History of railroading

You can say almost anything about Canadian history if you put John A. Macdonald in the story:

"If John A. Macdonald . . . can build a railroad from one end of our country to the other in four and a half years, why can't we build the pipeline even quicker with the technology we have?"

            -- Doug Ford, promoting the Northern Shield cross-Canada pipeline proposal, September 30, 2026. 

We'll see how long that pipeline takes, if it ever starts. But the railroad took almost fifteen years from the first commitment in 1871, and much of the preparatory work was done by the government of Alexander Mackenzie. 

"Province House in Charlottetown, where ... in 1864, Sir John A. Macdonald gathered delegates in the Confederation Chamber and began the negotiations to create Canada."

            --  Steve Paikin visiting Prince Edward Island, September 30, 2026.

But Macdonald did not "gather" anyone at Charlottetown. He was one of twelve members of the Province of Canada delegation. It was invited by the Prince Edward Island government to meet three other provincial delegations. He spent much of his speaking time there vainly advocating for legislative union rather than federation, and did not chair any of its sessions. He wasn't a knight then, either.

Back to Blogging: museums, books, elections, universities

Back home and with thoughts.

The Maritimes -- never had a bad holiday there. One of our projects this time was chasing sites where my wife's Acadian ancestors had lived and died in various obscure corners of New Brunswick and Quebec. Surprising, the fun to be had in arriving in a small town and chasing down its original cemetery, its "old" cemetery, its current cemetery, and its various memorials, and actually finding headstones of great-grandparents, buildings they went to school in, and so on. Much aided digitally, of course, but in the end being there matters, too.  And great seafood everywhere.

Also, I could not help reflecting pretty much everywhere on the qualitative improvement in small and local museums. Fifty years ago a lot of these, even the charming ones, were basically lineage shrines, haphazardly filled with stuff out of people's basements explained on cheaply printed labels reflecting, shall we say, an unsophisticated historical consciousness. (Come to think of it, the seafood restaurants were often not so great then either.)

No more. I was impressed in several places: the Institute Lefebvre in Memramcook, the Village Historique Acadien near Caraquet, Parks Canada's Restigouche historic site, and particularly the Museum of Quebec Acadians in Bonaventure, Qc. A lot of people have gone through museology courses and programs in the last fifty years, and it shows. Museum funding may have become more sophisticated too. I was educated and entertained and impressed by the professionalism of each of these in their own way. 

The fall book season is upon us.  Two books whose imminent arrival caught my eye are Matthew Hayday's biography Joe Clark, Progressive, Conservative, Canadian (McGill-Queens UP), and Truth before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism (Manitoba UP) edited by Sean Carleton and Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair.  More about them and other books, I hope, before long.

David Eby's election call in British Columbia, two years early and prompted by a crisis in the opposition that is already over, reminds me how badly governed almost all our provinces are at present.  It's the kind of decision that is driven by the triumph of the pollster-strategist-political gamester mentality that is so powerful in Canadian politics.  

Not that I want Eby's government defeated, given the alternative, but if it is, it will be richly deserved. 

Higher education strategy is not one of my preoccupations, but I seem to come back to Alex Usher's Higher Education Strategy blog surprisingly often.  Currently he has a lively conversation posted with the historian behind what sounds like a lively book on the history of the university, William Whyte's The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood.

Okay, itch to blog scratched for the moment.

 

Book Notes: Macfarlane and Puddister on lawyers and political scientists; Boyko on Sandford Fleming

I

At Substack, the political scientist Emmett Macfarlane reports on his new edited collection with Kate Puddister, Disciplinary Divides In The Study of Law And Politics, on the subject of how differently lawyers and political scientists look at questions of law and politics and the constitution and federalism and the Charter and all that. It's a set of academic essays by law profs and polisci profs who work on the contested territory between them.

Having written a bit about both constitutional politics and legal history, I'm tempted to read in it. I can certainly believe in the difference in perspectives. I'd be even more interested in a book about how differently historians and political scientists think about these things.  Or about how differently historians and lawyers do.  

