Talking to Americans

Americans!

Jeopardy has been having a reunion of former champions, and the combined talent has been running up big numbers by knowing the answers  -- rather, knowing the questions -- to EVERYTHING.

Until last night, when the contestants included all time Jeopardy master Ken Jennings and more recent long-run competitor Austin Rogers, and the answer given was: On this date in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was proclaimed.

Who knew the right question? Crickets. None of the competitors responded. Host Alex Trebek, good Canadian boy, was indignant, and the contestants laughed ruefully. Can't expect anyone to know that! 

The bit is probably online somewhere, but....

Notes and updates UPDATED

Just to say I was pretty completely wrong in the post of February 19 when I speculated that differences over SNC-Lavalin were really a pretext for a larger disagreement between Jody Wilson-Raybould and Justin Trudeau over policy on Indigenous matters.  At the time I did not expect that it would turn out that cabinet and the PMO had trampled on the obligations of the attorney general.  It's pretty clear now that the issue of the AG's independence was real and serious!

Which is also a reminder: I try to make this a blog about history, but when I do drift into politics, I ain't an insider. I may have some (historically-informed) ideas, but I don't have any insider buzz about political events

But. I am still struck by the kind of complacency about prime ministerial autocracy expressed by political scientists and commentators. Journalists last night were speculating about if and when Justin Trudeau would throw Jody Wilson-Raybould out of the Liberal party, without a flicker of realization that such measures come from the same attitude that allows prime ministerial staffers the freedom to bully and threaten a government minister in the exercise of her duty.

Not just journalists take this view. I find it comes constantly from political scientists and constitutional scholars, who deny that there is any serious problem of PMO overreach and actually cite the current crisis as proof that prime ministers are held adequately responsible in our existing politics. A striking recent example (from a skilled and hardworking scholar) is this recent blog post by Philippe Lagassé. For my complaint about another example, see here and scroll down.) They are everywhere once you become aware of them.

Update, March 4:  I've been criticizing the tolerance of journalists and scholars of prime ministerial autocracy. Let me just note that Andrew Coyne is now thinking much as I am, both about Philippe Lagassé's views and about the necessity of caucus control of leader selection (and removal):

If the system worked, it would not be the prime minister, having been credibly accused of something perilously close to obstruction of justice, musing aloud over whether his accuser can maintain her position in caucus. It would be the caucus deciding whether he can keep his.

Both he and I were writing before Jane Philpott's resignation today.

Update, March 1:  Russ Chamberlayne writes:

With the public comments last week of Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick and Jody Wilson Raybould's mention of him yesterday, I got out Memoirs of a Very Civil Servant by Gordon Robertson, who held the Clerk position under Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. Feeling put off by the overly dramatic nature of some of Wernick's comments, I was drawn to Robertson's rational tone.

In his discussion of the Clerk's role, he makes (p 305) a point about good judgment:

"Success in it depends on judgment and confidence - good judgment on the part of the clerk, and the sure confidence of, above all, the prime minister but also of ministers and heads of departments."

He then quotes Isaiah Berlin's definition of political good judgment: "To be rational in any sphere, to display good judgement in it, is to apply those methods which have turned out to work best in it."

It's been a long time since I looked at Robertson's memoir, but when I did I was struck by his avidity for striking a constitutional deal of almost any kind, without much concern about the principles the deal would sustain or ignore, and his frustration while in retirement with Pierre Trudeau's arguments of principle when there were deals to be had at Meech and Charlottetown. I might have said Wernick's recent performance was similar. Neither Clerk was specifically partisan, both were wholly focussed on getting the government what it wanted, without much concern for the right thing.

But Robertson, quoted by Chamberlayne, goes on to wonder whether: 

 "...the balance in our government today [(ca. 2000)] does in fact 'work best in it.' An overly great concentration of power at the centre has a price with the best ministers and the most creative and effective heads of departments. They are the very ones who do not need to stay, if they find their role too limited or frustrated by central interference."

Which sounds like something I might agree with.

Befuddled by history?

Kevin Drum, a progressive blogger at the left magazine Mother Jones, is "befuddled by history" -- or maybe just by historians.  He's been informed of a new book that sets out to correct the belief that white women in slave regimes were "reluctant actors:"

The scholarship of the 1970s and ’80s, in particular, did much to minimize their involvement, depicting them as masters in name only and even, grotesquely, as natural allies to enslaved people — both suffered beneath the boot of Southern patriarchy, the argument goes.

