Learning to live with minority governments (we can only hope)

Prime Minister Harper is now using the threat of an early anticipated election as a reason for giving the Conservatives a majority (may it not come to pass). Using elections as a threat is not a new strategy for the Harper government. It has been using the threat of an election all through its two minority mandates. It is a perverse twist of logic to recast that supreme symbol of democratic governance, an election, as a negative, as something we would want to avoid. There is now this notion in Ottawa that whichever party would be so reckless as to cause an “unnecessary” election will be made to pay at the polls.

The Harper government has not acted as a minority government, seeking common ground so as to maintain the confidence of the House. Rather, it has time and again put through those parts of its agenda it could and challenged the Opposition to defeat it and trigger an election. This is because the Harper government is not interested in governing per se, it is only interested in its own agenda. This is why it does not compromise, it only temporizes. It bides its time, waiting for the majority that would allow it to implement its agenda holus bolus. Meanwhile, they keep daring the Opposition to defeat it and govern by any or all extra-Parliamentary means available or unavailable, including suspending Parliament at their convenience.

This is not how a minority is supposed to operate. The general expectation is that a minority government act in accordance with the will of the people, as expressed in the representation in the House of Commons, under sanction of replacement by a government that will if it fails to do so. This is where our frozen political landscape and our constitutional conventions no longer serve us well. Replacement seems only possible by way of an election, which in the current environment is not an effective sanction: 1) elections are very expensive; 2) they are unlikely to bring about a very different result than the current representation; 3) for these reasons, parties do not want to be perceived as having triggered an election for fear of being penalized at the polls. So, we have a situation in which a minority government need not fear replacement, a serious degradation of the democratic legitimacy of our governing institutions. The fear of replacement is an essential component of democratic governance. It is what keeps the government honest and accountable. If it is lost, we are one step closer to tyranny.

So, our institutional framework has to adapt to the new situation, and in particular the Governor-General’s in role in agreeing to the dissolution of Parliament when a minority government falls. It should no longer be the case that an election is the first recourse in this eventuality, for the reasons expressed above. Rather, the norm should be that the Opposition be asked to form a government and try to maintain the confidence of the House for as long as possible. If that government falls, then maybe the third party can give it a try. In the end, we don’t elect a government, we elect a Parliament and we expect that a government can be formed from the representation in Parliament, in whatever configuration is necessary to maintain the confidence of the House for the life span of a given Parliament, which the Constitution Act of 1867 still restricts to five years. (see this interesting review of the Conservatives four year fixed election law). If the sanction were immediate and predictable replacement in this way, minority governments would be more likely to seek the middle ground and rule through consensus rather than division. And it would take away the temptation of using a threatened election as a weapon, which debases that most basic treasure of democracy.