I suspect too few historians care about such theoretical matters to engage the way the political scientists and the law profs actually do. Come to think of it, there are not that many who even engage with, say, confederation any more.

But I do sometimes reflect that a lot of political scientists say "in the time of Jean Chretien" (or the older ones "the time of Pierre Trudeau") to mean what other people mean when they say "in the mists of antiquity." A historical sense does not always seem to be a prerequisite.

II

John Boyko is launching a new biography of Sandford Fleming, In Pursuit of Tomorrow. I recall a previous Fleming biography, Time Lord by the Canadian-American novelist Clarke Blaise, an original and idiosyncratic appreciation.  It was very much focussed on Fleming's role in establishing global time zones and, beyond, on the very nature of time and how it was changing in the 19th century. I remember liking it quite a lot.

I have not yet read Boyko's but it is clear this seeks to be a complete and straightforward biography of the man and all his diverse accomplishments (and some failures too, maybe).  More comments may follow, as Sutherland House publishers has kindly send me a copy to peruse.

Cuts at the War Museum and Canadian History museum

Maybe this is what the Carney government really thinks about the importance of historical and cultural matters in our current situation. The CBC reports:

The Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum will be cutting permanent staff levels by 18 per cent over the next three years due to cuts announced in the federal budget.

Avra ​​Gibbs-Lamey, a spokesperson for the history museum — which also manages the war museum — told Radio-Canada that permanent staff will drop from 371 to 304.

A fixer's history: the Coutts diaries

Down last night to the gothic halls of Trinity College, U of T, for the launch of The Coutts Diaries: Power, Politics and Pierre Trudeau. It’s a selection by Ron Graham from the massive private journals of the late Jim Coutts (1938-2013), longtime Liberal political fixer and chief of staff to Pierre-Elliott Trudeau.

Sutherland House had kindly sent me an advance copy. My first reactions to it were none too positive (except to admire what a handsomely produced volume it is).  I was probably jaundiced against Coutts from the start, for I thought of him as not exactly the cause, but certainly a symbol of the degradation of Canadian politics: its takeover by the unelected strategists, marketing guys, and poll analysts who give marching orders to cabinet ministers, caucuses, and the whole “representative” side of political life.

So at first I was both annoyed and bored with Coutts’ endless recounting of strategy sessions and speech-drafting at Pierre's elbow, as if the diaries were a rewriting of his appointment book.

But the book grew on me gradually. I conceded that John Ibbitson had a point in his rave review in the Globe and Mail, summed up in his quotation from Ron Graham’s introduction:  

at their best [the diaries] are “extraordinary: vivid, insightful accounts of one of the most turbulent times in Canadian history”

The diaries will have great value for researchers and journalists looking for new clues to the mind and measures of Trudeau the First. Trudeau gave him great latitude to drive all the (many) matters that did not engage Trudeau himself. For most of a decade, Coutts was in (often shaping) every significant conversation in the Prime Minister’s office, in the cabinet room, and in endless Ottawa lunches, dinners, and telephone sessions with the powerful and connected.  Historians, political scientists, journalists, and aspiring apparatchiks will be mining Coutts's testimony for decades as to how politics was done in the first Trudeau era. 

And as I kept browsing through – what’s a published diary for if not for browsing through? – I sorta came around to the man writing them.  

They remain intensely focused on political detail.  Beyond a few descriptions of visits to his parents in Alberta and an occasional touch of angst over his long-floundering relationship with a woman from a prominent political family, it's mostly just the job, the job, and the job. But gradually I had to acknowledge Coutts was more than a guy selling politics like cornflakes. 

He did wield way too much power for someone never elected to anything, but he surely had a brilliant policy mind and immense skills at getting real politicians to do what he wanted them to do. And I don’t doubt he cared deeply about devoting his life to something he actually hoped would make his country a better place.

In the end, however, he was not a great writer (except of policy briefs and campaign speeches, I guess). Maybe the Coutts diaries are an important book but not a great diary. He's not Charles Ritchie.   

