Why not dismantle party discipline?
August 30, 2010 | 22 Comments
The NDP is staring down a potentially disastrous situation. Most of its federal caucus wants to save the long-gun registry that the Conservatives have, for years, hoped to kill. The rest of its caucus could, quite awkwardly, help those same Conservatives kill that same registry.
So rural MPs are fulfilling an election promise by killing the registry and urban MPs are fulfilling an election promise by saving it. It’s a position that’s hard to spin either way if the goal is to present an image of a united caucus. But today, NDP leader Jack Layton gave it his best shot. He told reporters that he wants new legislation that would change, but not scrap, the registry. And then, as reported by Canadian Press, Layton released the spin:
If we make the changes that can allow urban, rural and northern Canada to feel that they are not being slapped in the face, that their legitimate concerns about the registry are being understood, then we have a win-win scenario.
Immediately, Layton took a beating on Twitter, primarily from Liberals who are committed to the registry; but he also took some shots from NDP faithful. Twitter might be a bad sample, but it at least provided a window into the immediate reaction from the online political class. And if there’s anything to that snapshot, Layton’s half-way solution might not find many friends among those partisans who support the registry.
So what should Layton have said instead?
He might have taken the political high road and found some inspiration from David Kilgour. Kilgour was a long-time member of parliament who was elected under both the Liberal and Progressive Conservative banners. His time in parliament spanned 25 years, and he sat as an independent for the final few months of his political life.
Kilgour, it seems, was not a fan of party discipline. On his website, Kilgour wrote about an alternative.
If party discipline in Canada is relaxed, it would be easier for, say, Atlantic MP’s to defy their three party establishments, if need be, in support of maritime issues. Coalitions composed of members from all parties could exist for the purpose of working together on matters of common regional or other concern. The adversarial attitudes and structures now entrenched in Parliament and our legislatures by which opposition parties oppose virtually anything a government proposes might well change in the direction of all parties working together in the national interest.
These days, this War of Independence for members of parliament is being fought in Canada almost exclusively by Andrew Coyne (who is still fighting the fight on Twitter as we speak).
Today, Murray Dobbin wrote at rabble.ca (oh, and at The Tyee) that politics needs a game-changer, and the NDP is the party best placed to change the game. He said there is “absolutely no excuse now for the NDP leader not to apply the whip,” so I imagine he might not be keen on this proposal. But there’s no doubt it would change the game. The move would blindside the other parties and force them to respond. Plus, it might just be the principled thing to do.
Tags: David Kilgour > Gun Registry > Jack Layton > Liberal Party > NDP > Party discipline
Comments
22 Responses to “Why not dismantle party discipline?”
Leave a Reply
August 30th, 2010 @ 3:18 pm
Isn’t the Senate supposed to offer balance on such regional issues?
At what point do overarching national issues demand reconciliation over regional interests in the Commons? Is it not incumbent on the parties and their leaders to seek conciliation and consensus in such matters? The Conservatives’ PMB seeks to divide Canadians and the House. Party discipline is important but tangential.
[Reply]
August 30th, 2010 @ 4:49 pm
I think the fundamental question is to whom do MPs serve. Are they duty bound to their party or their constituents? To their principles or to a party line?
The fact that leaders would whip this vote goes to show where the loyalties lie. Why would you vote for someone who doesn’t represent you when it comes to a large issue, but rather does what someone elected in a different part of the country says? Kilgour makes a great point.
And as for the gun registry itself, what purpose does it serve at all? This isn’t a fight about an issue, this is a fight where neither side want’s to lose. This isn’t Urban vs rural, left vs right, right vs wrong. This is not wanting to be the side that doesn’t win.
Call me idealistic but MPs who get elected should represent their riding first, and their party second. Let rural MPs vote to kill it if they want.
This is just sad. The debate is no longer about the gun registry, it’s about loyalty to a ideology. Hypocrites on all sides of the House. This is why people don’t like government.
[Reply]
August 30th, 2010 @ 7:58 pm
What purpose does the registry serve? Well, for a few million bucks a year, it helps police offers across the country do their jobs and deal with violent crime.
