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During the campaign leading to the election of June 2, 1997, television coverage focused almost exclusively on the party leaders. They jetted about the country, seeking photogenic backdrops against which to strike poses and to deliver the sound bites by which advertising managers hoped to gain a point or two in the polls. I was glad when it was over.

In the west Toronto constituency where I live, the winner was a first-time candidate, a Liberal. She seemed able and energetic and well-meaning, as, indeed, did many candidates around the country. But, like all the other candidates in all the parties, she offered nothing but blind support of her leader. Though we had made her a member of Parliament and a member of the government caucus, it seemed understood that she could do nothing to represent us, or
even to assert her own convictions. Should the re-elected government decide to bulldoze a square mile at the centre of our constituency to build a nuclear waste disposal facility, her duty would be to tell us that it might be unfortunate but it had to be done. Should she resist that assignment, she would suffer the fate of the member for a neighbouring riding, John Nunziata, expelled from his caucus and his party for voting against a party measure. Nunziata won re-election on June 2, defeating an official candidate personally designated by the party leader. But as an “independent,” Nunziata would be as unable to influence policy as he had been as a docile member of caucus. The government’s majority was small (and had been won with only 35 per cent of the vote), but unconditional support from its backbenchers would keep the government beyond control of Parliament and the voters for another four years.

After the election, many Canadians seemed to find it difficult to credit that in these ways one of the world’s great democracies chose among leaders who seemed little more than media images. Indeed, the election seemed to have strengthened many Canadians’ loathing for the whole political and constitutional tradition of their country. In the weeks after the election, demands for fundamental change, even for the immediate creation of “the republic of Canada,” floated through opinion columns and talk shows.

These pleas all started from the assumption that parliamentary democracy was the root of the problem. As ex-MP James Gillies put it in his post-election plea for establishing an American-style republic, a system “designed for a small, relatively non-industrialized unitary state” may have been appropriate in the élitist and anti-democratic day of confederation, but was simply out of date in modern, sophisticated times like ours. In the summer of 1997, that kind of contempt for the Canadian political tradition was a rarely challenged proposition.
¹

In those circumstances, I wondered if it was simply perverse to be offering a book that gave close and often respectful attention to the ways responsible government and parliamentary democracy had
made possible the constitution-making of the 1860s. Yet the 1860s suggest powerfully that the problem of the 1990s lies less with parliamentary government than with the fact that it has largely ceased to function in Canada. When the election was over, what seemed missing from Canadian politics was that dead, and dismissed, and derided concept from Victorian textbooks, responsible government.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, responsible government meant that the survival of the prime minister and his cabinet depended, day by day, on the verdict of a vigilant Parliament. Members of Parliament were chosen by, close to, and dependent on (for those times) a broadly based and well-informed electorate. Contemplating the results of the election of 1997, I found myself wishing we lived under conditions more like those.

If parliamentary democracy functioned in Canada, the future of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien would depend on the Liberal Party caucus. It was widely expected after the 1997 election that Chrétien would not lead his party in the next election. But it was also understood that his retirement would come entirely at his own choice and he would determine the timing. Neither the Liberal caucus, nor the party at large, nor the voting public, would wield any notable influence on the decision. In a functioning parliamentary democracy, however, Prime Minister Chrétien’s leadership – and the choice of his successor – would lie in the hands of the caucus of elected parliamentarians. They would assess it constantly – according to their own political calculations, according to the interests of their constituents, perhaps even according to the needs of the country. The same would apply to the leadership of Mr. Manning, M. Duceppe, and all the other party leaders. If the 301 men and women whom Canadians elected in June 1997 recovered authority over their leaders, they would also recover power over the making and changing of party policy.

No constitutional amendment, not even a legislative act, would be required to return a prime minister’s tenure in office to the control of the parliamentary majority, or to make all the party leaders
answerable to their caucuses. It would simply require an act of moral courage and a little organizing on the part of the backbenchers.

Compared to calls for spectacular transformations – for proportional representation, referendums, an elected Senate, a Republic of Canada – mere parliamentary democracy seems a very modest, unambitious, and anti-utopian notion. It offers, however, the great advantage of being possible. To restore parliamentary authority, no sweeping constitutional amendments and no radical legislative initiatives would be needed. The starting point would be a change of mind. At the beginning, all that would be required would be an act of will by elected members of Parliament, a decision to shoulder once more the fundamental responsibility of representatives in a parliamentary assembly – the making and breaking of governments.