Paul Wells’s Substack the other day had an interview with Ron Graham about the book.  These are two veteran political journalists, and both are concerned about whether who might read a book like this and the larger implications for serious researched nonfiction in Canada. Graham says:

There’s been a total collapse of the Canadian newspaper and magazine publishing businesses. There are many guilty suspects out there, but we all sort of know what's happened. One thing is that there's just not the vehicle. I mean, when I was doing those Saturday Night articles, I was allowed to spend 3 or 4 months following Joe Clark around the country during an election, with expenses. Now, sometimes I had to sleep on a friend's couch, but they were pretty good. They gave me the length to write about them.

The pay was always crummy, but it's even worse now. In fact, I think it's the same dollar per word as it was in 1970. Then you get into all kinds of issues with attentive readers. Who's buying a book anyway, these days? Then you get into the much more complicated— and I think more important— public policy issue of our shameless abandoning of the nonfiction and historical side of our country. Our publishing industry is foreign-owned, our newspapers are broke, our magazines are charities effectively.

True, all that. Boy, is it ever.

Coutts wrote frequently in his diary about people telling him it was time he got elected to Parliament, took a Cabinet seat, prepared to run for the leadership. I must say, nothing in the book made me feel it was a brilliant idea or even very likely to come true.  

Wells reminds us that Coutts actually did decide to run for election in 1981, and Trudeau sent a backbencher off to the Senate to open a safe seat for him. But he lost. And then the diary, the political diary at least, stopped dead.  

The Trinity book launch was not the usual drinks and book-selling thing, but mostly an interview by Ron Graham of Coutts alter-ego Tom Axworthy and Alexandre Trudeau, all three of them lively and insightful.

 

Book Notes: Mark Bourrie on Poilievre

In the Globe and Mail, Charlotte Gray gives a long, thoughtful, and positive review of Mark Bourrie's new biography of Pierre Poilievre, The Ripper. The book is also long and thoughtful, but not positive. Gray: 

Ripper has one message: The Pierre Poilievre we see today is the same person as the teenager he was in Calgary’s Reform Party backrooms. Mark Bourrie describes that 1990s teenager as “the political equivalent of a hockey goon,” and argues that he hasn’t adjusted his behaviour or outlook since then.

Bourrie is borrowing a New York Times columnist's division of today's politicians into "weavers" striving for consensus and "rippers" who see politics as war.  Gray suggests his book is as much about the socio-economic transformations and media revolutions that have "spawned a crop of right-wing dictators, and caused the deterioration of traditional journalism and public discourse."

Bourrie conclusively proves his point that the politician is an Olympic-class ripper, a viciously brilliant critic who has shown no potential, as yet, to become a weaver who could bring the country together.

Sounds like the book Mark Bourrie was born to write.  Good on him and Biblioasis for getting it out in such timely fashion (something the Globe has also chronicled).

History of Ontario and of elections

The quick, early, provincial election called by Ontario Premier Ford wraps up this coming Thursday.  I don't think I have ever experienced a general election with so little engagement, so little sense of the public paying attention, and so little change in the polls.  All just as the governing party planned. The half metre of snow we have had in the past week must have the strategists thinking they have successfully rigged even the weather.

But if you do care to follow the issues at stake in Ontario, a good source is The Local, a shoestring digital-only newspaper available by free subscription (and always seeking your patronage).  The other day it put out a special election number  (funded, it says, by a lot of friends of the paper throwing in the $200 "taxpayer rebate" cheques Ontarians are receiving from the government (sometimes arriving on the same day as their voters' card.)  Here's the free link: 7 Years of Doug Ford | The Local. 

I wonder if representative government is just fading away, given the dominance everywhere of showman, performers, charlatans, and celebrities.  However, I'll get out to the polls on Thursday, voting who seems best placed against Ford's sockpuppet in our constituency.  Medical system in near collapse, education shattered, housing starts worst of any province in the country, unemployment up throughout Ford's term, cronyism and special dealing everywhere. Hope you vote too, if you are in Ontario.   