And it’s not an either/or situation when it comes to who MPs represent. Binary thinking has no place in a sophisticated democracy, which is, in theory, what we ought to have. The truth is that MPs are responsible both to their parties and their constituents.On certain issues, those loyalties will come into conflict, and that’s when they really earn their paycheques.
[Reply]
August 30th, 2010 @ 8:26 pm
While this is off the topic that Nick has blogged about, I’d like to know Max, how exactly does the registry help police do their jobs?
If the police don’t do their jobs assuming everyone they encounter could have a weapon, they aren’t doing their jobs properly. And if they assume that everyone could be armed, what difference does it make if the person is in a database or not? And if they don’t assume that, and the person hasn’t registered, aren’t they just asking for disaster?
Police have argued against the right to counsel, the right to silence and the right to be free from arbitrary detention.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~clement2/cacp.pdf
All those meet your criteria for being cheap and helping police do their jobs. Do you accept those too?
If the registry works and has value, let’s keep it. But first we need to define what working is, and then test to see if it is. No one has been able to tell me exactly what working means, other than a list populated by some gun owners but not nearly all of them. What’s the value in that?
[Reply]
R. Mowat Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 10:27 am
I agree with you.
Arguably the police would be in favour of a registry that let them know whether or not you took karate lessons. And if one existed, they would certainly check it.
The police can advocate for certain tools, but its up to the citizens, via our elected officials, to determine which tools are reasonable.
[Reply]
August 31st, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
Lucas is bang on correct with “I think the fundamental question is to whom do MPs serve. Are they duty bound to their party or their constituents? To their principles or to a party line?”
Whipping the vote is a ‘feature‘ of our political system that breeds a nasty form of [authoritarian] rule by the few (that being the party leadership) who are either unwilling or incapable of selling party MP’s on a course of action and must therefore resort to threats and punishment to enforce their will.
If the party leader cannot sell their idea/position/platform to those who have allied themselves with him or her how good can that plan/position/platform really be?
[Reply]
August 31st, 2010 @ 3:11 pm
Let’s set aside the tinfoil hat paranoia about the police for a second and stick to the evidence. The police chiefs in this country back the registry without equivocation, and their argument is that it provides them with more sophisticated information with which to do their jobs.
Case in point, from an article in the Edmonton Journal: “When a man with a long gun walked into the Workers Compensation Board building in downtown Edmonton last year, fired off a shot and took workers hostage, police ran his name through the national firearms registry to learn what firepower he was carrying.”
I’m a big fan of more and better information, and that’s a feeling that this government, judging by their tinkering with the census, evidently doesn’t share. Their effort to scrap the gun registry is just another example of their decision to prioritize ideology above information.
Have the police overreached in the past? Sure. But is their decision to support the long gun registry anything like their efforts to campaign against the right to counsel? Hardly, and referencing a document from 30 years ago isn’t about to change my mind about that.
[Reply]
August 31st, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
And “stageleft,” your understanding of how a parliamentary democracy works is fundamentally flawed. You’re essentially describing an American-style system, one in which the party leadership must “convince” its elected members to support their position. But that simply isn’t how our system works, or has ever worked.
Whipping the vote, and party discipline more generally, are features – unpleasant ones, perhaps, for democratic purists – that allow the business of government to get done. The Canadian system is, despite its current state of affairs, still a vastly more effective and efficient one than its American counterpart, which routinely gets bogged down – even deadlocked, on occasion – by filibusters and technicalities.
Should the party leader be able to “sell” his or her ideas to his caucus? Sure, in a perfect world, one in which the members of his caucus are rational, reasonable people who are open to being swayed by the force of an argument. But the truth of the matter – a truth that I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing first-hand – is that many of these people aren’t so reasonable. Despite the merits of a position or its inherent logic, they might still vote against it out of fear of a backlash by voters in their riding – witness the same-sex marriage debate, or any other controversial social issue that’s made its way into Parliament.
Sometimes, a leader has to lead, and sometimes that means whipping a vote here and there. Arguing that we should do away with party discipline is like arguing that a patient should do away with one of his organs; it might not be performing as well as he’d like, but he can’t live without it. It’s the same when it comes to our system of governance; you can’t graft free votes or internal party democracy onto a Westminster system and expect it work any more than you can graft wings onto a dog and expect it to fly.
