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| Who cares if he lives or dies as leader? It's the accountability that matters |
It has been argued that the Reform Act, which Chong brought into being and shepherded (albeit much watered-down) into legislation, is useless and unnecessary because MPs already have unlimited and unfettered power to hold their leaders accountable to the people's elected representatives (ie, them) any time they want. They do indeed. But in Canada they have not, and they do not, want to use them. Mostly Canadian MPs (and political scholars and political journalists) do not believe party caucuses are entitled to fire their leader's ass, or reject the leader's pet policies, or influence who the cabinet/shadow cabinet should be. And the dutiful little MPs come to accept what they are told.
It's the Reform Act that has got some Conservative backbenchers doing that holding-to-account tomorrow. They are using the process set out for them in the Reform Act to see if the leader of the parliamentary Conservative party has or does not have the support of his caucus. And even though the unhappy backbenchers seem to be acting out of the dumbest and meanest motives anyone can conceive, the very fact that a caucus of Canadian backbenchers is initiating a process to test a leader's caucus support is an absolutely good thing.
Eventually even the Liberals and the NDP and the other party caucuses, no matter how much they sneer at the "Tory Reform" Act, will be unable to resist using the Reform Act process. Eventually what is the most routine process in parliamentary democracies all over the world -- caucuses removing from office (or choosing not to remove from office) leaders who are not up to the job or who may have lost the confidence of the people's elected representatives -- will happen in Canada. Canadian parliamentary democracy will be the better for it. Really, we should say, restored by it.
It's discouraging to hear a CBC report describing what is going on as a "mutiny" among backbenchers. ("Coup," "rebellion," "revolt," and "constitutional crisis" are other phrases journalists seem to reach for in these situations, as if the divine right of kings somehow still prevailed. But they, like the MPs, will learn, kicking and resisting all the way. And the Reform Act, and the way it is used, is one of the institutional factors that will help to enlighten them.
I don't care a toss between Erin O'Toole and the people trying to remove him from the leadership. As far as I can see, they richly deserve each other. But as long as they are fighting, praise the Lord and pass the Reform Act. Some MPs, and some observers, may learn deeper lessons from using it.
For more than a decade Michael Chong MP has done more work than anyone else in Canada toward the fettering of the autocratic power of the party leaders (selected by vote-buying orgies) and to replant some seeds of genuine parliamentary representation in the sterile fields of Canadian governance. He has somehow done it without having some twerp in the leader's office decide to boot him from caucus, or cancel his candidacy in his riding, or anything similar. You'd think someone would think that was a story worth covering.
