One and a Half Cheers

Minority governments crop up with some regularity in Canadian voting history, but they are fragile flowers that do not tend to last long. Of the twelve federal minorities this country has had since 1921, their average length of operation has been one year, eight and a half months. Stephen Harper has outrun the average by a full year at this point, thanks to a set of opponents who seem to have no interest in returning to the polls.

Whenever we find ourselves in a minority situation, experts can be counted on to argue that this form of government is not a bad thing for Canada—or for any country—because it keeps the executive in check. Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, from University of Toronto political scientist Peter Russell, is the latest and one of the most thorough, although ultimately unconvincing, attempts to make this case.

The book is essentially half history of minority government (including Canada and other jurisdictions, as well as a comparison of presidential democracy versus parliamentary democracy) and half analysis and argument for minority government versus “false majority” government, as a check on prime ministerial government. A false majority in this parlance is one in which a party gains the majority of the seats in parliament but only a minority of the popular vote, a situation that also occurs quite often in Canada.

Since 1921, the federal political scene has had more than two viable parties and, not surprisingly, the 1921 federal election produced the first minority government. In the 26 elections since then, Canadians have elected 12 minority governments, 12 false majority governments and 2 true majority governments (John Diefenbaker’s in 1958 and Brian Mulroney’s in 1984).

Meanwhile, in western European and Commonwealth parliamentary democracies (which make up almost all of the 50 parliamentary democracies in the world), 13 percent of the governments between 1945 and 1987 were single-party majority governments, while 87 percent were coalition majority governments or coalition minority governments (lasting usually about three years).

From this history, Russell reaches four general conclusions Russell reaches: 1) Canada with 30 percent minority federal governments since 1867—none of which involved the ruling party forming a coalition government with a smaller party—is far above the average compared to the other parliamentary democracies, where parties almost always agree to form a coalition government; 2) Canada’s single instance of a coalition majority federal government is far below the average (mainly because under Canada’s voting system single-issue small parties do not win seats); 3) Canada’s minority federal governments have been short-lived compared to other governments (averaging less than two years instead of three); and 4) minority governments can make tough decisions and be effective.

While Russell qualifies this last conclusion when talking about other countries, pointing out that it is hard to generalize, he does not hesitate to claim that nine of Canada’s twelve minority federal governments have been “effective” (as have been many provincial minority governments, he claims). What he means by effective is not made clear, and a political scientist should be clear when using such loaded words. Beyond the definition, the book should have included at least a summary list of the bills passed and programs and initiatives undertaken by minority versus majority governments in Canada, which would have let readers decide which type, if either, of government they feel has been effective.

From the description provided of each minority government, I concluded (before reading Russell’s conclusion) that only the 1957, 1963 and 1965 (with its combined track record), 1972 and current minority federal governments have been effective (and maybe also the 2004 minority federal government). In other words, six of Canada’s federal minority governments have been effective, not nine as Russell claims. Again, I reached my conclusion only from reading the brief descriptions of the various governments provided in the book, so I am completely open to being convinced—I just was not convinced by the book’s contents.

The flipside conclusions Russell reaches are that false majority governments can be dictatorial and that in such governments the legislature “as a meaningful forum for the discussion of public affairs virtually disappears” and that they therefore make bad decisions. However, once again no description is given of what constitutes a bad decision, nor is any evidence presented that any particular type of government is more prone to making bad decisions.

As a result of the above, Russell similarly jumps to the conclusion that minority government is the most effective parliamentary check on the prime minister’s or premier’s power (and also that voting reform is the best way to ensure minority government).

This leads him to note that the federal government and a few provincial governments have passed a law fixing the dates of elections, which both somewhat checks the prime minister’s power to control election dates and also has a stabilizing effect on minority governments. He fully explores the implications of the prime minister going to the governor general to request that Parliament be dissolved and an election called even if a non-confidence vote has not occurred, and comes to the conclusion (which I and many others agree with) that the governor general should refuse to call an election in such a situation before exploring with the opposition party leader the possibility of forming a government by coalition or agreement with other opposition parties.

I note this not only because it is a pertinent development, but also because I think we will see Prime Minister Stephen Harper go to the governor general before any non-confidence vote in his Conservative government occurs, and before the fixed election date in October 2009 passes. It will be more than interesting to see what the governor general will do.

Unfortunately, Russell fails to fully, and fairly, canvass other means of checking the power of the prime minister and ruling parties (whether they form a true majority or false majority or minority government).

For example, Russell claims that the House of Commons is not much of a check on the prime minister (or any Cabinet minister) when the ruling party holds a majority of seats (again without giving any evidence). To give one example of many that counter this claim, 60 or so Liberal members of Parliament established their own committee, held their own hearings and issued their own report on bank accountability and bank mergers in 1998; they definitely had an effect on finance minister Paul Martin (in part because he knew he would never become leader of the party, let alone prime minister, without their support).