[Reply]
August 31st, 2010 @ 7:10 pm
It is impossible to discuss this issue on the simple merits of the Registry as effective gun control policy. Because, based on its merits, it simply isn’t effective; the benefits are too marginal to justify its costs.
The Registry was a political response – not a policy one – to the Montreal Massacre. And therefore it is perfectly reasonable to discuss it based on its political merits, of which there are few (and many, depending on your point of view).
Politically, the registry gave a “win” to the anti-gun crowd. On the flipside, the registry is really ineffective as an “anti-gun” policy, and both inconveniences and mobilizes the pro-gun crowd.
Even those in favour of greater gun control should be in favour of the end of the Registry because it merely distracts Canadians from pursuing more effective policy.
In the meantime, rural (mostly Western) voters are further away from political consensus with their urban (mostly Eastern) neighbours, with all kinds of implications for an effective national government, and such…
R
[Reply]
August 31st, 2010 @ 11:05 pm
@Max Fawcett: Really? My understanding of parliamentary democracy works is fundamentally flawed?
I think not. I understand quite well how our parliament works – I also consider it to be fundamentally flawed for the reasons I stated.
While talking about what you think the problems would be without the whip you failed to answer the question, are MPs sent to the House of Commons to represent those who cast a ballot for them, or are they there to represent the will of the party leader?
It is my opinion that in a real democracy it would be the former as opposed to the latter.
Quite frankly I could care less if a given party leader has to work harder to ensure his/her legislative agenda is fulfilled – it’s a tough job, if people don’t want it they shouldn’t apply.
It is interesting to note that you blame the necessity of threats and punishment on unreasonable MP’s who refuse to be swayed (presumably from representing the wishes of those who elected them), and not the party leader who is unable to sell his/her ideas.
Should I assume you consider the various party leaders to always be right by simple virtue of their positions?
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 8:33 am
The long and the short of the registry was that it’s a useless boondoggle. It ran and consistently runs massively over budget and pisses off a great whopping horde of people and frankly does virtually nothing to improve public safety. If the conservatives are good for anything at all (a dubious assertion to say the least) they should be able to put this turkey to bed.
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 11:05 am
I’ve answered the question before, but I’ll answer it again: I don’t believe in binary thinking, so I don’t accept the kind of false either/or dichotomy that you’re offering up. I think – sorry, I know – that the best MPs carefully weigh their partisan obligations against their responsibility to their constituents in formulating a position on a given issue. The bad ones tend to fall completely on one side or the other, as you suggest I do.
It’s also a false dichotomy because there’s never, ever, a single and unified will expressed by constituents. They are always in disagreement, and while one side of an issue may find more support than the other, there will always be constituents on both sides. The MPs job, ultimately, is to do what he or she believes is in the best interests of their riding, their province, their party and their country, and there are no easy shortcuts or rules of thumb available for figuring that out.
[Reply]
ChrisInKW Reply:
September 1st, 2010 at 12:39 pm
This is the hallmark of a good leader: banding together a large, disparate group of people with differing views and concerns and uniting them under a compromise. Discipline is also an integral part of a leader’s tool-chest. Without some amount of order and balance, there is chaos. As leader, strike a poor balance and one risks open revolt and an end to one’s leadership.
If MPs are to be a direct conduit and channel the will of their constituents, why not eliminate them completely and replace them with machines? Program them with the results of various plebiscites and set them in motion.
Of course, this is a ridiculous notion, as it ignores a simple question that has been with us since ancient times: at what point does the broader public interest demand reconciling democratic rights with doing what’s right? MPs are selected to make these judgements. Caucus, discipline and voting are the tools through which they are made.
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
@Max Fawcett
Re: I’ve answered the question before, but I’ll answer it again
Your answer is (quite purposefully I believe) ambiguous. Let me summarize what you seem unwilling to say – an MPs duty is to carefully consider and weigh all the options and then vote how they are told by the party leader when the party leader tells them how to vote, provided of course (as evidenced by the Liberals not so very long ago) they are allowed to vote at all.
Re: …the best MPs carefully weigh their partisan obligations against their responsibility to their constituents in formulating a position on a given issue.