Book Notes: ripping Pierre Poilievre

No cover image yet!

The Bibliophile from Biblioasis Publishing reports on how its new biography of Pierre Poilievre, called The Ripper, came about. Gradually, and then suddenly, reports publisher Dan Wells.

Partly it's that Andrew Lawton's recent biography of Poilievre "seems to border on hagiography." Not this one. The title comes from the idea that politics today is about "rippers and weavers," and that Pierre Poilievre, "the angriest man on the political stage, constantly flinging rage" is emphatically among the rippers.

Biblioasis's author is Mark Bourrie, author of the histories Bushrunner and Crosses in the Sky, but also a journalist and a lawyer very much at home in the Ottawa political world. Bourrie may be a bit of a ripper himself -- I've been amazed by the venom he can direct against reviewers who don't treat his books with unrelenting praise. He's likely to be unsparing on Pierre Poilievre.

The Ripper should be in bookstores in March. Bourrie and Wells first discussed a book last spring. Bourrie delivered a manuscript in December, and with the Christmas turmoil in Canadian politics and the election date moving up from fall of 2024 to sometime in the spring, Biblioasis sped up its processes to have books into bookstores by the end of March.  

The book could be newsy then.  Good thing we have some fast-on-their-feet Canadian publishers still.

History of Cabinet government

Can't help thinking that if Chrystia Freeland had stood up for Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott when they were dismissed from political life for having stood up for cabinet government, she might be in better situation today.  And us too.

Emmett Macfarlane: "More than electoral reform, perhaps even more than gov't transparency, the idea of 'cabinet government' is possibly the most blatant broken promise of Trudeau's tenure. It's unfathomable that - as reported by ppl like Garneau and JWR - his ministers simply couldn't reach him, barely ever saw him." — Bluesky
 

We have had a century-long consensus among political scientists, political journalists, and political consultants that a prime minister must be strong, and that it is "democratic' to choose party leaders by an extra-parliamentary process, specifically to insulate them from accountability to cabinet ministers and other elected representatives. Electoral reform will not help that. Nor will a new leader chosen by a vote-buying orgy "leadership convention."

Change will come when a caucus removes a sitting prime minister.  And chooses their replacement.

Historians against the Fascist Turn

The New York Times Magazine has a long profile of Robert Paxton, 92 year-old American historian of fascism, whose 1972 book “Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, transformed historical understanding of France and its politics under German occupation 1940-44 and who has remained a leading authority on fascism and its variants ever since. 

During Donald Trump's term as president of the United States, Paxton remained reluctant to label his regime as "fascist." The Times Magazine profile is mostly about Paxton's turn, on and after January 6, 2021, to become a confirmed advocate for labelling what is going on in the United States as a fascist movement.

Historians have been influential, one might say, in the evolving analysis of Trump and MAGA and what it means. Think of Timothy Snyder, historian of Central Europe and author of Bloodlands, about that region's experiences during the Second World War. Snyder has been one of the leading opinion makers, first, on Ukraine and its resistance to Russian conquest, but equally importantly on tyranny and freedom in the United States (and other democracies). 

Think of Anne Applebaum, student of the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia and its neighbours, whose Autocracy Inc is a current bestseller.

And let me add my friend Ken McGoogan, best know as the chronicler of 19th century Arctic exploration in six successful books, whom the Trump phenomenon has turned into a political sage. His Shadow of Tyranny is hardly about current events at all -- except it totally is at the same time.  It's a collection of portraits of individuals who confronted Fascism in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, during the war itself, and in the postwar period, bringing us up to the near present: writers, politicians, reporters, spies, resistance fighters opposing autocratic rule 

Doug Ford in one sentence

"The Ford government wants sewer pipes that send raw waste into Lake Ontario to be diverted into a channel used by swimmers and rowers, the Star has learned."

                                                        -- Toronto Star, October 9, 2024, page 1.