As a result of his overreaching claim about the lack of power of MPs, Russell fails to address the idea of empowering members of the House of Commons as a check on prime ministerial power.

One key power MPs are lacking is the clear right to be nominated as a candidate in the next election through a democratic process. Throughout the history of Canada, prime ministers have overridden the nominating processes of riding associations, so all MPs live in fear of losing their jobs. This alone often keeps them toeing their party leader’s line.

And while Russell points out that as prime minister Martin allowed MPs to choose the chairs of parliamentary committees, the fact that Harper has withdrawn this right leads to Russell not fully explore this method of empowering MPs. Indeed, a law should be passed giving MPs this power and the power to choose who sits on committees, since they are Parliament’s committees, not the government’s.

Russell does address the issue of confidence votes, but again I think he fails to consider fully the beneficial effect of passing a law with a very restricted definition of such votes, which would ensure that MPs were much more free to vote according to their conscience or the will of their constituents (hopefully after a meaningful consultation).

Of course, MPs also need to be disempowered in a key way, one that Russell thankfully highlights, especially during minority government times, namely by taking away their right to change parties in between elections only to satisfy career ambitions. (There do need to be some exceptions to ensure MPs can dissent from their party leadership’s policies and actions using this method if they can prove to, for example, the federal ethics commissioner that those in leadership positions have broken fundamental party commitments or have refused to resign after being found guilty of ethical or other legal violations.) NDP MP Peter Stoffer has introduced a bill a number of times since 1999 that proposes an automatic by-election when an MP changes parties between elections, but not if an MP leaves his or her party and becomes an independent.

Russell addresses reform of Canada’s Senate fully, but then also dismisses the possibility of it happening. Overall, I think the strongest proposal for change in Two Cheers is set out in this part, and it is to follow Australia’s example in both voting system reform (the system used in Australia usually produces majority governments in its House of Commons) and senate reform (elected in Australia through a voting system that usually gives no party a majority of senate seats).

However, there are many other key changes Russell does not mention that would also check the power of prime ministerial government very effectively without having to change the voting system, or trying to achieve clearly difficult reforms to the Senate.

Such changes would include:

Finally, Two Cheers is not, as Russell notes, a book on voting system reform, but he strongly suggests that such reform is the ultimate creator (and stabilizer) of minority government. However, I believe I am correct in projecting that if the type of proportional voting system that allows voters to rank candidates by preference had been in place for several recent federal elections, Liberals would have received a huge majority of the seats in a few elections in a row (as polls showed that the Liberals were the second choice of almost all voters who had selected other parties as their first choice). Of course, we can never know how voters would have voted if such a system had been in place, but I mention this because I think that Canadian vote-system reformers are not fully considering, or presenting, possible unintended consequences even in book-length treatments of the subject.

And while Russell mentions that minority governments that involve coalitions of parties (the most common form in other countries) have the undemocratic consequence of allowing parties, not voters, to decide who governs, he does not even begin to explore other implications of such coalitions.

Again, a “scientific” examination of minority governments world-wide should, I think, include a summary of what types of compromises have been made by larger parties with their small-party coalition partners. Without such information or examples, the reader is simply left with a morass of questions: Have these compromises, which small parties can essentially force under some voting and parliamentary systems, usually been in the public interest (defined how?) or just in the singular interest of the small party? Have these compromises gone further in the direction of the public interest (again, defined how?) than the compromises many false majority Canadian governments have made because of opposition party, interest group, media or public pressure?

After all, as the helpful chart at the beginning of Russell’s book makes very clear, the ruling parties in the twelve false majority federal governments in Canada since 1921 won on average only 14.75 percent more seats in the House of Commons than they won percentage of the popular vote. And given that these false majorities have been won with usually somewhere between only 40 percent to 45 percent of the popular vote, if the ruling party dropped in popularity by on average only 6 percent during its time in power, the next election could very possibly turn them into a minority government. So it is a complete overstatement to claim, as Russell does, that these governments have been all powerful and completely unfettered.

Nor would some types of voting system reform necessarily lead to a lower percentage of what Russell and others like to call “wasted votes.” If, for example, Canada set out a minimum percentage of votes needed to win a seat in the House of Commons (say 5 percent), three small parties could each win 4.5 percent of the vote, none would get seats and 13.5 percent of votes would be “wasted.”

So overall, given that even with our current first-past-the-post voting system just under half of Canada’s federal governments have been minority governments in the past 86 years, and given that we have not tried any of the above-listed accountability measures that will check the powers of all types of governments, and given that the case is still to be proven that minority governments are “better” and more “effective” and more “democratic” than false majority or true majority governments, why don’t we try these other ways of checking the prime minister’s power first before we take a chance on voting system reforms that will guarantee either minority or majority governments?

And in the meantime, how about we give minority governments one and a half cheers (i.e., just 50 percent approval), not the false majority of two cheers?