Huh? is more or less his reaction. He's reasonably well informed about American history and racial issues, and "until five minutes ago, before I read this book review, it never would have occurred to me that white women were anything less than full partners with men in the white supremacy of the antebellum South."  Did he really miss something, he wants to know. 

His larger point, I take it, is that we historians are all too often trumpeting our work as a bold new corrective to widely-held misconceptions, when really we are simply differing from some obscure, and perhaps never widely accepted, argument or suggestion known only to a few other specialists in the field.

Yeah, maybe we do a bit.

History of the independence of Attorneys-General

Oliver Mowat is looking down

Adam Dodek, academic and constitutional scholar, observes in today's Globe & Mail that the Trudeau/Wilson-Raybould clash has arisen because in Canada the Minister of Justice, who had a large government department to run and important parts of a government's legislative agenda to direct, is also the attorney-general, in effect the cabinet's legal counsel, bound to give the government independent legal advice.  He declares the offices create unavoidable conflicts and must be split:

The answer for why the two offices are combined is simple, if unsatisfying: That’s the way it has always been in Canada. But governments do combine and divide departments from time to time. [...]  The Justice Department and this combined role, however, has remained largely unchanged since the department’s creation in 1868, with the biggest change coming in 2006, when its prosecutorial arm was spun off into a separate office, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC). Of course, it is this relationship that’s at the heart of the current controversy involving the PPSC, the attorney-general, the Prime Minister’s Office and SNC-Lavalin.

There is no deeper historical reason that the two jobs are fused in Canada, either. In the British parliamentary system, from which Canada inherited its governance structure, the attorney-general and the Minister of Justice (Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice) have always been two separate positions. The British minister of justice is a member of cabinet, while the attorney-general is not, although the latter does attend cabinet meetings.

I know that as a historian I have to say this, but there is a deeper historical reason. And since governance in Canada goes back before 1867, it's way back there.  Indeed, the question of splitting or uniting the two roles was extensively debated, with much legal advice sought, back to the 1840s and 1850s.  I was able to confirm this in very satisfying fashion by grabbing my copy of Paul Romney's 1986 classic Mr Attorney.

Before confederation (and after), many elected representatives of the people in British North America were men who would not have even had a vote in Britain at the time: farmers, merchants, journalists, etc. Legislative and administrative expertise was often at a premium in early legislatures. Lawyers tended to have those skills, and frequently rose to positions of leadership and responsibility.  Oddly, attorneys-general were among the few politicians with a substantial income from their political office, since their job then included actually going to court to represent the crown (and being paid for their time). As a result, AGs were able to devote more time to politics (particularly by delegating their courtroom chores to other lawyers) than most barely-paid legislators and ministers. As a result, the pre-confederation attorneys-general tended to be, not merely in cabinet, but to be premiers and prime ministers.  Such grubby details would be incomprehensible to most British statesmen of the day, of course. British North American politicians were well aware of the British example of non-cabinet AGs, but also understood the different circumstances of North American politics.

After confederation, there was another deep historical reason for the fused role of AGs: federalism. One of the vital jobs of a provincial attorney general in Canada is to determine where the province's authority ends and where that of federal government begins. As a result, right from confederation, attorneys general were deeply involved in both the policy-making and the litigation of federal-provincial relations, and the legal and political aspects were so enmeshed as to require the AG to be in cabinet, if not actually leading it.  Again, this was not a situation British politicians had to consider.

Really, none of this history need affect the question of principle that Adam Dodek addresses. In fact, mid-19th century Canadian politicians and jurists debated the question at great length and no small sophistication, all of which I could follow in some detail in Romney's book. When Canada diverges from British parliamentary norms, there are generally reasons worth exploring -- sometimes way back. And it's nice to see a case when the history book that demonstrates that is already written and in print. (I have massively under-reported here the subtlety of Romney's presentation!)

On a 21st century note: Dodek argues the attorney general should be an MP, not a cabinet minister.  But would that provide the independence required?  It is understood that cabinet ministers are bound by cabinet solidarity, but today MPs in Canada are equally bound by party solidarity. Since it is now Canadian political custom that any MP who dissents from party orthodoxy can be summarily dismissed from caucus (and probably denied renomination) by the party leader, could Canadians confidently believe an MP was a more independent AG than a cabinet minister could be?

Canadian particularities still influence abstract Westminster principles. 