Book Notes: Alleged Canadian Coups

There is some media buzz about Ted Glenn's A Very Canadian Coup: the Rise and Demise of Mackenzie Bowell. Any time there is buzz about 19th century Canadian politics -- at least in any context other than the toppling of statues -- is surprising.) 

I have not read it  -- and may do so, and it may be terrific --but the title compels to express my despair at how Canada calls any reasonably decisive political change a "coup." The removal of Mackenzie Bowell was in no sense a coup. The process was a normal, indeed essential, part of any functioning parliamentary system.  

Parliamentary government depends on an answer always being available for the question: "Does the government have the confidence of the House of Commons?"  And the equally essential corollary is "Does the party leader have the confidence of the party caucus?" In 1896 the answer came up "No" and so Mackenzie Bowell left office.

I mention this because I have been reading an advance copy of journalist Steve Paikin's biography of John Turner. And the whole chapter covering how the Liberal Party considered replacing Turner as party leader during the 1988 election campaign is entitled "The Attempted Coup," and proceeds on the unexamined presumption that for MPs to consider removing their leader is in all circumstances treasonous, unethical, and destructive of the constitution.

People, it ain't. Pundits, journalists, political scientists, historians, MPs themselves, and Kory Teneycke will all tell you it is. And they are all blowing smoke.

Mackenzie Bowell, by the way, has a terrific Twitter feed -- @PMBowell -- for an old bearded white guy who is dead. 

History of Political Consultants: nobody knows anything

These days, it's generally accepted that cabinets are -- and should be -- no more than the PM's implementation team, and caucuses needed only when a House vote looms. The Leader is everything.  But consultants to the Leader have godlike powers in Canadian politics. Even when they lead Paul Martin to electoral disaster in 2006 or Stephen Harper there in 2015, they generally turn up selling the same services in party leadership races, in provincial or urban politics, or as private sector pollsters, pundits, and advisors. It's a good gig. 

You would think no organization would have access to more or better professional strategists, consultants, opinion analysts, and such than the Liberal Party of Canada. One has to assume the election call this summer was strategized to death. 

And then the election was called. And it turned out all this expensive expertise knows ... nothing, more or less. Not that this election is over, but if the consultants had known the day before the election was called what they know now, they might have had second thoughts.

Which does make you wonder: If the old arbiters of decisions like elections -- i.e., cabinet ministers and caucus members -- still held influence, would they have known any better?  Would actual working politicians have picked up better than the opinion researchers and strategists that Justin Trudeau is not as loved out in the country as the PMO calculated he was? 

They could not do much worse, so far at least. 

If the campaign continues on its current trend, a lot of MPs and cabinet ministers will find themselves out of a job, a fitting reward, maybe, for their passivity and non-involvement. Consultants, on the other hand, have a vested interest in always recommending the election call, and there's not much risk to them.  For them, the more elections the better -- it's where the strategists, consultants, and pollsters really make money. And if their guy loses, well, a lost election generally leads to a party leadership race, starting a new cycle and even more work for them.

Update, September 28:  Now that the election is well over, I find myself suspecting the strategists were maybe not so naive.  They maybe calculated that a minority like the one that resulted was at least as likely as a majority.  But they were perhaps ready enough to setttle for a minority. The odds in late August were good for at least that.  Who knows when they would be better?  And a couple of more years guaranteed maybe seemed better than sliding toward a fixed election date when things might actually be worse. 

No doubt that's what the strategists will begin to hint, anyway.

History of Canadianizing the world's Parliaments

Dominic Cummings is a very Canadian figure, though that probably would not occur to him, and he's British. He is the political consultant who more-or-less runs Boris Johnson's government. Previously he was the behind-the-scenes director of the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum, played by Benedict Cumberbach in the movie that followed. 

It's still somewhat unusual in Britain for an unelected spin doctor to hold such power. But to followers of Canadian politics, Cummings looks a lot like familiar Canadian figures like Kory Teneckye, David Herle, and Gerald Butts  -- that is, unelected consultants who hold more power than MPs or cabinet ministers so long as their client is in power.  