Whether they engage in such a process or not is really quite irrelevant isn’t it Max? An MPs choices on a whipped vote are to [a] submit to the will of the party leader and vote how and when they are told to do so, or [b] be removed from caucus and banished to the back benches.
Is that not the case?
Re: …there’s never, ever, a single and unified will expressed by constituents
Nobody (and certainly not I) said there was a “a single and unified will expressed by constituents“. Is there, or is there not, a majority opinion/position on pretty well any given issue? And if there is, and provided that the majority opinion/position is legal, should MPs not be under any compulsion to vote that position?
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
No, stageleft, you’re confusing ambiguity with complexity. The world is not nearly as simple or straightforward as you seem to believe it is, and our politics reflect that complexity. I have no axe to grind here, and am not a member of any political party – my interest is in trying to encourage a more sophisticated dialogue about partisanship and politics.
Meanwhile, I find your notion that MPs should always represent the will of the electorate abhorrent, to be honest. If our elected officials genuflected before the expressed will of the majority, as you suggest, we’d never have seen the kind of social progress and change that have made this country so different from the one below us. There would be no same sex marriage, no decriminalization of homosexuality or divorce, no end to capital punishment, or any other number of progressive causes.
And, as ChrisinKW wrote, if you believe that MPs should mindlessly parrot the will of the electorate, why not just replace them with a series of rolling polls? In one fell swoop, we could do away with party discipline, whipped votes, and all these other supposed encumbrances to democracy that you find so objectionable. You’d have to repeal the Charter, of course, because it protects minority rights, but once that’s accomplished you’d have a perfectly democratic state, one that bends instantaneously to the will of the people.
For what it’s worth, the purpose of a political party isn’t limited to electing representatives and forming a government. They also play a social function, educating their members and bringing them into contact with different people who hold opposing views. If you only focus on what happens in the House of Commons, you’re missing 9/10 of the real democratic process in this country.
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 6:41 pm
An often cited reason as to why direct, or even more direct, democracy would not work is the tyrany of the majority. It requires a belief that the majority of our citizens do not believe that all of us are entitled to the same rights, and/or that all citizens are not equal. I am not going to say that there are not countries where the majority would not abuse this responsibility but I will say that I do not believe that Canada is one of those countries.
I do believe that we have small [somewhat] radical/fundamentalist and very vocal groups of people who claim their beliefs, values, ideas, are held by the majority of Canadians – but as we’ve seen in the last number of elections that is not the case. IIRC Mulroney was the last Canadian Prime Minister who could claim a real majority after receiving [ever so] slightly more than 50% of the popular vote.
I do not believe that the majority of Canadians would vote to recend the right to same sex marriage, I do not believe the majority of Canadians would recriminilize homosexuality, and I do not believe that the majority of Canadians would recend divorce laws. Nor do I believe that they would ban women from voting, take away the right of certain ethnic groups to own property, reinstitute any form of racial/cultural segregation, vote to spend tax dollars on new residential schools and restart Aboriginal assimilation programs, or overturn any of the other important rights and liberties that make us so different from the one below us.
(Before someone feels compelled to point out that I didn’t mention capital punishment there is a reason for that – I am not necessarily opposed to the practice in certain cases.)
You would have us believe that were Canadians given a greater say in their affairs that we would revert to the Canada we were on July 1st 1867. Happily we are not the Canada we were 132 years ago, few would dispute that we are the Canada we were even 50 years go, and fewer still would want to return to the laws of that time.
If we can say that “if you believe that MPs should mindlessly parrot the will of the electorate, why not just replace them with a series of rolling polls?”
– can it not also be said that “if you believe that MPs should mindless parrot the will of the party leader, why not just replace them with Canadians voting for party leaders, having Elections Canada tally the vote, weight each leaders level of authority based on the percentage of the vote they received, and do away with the salaries and infrastructure currently required to maintain the other 304 MPs we now fund“?
In that perfect world you mentioned a few comments back maybe parties would educate their members and bring them into contact with different people who hold opposing views – but in the real world that isn’t what happens. In the real world the party distributes propaganda to its’ membership telling them how “the other guys” are out of touch with Canadians, would ruin it if they had the chance, and offers official party talking points just in case they are asked any questions.