Emerging Historians Program at Heritage Toronto

Heritage Toronto, the "charitable arms-length agency of the City of Toronto established in 1949 to promote a greater appreciation for the city’s rich architectural, cultural, archaeological and natural heritage," seeks applications for its Emerging Historians program.  As far as I can tell from the site, the program introduces would-be historians and heritage workers to what Heritage Toronto does.

Heritage Toronto also released Changing the Narrative (pdf here), a seemingly rather gloomy "State of Heritage" report to Toronto City Council.

And they are looking for volunteers too.

Image: Heritage Toronto: Emerging Historian as tour leader

Three Weeks, in Scarborough

Next Tuesday evening, February 26, I'm talking to the Scarborough Historical Society about Three Weeks in Quebec City, confederation, and why it matters. Friends and follows can find details and further info on the Society website here

Heroic historian of Davos: update

We recently saluted Rutger Bregman, the historian who told the billionaires of Davos a few home truths.

Bregman now reveals that he then attracted the attention of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.  The interview did not go well, The Guardian reports,

Things become tense when Bregman tells Carlson that Fox News has tended to ignore tax because “what the Murdochs want you to do is scapegoat immigrants instead of talking about tax avoidance”. Bregman then accuses Carlson of being bought by the Murdoch family and the Cato Institute, a rightwing thinktank of which Carlson was a fellow until 2015. Bregman says Tucker took the “dirty money” of the institute, which is funded in large part by the Koch brothers and opposes higher taxes.

He says Carlson is “a millionaire funded by billionaires” and “not part of the solution” but “part of the problem, actually”.

Bregman finishes by acknowledging that the interview probably wouldn’t be aired, but saying that he “went to Davos to speak truth to power and I’m doing exactly the same right now”.

Carlson, near-speechless for much of the interview, replies by saying: “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, you tiny brain. You’re a moron. I tried to give you a hearing but you were too fucking annoying.”

Fox did not air the interview. Happily our historian was making his own recording, which he has now released.

Update, February 25:  Don Pittis at CBC News considers how billionaires determine much of what the media says about these issues:

From the Wall Street Journal controlled by Murdoch, Bloomberg controlled by Michael Bloomberg, the Washington Post controlled by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Canada's richest family, the Thomsons that controls both the Globe and Mail and Reuters, is it any wonder we don't get front pages filled with stories outraged that billionaires don't pay enough tax?

HIstory of Prime Ministers and Cabinets WITH COMMENTS

Less minister of justice, more Puglaas

As this slow-motion political crisis over SNC-Lavalin and ex-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould soaks in, I find myself with two longer-perspective thoughts.

The first is the extraordinary non-accountability of Canadian prime ministers.  Sure, Trudeau's future election prospects are taking a hit, but other than that, who is there to talk to him, to say, JT, you are screwing up, you have to change, and if you don't we are going to take steps.

Cabinet no longer holds anything like that role, it seems.  Caucus has accepted it is responsible to the leader, not the reverse. The party at large is for fundraising and election readiness, not for anything political. And the key people surrounding the leader are his hired hands, their jobs and careers and reputation entirely dependent on their unwavering commitment to his interests alone. The Butts resignation will not change that.  There's likely to be another would-be Gerald Butts waiting in the wings.

It's not, shall we say, the classical model of parliamentary democracy, with the executive holding collective responsibility to both the majority caucus and the legislature at large.  Might work better if it was.....  But n our present political culture, it's barely a fixable problem.

The second takeaway is that maybe SNC-Lavalin was never at the heart of this matter.  Perhaps the deeper problem in the cabinet relationships was that when they invited Jody Wilson-Raybould to be Justice Minister, the PMO team thought that was Reconciliation:  see, an indigenous woman can hold an important cabinet post.  But look at her career path, and it seems that she took the job in order to be able to work on the big legal changes that would lead toward real Reconciliation: respect for treaties and title to land, of real First Nations governments and the secure revenue base that would enable them to succeed.

The clash of expectations over that seems to have been far greater than any matter of nuance over how to deal with SNC-Lavalin's criminal culture.  And that is not very fixable either.  Wilson-Raybould is part of a generation of First Nations leaders who are not interested in tokenism and have very clear ideas of what real reconciliation has to be based on.

And it's not just that the Trudeau team is not ready to take those kinds of initiatives. It's that, given what Canada is willing to accept in matters of First Nations rights, it's probable that no Canadian government could presently commit to what Wilson-Raybould would take as a minimum -- and survive.

