, include whether Parliament on its own can impose elections and term limits on senators, or abolish the chamber altogether.

“They can keep pushing it. It’s sort of like pushing for virginity in a summer camp,” said Ned Franks, a constitutional expert at Queen’s University.

“So many of the proposed reforms are simply buzzwords that haven’t been examined,” Prof. Franks said. Senate elections, for example, sound reasonable, he said, until you realize that Quebec and the Maritime provinces have nearly a majority in the Senate, but a quarter of the population. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Any movement toward abolition “would become very quickly part of a larger constitutional reform package, and that would ultimately lead into the decay and destruction of recent efforts to reform the constitution,” Prof. Franks said. “They just are not profitable. You wind up pitting group against group.”

“This expense scandal has nothing to do with Senate reform,” said Emmett Macfarlane, assistant professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. Mr. Harper’s mention of abolition was a distraction, he said, “part of a rhetorical appeal to dodge away from the real issue.”

The question before the Supreme Court on abolition is the clearest of all, he said, because major constitutional changes clearly require unanimous consent of the provinces. There is a “fanciful” theory, however, that it would only take seven provinces, representing 50% of the population, to gut the Senate of its powers and leave it as a kind of “vestigial organ that does nothing,” he said, like the parliamentary appendix.

The Supreme Court is likely to clarify which standard must be met, but both are almost practically impossible, and the path forward is fraught with electoral peril, Prof. Mendes said.

“Even if [Mr. Harper's Senate reform] proposals were upheld by Supreme Court, and he can push them through with his majority government before the term ends, it would hugely penalize the West, his base. It would entrench the under-representation of Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan forever,” said Prof. Mendes, who teaches constitutional and international law at University of Ottawa. “I’m surprised the West hasn’t screamed.”

On the other hand, if the Supreme Court decides elections and term limits are unconstitutional, then Mr. Harper “has free reign, if he wins next election, to fill the entire Senate with bagmen, fundraisers, etc., and the play goes on,” Prof. Mendes said.

Abolition will be “at minimum extraordinarily difficult,” said Craig Scott, NDP critic for democratic reform. “Then the question becomes: When do massive changes occur in society? They occur when there is a historic moment when not just elites are ready for it, but the people are ready for it. And I think on this one, if we have a popular threshold that’s been crossed, where average Canadians are just so fed up, they’ve begun to understand that these ethical scandals are not just about individual ethics, but about, let’s call it, structures in culture related to the Senate. Then all of those things can come together and we’d have something resembling a social movement, or at least a social consensus. Without that, it would be almost impossible to abolish.”

“I think Canadians are getting there,” he said.

“The nature of a constitution is to resist change. That is what constitutions do,” said Anne Cools, the longest-serving current senator, who sits as an Independent from Ontario after previously being both Liberal and Conservative.

“The Constitution of Canada has lasted for 150 years and that is one of the reasons, that those individuals who framed that constitution intended that it would be very difficult to amend, for very good reasons,” said Ms. Cools, who has been granted intervenor status at the Supreme Court on the reference.

Describing the arguments she will bring to the court, she said it is “unthinkable” to contemplate a modern federal country without an upper chamber, and that tampering with the Senate is tampering with Canada.

“There can be no federal system without a senate,” she said. “Remember, the federation is embodied not in the House of Commons. The federation is embodied in the Senate, because of the nature of the representation. … It’s a point that’s been overlooked.”

“Every time one opens up the constitution, one is in danger of opening up the very same problems that existed when the constitution was created,” she said. “There’s a little part of me that thinks that any connection of abolition of the Senate to any errant behaviour, or apparently errant behaviour, by any senators, is not entirely politic, not entirely prudent… These things are not as simple as people are making them out to be.”

“We can’t at this point get rid of the Senate. We just can’t,” agreed Prof. Franks. “So if you’re going to live with it, you should look at trying to make sure good people are brought into it and are given the chance to do useful work.”

National Post
jbrean@nationalpost.com

Obviously, I agree with Sen Anne Cools on the need for a Senate in a federal state.

Prof Errol Mendes worries that an elected Senate will entrench misrepresentation, and i agree, but it is, I think, a necessary step in the right direction.

I have proposed that the Senate should be elected in conjunction with provincial general elections. If that system was in place today the Senate would look about like this (I had to do some rounding):

CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec):  7
Conservative:                            35 (29 Conservatives, 4 Saskatchewan Party and 2 Wildrose Party)
Green:                                        0
Liberal:                                      31
NDP:                                          21
PQ:                                              8
Other:                                        3

The current (Conservative) government would have a plurality (minority government status) but it is not clear to me that the Liberals would unite with the NDP to defeat most government legislation - delay, yes, but not defeat.

 

[dapaterson]

We agree on the big picture solution (provincial elections allocating seats by popular vote); I would adopt a slight American flavour, though, and only have half the seats in a province elected in each election, to provide greater continuity in the Senate.

 

[GAP]

We agree on the big picture solution (provincial elections allocating seats by popular vote); I would adopt a slight American flavour, though, and only have half the seats in a province elected in each election, to provide greater continuity in the Senate.

or alternate them. Adjust mandates to conform to that provinces' electoral terms

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some political scientists 1 think the Government's "Royal Baby" bill - which will give Canada's consent to a UK change to the Act of Succession will open the door to further, more drastic changes to the succession - including my proposal for a Regency when HM dies.