That said, lets not derail this into whether or not the party system should or should not exist – unless of course you think that the party system could not exist without the party leader having the authority to whip votes and meat out punishment to MPs who defy his or her political will.
[Reply]
September 1st, 2010 @ 6:44 pm
PS: In subsequent comments, should the necessity arise, I promise to spell rescind correctly
[Reply]
September 2nd, 2010 @ 12:03 am
You’re putting words in my mouth, and I don’t appreciate it. I never once said that we’d revert back to the Canada of 1867. What I said is that Canada wouldn’t look the way it does today had its governance been determined by a pure and unmediated representation of the will of the majority.
As far as your example goes, you have the chain of causality totally backwards. I’m not suggesting that majority populations would vote to rescind rights, although I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question. But they almost certainly wouldn’t grant new ones – in every case you mention, those rights were extended long before the general public expressed support for them, and in many of them the act of extending the rights served as a teaching moment that brought people around on the idea in question.
And, AGAIN, I’ve never said that I think MPs ought to do what their leaders say without qualification or condition. It’s more complicated than that – they need to weigh both sides. The world isn’t an either/or proposition, and I’m wary of those who would make our politics that way.
[Reply]
September 2nd, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
I was not intending to put words in your mouth, however when you say things like
“And, as ChrisinKW wrote, if you believe that MPs should mindlessly parrot the will of the electorate, why not just replace them with a series of rolling polls? In one fell swoop, we could do away with party discipline, whipped votes, and all these other supposed encumbrances to democracy that you find so objectionable. You’d have to repeal the Charter, of course, because it protects minority rights, but once that’s accomplished you’d have a perfectly democratic state, one that bends instantaneously to the will of the people.”
– you are indicating that things would go backwards.
re: “I’m not suggesting that majority populations would vote to rescind rights, although I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question. But they almost certainly wouldn’t grant new ones – in every case you mention, those rights were extended long before the general public expressed support for them…”
And I am saying “that was then and this is now”, we are not the country we once were. In any event, both of our positions are speculation on what we think Canadians would do or how they would act. You are looking at history to form your opinion (and there is no doubt that that is a valid process) and I am looking at what I see around me today – possibly that’s overly optimistic outlook.
With regard to your position on how MPs should/should not cast their vote, my sense is you believe that casting it as they are told by the party leader is almost always the best practice; regardless of what the constituency may think or want (if in fact the constituency has made their feelings known in significant numbers).
[Reply]
September 2nd, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
Either you can’t read, or you don’t want to. I’ve never once said that voting in any way, be it based on the will of one’s constituents or the demands of a leader, is “the best practise.”
In this discussion I’ve consistently advocated in favour of a more nuanced and complex understanding of how politics works. I’d just as soon criticize an MP who relies unequivocally on the will of his constituents as I would an MP who votes unthinkingly the way a party whip tells him that he must. Politicians – the good ones, anyways – are obligated to do their own thinking on every issue and determine how they ought to vote, based on the information at hand.
[Reply]
September 2nd, 2010 @ 10:25 pm
Re: Politicians – the good ones, anyways – are obligated to do their own thinking on every issue and determine how they ought to vote, based on the information at hand.
Something which presents the MP with potentially significant issues. Does s/he vote how s/he personally feels is in the best interests of his/her constituents or the country (downside = potential conflict with party and constituents), what his/her constituents want if that is known (downside = potential self-conflict or conflict with party), or how his/her party leader demands that s/he vote (downside = potential self-conflict or conflict with party).
I am a proponent of [at the very least more] direct democracy. I believe that (for the most part) Canadians are intelligent enough to make rational decisions in conducting their affairs and to see a very small group of wealthy, well connected, people making the decisions is, to my mind, a [very] large step away from real democracy.
I am not idealistic enough to believe that there would not be initial growing pains in instituting [at least more] direct democracy, but I firmly believe that we would not only overcome those challenges (many of which I believe to be based on overblown fear of the potential unknown – see ‘we’d have to throw out the Charter‘) but come out of it a better nation and people.
[Reply]
September 3rd, 2010 @ 8:11 am
“how his/her party leader demands that s/he vote (downside = potential self-conflict or conflict with party).”
should read
how his/her party leader demands that s/he vote (downside = potential self-conflict or conflict with constituents).
[Reply]