Reconciliation is going to be very hard and involve a big change in understanding and expectations.  Gonna take a while getting used to it. Justin Trudeau is not going to be the last Canadian leader to find it whacking him in the back of the head when he least expected it. As long as the Ottawa calculus is mostly about the price in Quebec seats of holding SNC-Lavalin to account, we probably have not even figured out what really drives this crisis. 

Update, February 23:  Jarod Milne comments:

Great comments. This is why so many Indigenous activists are criticizing the Trudeau government's efforts as 'tokenism' or ceremonial at best. The frustrating thing is that most Indigenous people have in many respects been very consistent about what they're looking for over the past 150 years, as John Ralston Saul's book The Comeback showed with its extensive quotes from Indigenous thinkers. Harold Cardinal wrote in The Unjust Society that 'the Indian has been shouting what he wants'...and he wrote that 50 years ago.

Unfortunately, for some reason the rest of us are more inclined to waste time and money fighting Indigenous claims and desires than actually trying to at least meet them halfway...which would have saved everyone a lot of time, money and grief in the long run, particularly when just about all the Indigenous people I've read and spoken to show no indication of changing their desires.

Black History from the United States

I've been busy enough, but mostly I post when something seems worth posting.  A ten-day hiatus on posts to this site makes me think CanHist must be in the doldrums right now. Amirite? Not much doing in the way of major publications, to my knowledge, and not many interesting news breaks, either, 'tseems.

Recently I volunteered to receive an advance reading copy of Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation by the American journalist Steve Luxenburg  (pub. date February 12)  Unfortunately it's a digital copy with every page massively watermarked  "Property of WW Norton Not for Distribution," which makes it practically unreadable -- and indeed I have not read much of it. 

But it's pretty impressive: a vivid 600 page narrative around the events that provoked the landmark 1896 law suit in which the American Supreme Court declared that "separate but equal" facilities for whites and non-whites were perfectly acceptable and did not undermine the equality rights of black Americans. Plessy was launched by a committee of black New Orleanais who hoped to see the endlessly ramifying discrimination against newly freed ex-slaves stopped dead by a successful suit against the "Whites Only" cars of American railroads. The Supreme Court voted 7-1 against Plessy (and the one vote opposed was no triumph of rights-talk, either), and segregation rules for another half century and more.

Wikipedia reports that Plessy is widely regarded as one of the worst decisions in U.S. Supreme Court history. (But Brett Kavanaugh is just getting started.)

Who in Canada is even trying to write big books like these?  And who would buy 'em if they did? 

At Policy Options on leadership accountability

Regular readers will be familiar  (wearily so?) with my views on parliamentary leadership accountability and the need for backbenchers to hold leaders, including prime ministers, to account --and when necessary to be prepared to fire them and choose their replacements.

This is just to say that if  you want to share these views with your friends, colleagues, and your elected representatives, you no longer have to link to posts from this blog  (or send them a copy of 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, not that that is a bad idea).  Link 'em to the prestigious, authoritative, (and proof-read) online magazine Policy Options, which has just this afternoon posted my "Proportional Representation Won't Solve Canada's Accountability Problem."

Update, February 21:  Vancouver Sun columnist weighs in on these matters here

Something to read for Black History Month

Black History Month seems to be working. Cecil Foster's They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Railroad Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada isn't quite published yet, and already it's listed as out of stock at Biblioasis, the lively little publishing house in Windsor that has begun venturing into historical nonfiction.

The title sounds... ambitious. But the excerpt in the Globe and Mail last Saturday argues effectively that the porters were not just a remarkable community of labour. As almost the only organized black network in Canada for a long time, they launched campaigns for non-racist immigration policies and civil rights for African-Canadians.

Following the Second World War, Mr. Grizzle and his fellow porters fought to create a new Canada by embodying a citizenship that reflected the diversity and dignity of humanity itself. They battled to normalize what is now routine, and even taken for granted, in our daily living: Black workers holding a wide range of jobs, including civil-service positions, and black people from Africa and the West Indies immigrating and becoming citizens of Canada.
We should always remember this was not a fight they were sure to win. We should also not forget that Canada wasn’t originally intended to be a multicultural society. Official multiculturalism was a fluke of history, and some thought of it as democracy gone wrong. Against great odds, the sleeping car porters sacrificed themselves and all they had, figuratively speaking, to put a stick in the wheels of a Canada headed in a different direction. The train porters turned Canada black, brown and a host of other shades. Yet this important piece of Canadian history has yet to be fully told.

More on black history and Black History Month in Canada: Black History Canada
Photo: CN Collection, Museum of Science and Technology via Globe & Mail