_____
1. I have exchanged E-mails with with both Philippe Lagassé - Ottawa and Emmett Macfarlane - Waterloo about this over the past few weeks.

I know this is arcane, not to mention terminally bloody boring, but the very Constitutional nature, of Canada is at issue here. We are ~ maybe ~ a constitutional monarchy, which, itself, is a corporation sole,* meaning that the right of succession is preordained. If the right of succession is in any doubt then, as Prof Marc Chevrier says, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, "If the amending rules are to be applied should they not be used to simply abolish the monarchy rather than to modernize it?”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/changes-to-royal-succession-face-legal-fight-in-quebec/article12401224/#dashboard/follows/

Changes to royal succession face legal fight in Quebec

RHÉAL SÉGUIN
QUEBEC CITY — The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jun. 07 2013

Two Quebec university professors are challenging Parliament’s approval of changes to the succession to the Crown, arguing it is unconstitutional and violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For some involved in the case, the goal is to rejoin the constitutional battle and provoke a debate leading to a sweeping result – the abolition of the monarchy in Canada._

On Friday, a motion was filed in Quebec Superior Court taking issue with Canada’s Succession to the Throne Act, which gives consent to a bill adopted in British Parliament last April changing the rules of succession to allow for the firstborn, regardless of gender, to succeed to the throne.

Geneviève Motard and Patrick Taillon, constitutional experts at Laval University in Quebec City, contend that the federal law represents a constitutional amendment and that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government failed to obtain approval of all the provinces as required under the 1982 Canadian Constitution.

By adopting the new rules of succession to the British Crown, the law “does not follow the amending procedure and no resolution has been passed by the legislative assembly of any province,” the two professors argue in their motion.

Marc Chevrier, a University of Quebec at Montreal political scientist who acts as a consultant on the case, said the fundamental issue involved not only reopening the constitutional debate but also considering the abolition of Canadian monarchy. There has always been a strong anti-monarchy movement in the province fuelled by Quebec nationalism.

“If the amending rules are to be applied should they not be used to simply abolish the monarchy rather than to modernize it,” Mr. Chevrier said. “And the most astonishing thing about this issue is that Quebec has said nothing. … If this can reopen the constitutional debate, then Quebec can use it to table its own demands.”

The Laval professors are receiving advice from astute constitutional experts: André Joli-Coeur, the Supreme Court-appointed lawyer who argued Quebec’s case in the 1998 federal government reference on Quebec secession; and André Binette, who was legal council to the Quebec government during the 1995 referendum on sovereignty. The professors may seek the advice of other experts when the case proceeds to court.

The Succession to the Throne Act was adopted in Parliament at the end of March with little debate. According to Mr. Chevrier, Quebec’s silence on Ottawa’s imposed changes to the succession rules was all the more surprising since the province was challenging the Harper government’s proposal to unilaterally reform the Senate. The federal law gave consent to the British bill that removed the priority of male heirs over female heirs, and also ended the disqualification from the line of succession arising from marrying a Roman Catholic.

The two Laval professors argue that the religious requirement constitutes “a discrimination that is contrary to the freedom of conscience and religion and the right to equality” guaranteed in the Charter. They also maintain that since the British Act was written in English only, it violated Canada’s official languages law, which was another argument for declaring it unconstitutional.

Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton, who is about to give birth to their first child, provided added impetus to the British government’s desire to change the succession rules.

In 2011, when the proposal for change was being considered, British Prime Minister David Cameron sought consent from 16 of the 54 Commonwealth countries – such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand – that still claim the British monarch as their head of state.

Mr. Harper moved quickly to support the changes, but in his haste he may have sowed the seeds of a constitutional confrontation, especially with Quebec.

Australian constitutional expert Anne Twomey concluded after examining the Harper government’s quick approval to the British Succession to the Crown Act that the Canadian approach appeared “to be either constitutionally invalid … or completely ineffective.”

“It is likely that the Canadian government took the gamble of this approach in order to avoid the hassle of obtaining the agreement of the provinces while banking upon the likelihood that no one would have the standing or motive to challenge it,” Ms. Twomey wrote. “It shows … a willingness on the part of Canadian politicians to sacrifice Canadian independence to avoid to engage with the provinces.”

Mr. Chevrier says that when Britain adopted the Canada Act in 1982, paving the way for the patriation of the Constitution, it ended its power to legislate for Canada. “The British Parliament has no authority to determine what represents the British Crown for Canada,” Mr. Chevrier said. “It creates quite a dilemma. How can the federal government rule on a British law that has no legal standing in Canada? …The federal law is simply unenforceable.”

If ~ and I suspect it is highly doubtful ~ this suit succeeds then, in my opinion, for what it's worth, the whole succession ~ which is based on "British law that has no legal standing in Canada" is invalid and we can have whomever we like, including no one at all, as sovereign when our gracious sovereign lady Elizabeth dies.

_____
*  The corporation sole is an historical legal entity created to allow holders of religious or certain civic offices to pass title and lands from one office holder to another in perpetuity ... Examples include a few religious offices, several statutory offices and the Queen's Canadian representatives: the Governor General and the Lieutenant Governors of the provinces.