This book has been about constitutional deal-making in a parliamentary system. And it may be in the constitutional sphere that parliamentary government offers the most intriguing possibilities. No sovereign Parliament could possibly permit the astonishingly autocratic (and consistently unsuccessful) constitution-making that our first ministers have engaged in for twenty-five years. Parliaments that actually controlled governments would certainly insist on participating in the making of a new constitution.

“Responsible government,” more or less as the confederation-makers of the 1860s understood it – but under the universal suffrage that prevails today – has been the least “thinkable” of all the political options Canadians have canvassed during the 1990s. It would, however, be relatively easy to reach. If it did not save the country, it would at least offer a political scene more lively, more interesting,
less demeaning
to all concerned than the present spectacle.

– July 1997

In the endnotes, I have cited sources for direct quotations in the book.

I began this book by reading the standard histories of confederation, most notably Peter Waite’s
The Life and Times of Confederation
(1962), Donald Creighton’s
The Road to Confederation
(1964), and W. L. Morton’s
The Critical Years: The Union of British North America, 1857-73
(1964), as well as the two-volume biographies
John A. Macdonald
by Creighton (1952, 1955) and
Brown of the Globe
by J. M. S. Careless (1959, 1963). I was also helped and influenced by the interviews several historians granted me for my radio documentary “Historians on Confederation,” broadcast on CBC-Radio “Ideas” on November 28 and 29, 1991. One of those scholars, Ged Martin, has since published one of the few substantial recent works on confederation,
Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67
(1995). Throughout, I relied constantly on many volumes of the indispensable
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
.

“George Brown and Impossibility” relies heavily on Careless’s
Brown of the Globe
, though I was also influenced by S. J. R. Noel’s view of the union in
Patrons, Clients, Brokers: Ontario Society and Politics, 1791-1896
(1990).

For “Charles Tupper Goes to Charlottetown,” I found no really good study of Tupper. Scholars have not produced a solid collection of the confederation documents, and for the proceedings of the Charlottetown conference, I relied on G. P. Browne’s compilation for
undergraduate use,
Documents on the Confederation of British North America
(1969).

“Ned Whelan and Edmund Burke on the Ramparts of Quebec” relies on Whelan’s writings and items from Burke’s
Writings and Speeches
, as cited in the notes. Conor Cruise O’Brien’s
The Great Melody
(1992) shaped my sense of Burke, although the great hole in that book is Burke on Britain and its constitution. This chapter also owes much to Ian Ross Robertson’s fine book
The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island, 1864-67
(1996).

For “Under the Confederation Windows,” I relied on Browne’s
Documents
for conference minutes and notes. My sense of Mowat’s role was influenced by several works by Paul Romney cited in the notes and by Robert C. Vipond,
Liberty and Community: Canadian Federalism and the Failure of the Constitution
(1991). Creighton’s
Road
led me to Mercy Ann Coles, whose diary remains unpublished.

“If Brother André Went to Parliament Hill” relies on Andrée Desilets’s biography
Hector Langevin, un père de la confédération canadienne
(1969), Jean-Paul Bernard’s
Les Rouges
(1971),
The French-Canadian Idea of Confederation
(1982) by Arthur Silver,
Quebec: A History, 1867-1929
(1983) by Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert, and Brian Young’s biography
George-Étienne Cartier: Montreal Bourgeois
(1981). In
Le Québec et la confédération: un choix libre?
(1992), Marcel Bellavance argues against the legitimacy of the confederation process in Quebec. All the quotations from the Canadian legislative debates are from
Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation
(“the Confederation Debates”), published in 1865 and again in 1951.

Like all post-1990 writing on the Maritimes and confederation, “Leonard Tilley and the Voters” has been influenced by Phillip Buckner’s ground-clearing essay “The Maritimes and Confederation: A Reassessment,” in
The Canadian Historical Review
(1990). I also drew on Carl Wallace’s dissertation, “Sir Leonard Tilley: A Political Biography” (1972). Michel Brisebois of the National Library of Canada and the inter-library loan staff of the University of Saskatchewan
Library helped me locate the rather important and remarkably inaccessible
Debates of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly
for 1865, 1866, and 1867.

Considering “The Leadership Secrets of John A. Macdonald,” I was surprised by how little attention has been paid to the
Economist
’s articles on confederation, which I read in conjunction with Walter Bagehot’s
The English Constitution
. Beyond the standard sources and several compilations of Macdonald anecdotes, I relied on Gordon Stewart,
The Origins of Canadian Politics
(1986), on the party-building process. For the comparison of leadership processes in other parliamentary states, I relied on interviews I did for my documentary “Leadership Conventions” (CBC-Radio “Ideas,” February 1, 1993). One of the interviewees, William Hague, became leader of the British Conservative Party in 1997. Professor John C. Courteney was also most helpful.