In a Canada-style parliamentary world, one where the leader is everything and political consultants make the leaders -- something Britain is rapidly becoming --  a Dominic Cummings can be top dog.

Except, maybe not. Suddenly he is in trouble. In March, while actually coming down with Covid-19 (he survived), Cummings defied strict British regulations, promulgated by Johnson's own government, against unnecessary travel. He secretly roamed on personal and family errands between London and Durham in the north of England, and many people were exposed to him.

Since the news got out, public outrage over rule-makers who exempt themselves from the rules has been intense. Until now, Cummings has seemed too important to the Johnson government to suffer consequences. He has been vigorously defended by the prime ministerial team, which has tied its own credibility to his.

Except. Turns out there is still some spine in British backbenchers. Johnson is a recently elected prime minister with a large majority.  But right now enough Conservative backbenchers have revolted over the Cummings scandal to put their party's majority at risk. The Guardian:

Johnson’s former political secretary [now a loyal-hack MP] laid out a political truth: “No 10 won’t budge, so calling for DC to go is basically declaring no confidence in PM.”

And many of his fellow MPs, not so hackish, said, okay. let's do that.

More than 35 MPs have so far gone public to call for Cummings to go. However, even the rebels admit they need the number to increase before they have any chance of success. “There’s no chance of No 10 listening to us until it’s closer to 80,” said one MP. Though they already have almost enough MPs to wipe out Boris Johnson’s majority were any vote to take place, they feel they need this higher number to show it’s a rebellion that won’t peter out if a few people fall into line.

Johnson is likely to win this struggle and perhaps Cummings will hold on to his job. But that such a challenge to the leader could surface among party MPs will be shocking to most Canadian politicians observers, and consultants. Farces like the Conservative leadership "race," decided already by which consultant-run campaign has invested the most in the purchase of party memberships, still set the (abysmal) standard of Canadian political accountability. 

Couldn't happen here.  Pity.

Update, same day:  Just for laughs, here's Boris on the same topic 11 years ago.

History of Solitudes

J'ai serai candidate.

I don't follow French language media as much as, well, I'd like to, but even I have been struck by the differing treatment of Peter Mackay's French in English and French media. In English a lot of the coverage is "Well, it may or may not be an problem," and "He has been very busy in the private sector lately," and "He's taking courses now," and "In Quebec they criticize Justin Trudeau's French, just because he's in Ottawa."

Compare Michel David:

En fin de semaine dernière, Peter MacKay a démontré de façon éloquente que les rumeurs concernant ses progrès en français n’avaient aucun fondement. À côté de lui, Andrew Scheer passerait presque pour un académicien.*

Note that David does not write for Québecor, usually identified in English Canada by its separatist-minded owners, the Peladeau family. David's with Le Devoir.

David suggests it's a question of respect. But he does weakens his point by an allusion to the Meech Lake Accord

Ce qui avait le plus choqué les Québécois dans l’échec de l’accord du lac Meech, c’était l’absence de respect qu’il traduisait.

I have lots of respect for Quebec, but it doesn't mean I had or have to support that constitutional botch. 

Update, January 30:  From Tom Morton:

When I listened to a discussion on CBC radio this morning by anglophones, I was appalled. Panel members discussing Mackay had no idea how much effort and time it takes for an adult to achieve fluency in a second language. Moreover, I would argue that Mackay's lack of competence in French after so many years in Parliament reflects a lack of interest in not just the language but the culture and people as well.

_____
* Usage note: I'm pretty sure "académicien" here doesn't translate as "academic." He's thinking of the linguistic masters who form the Académie Française.

History of electoral corruption

Kenney: what parliament have instead of impeachment

Since the appointment of an independent Chief Electoral  Office about a century ago, and of electoral boundary commissions more recently, electoral corruption in Canada has been confined mostly to contests within the political parties -- where, unfortunately. they run rampant and largely uncontrolled.

It is entirely typical that the Alberta government is bringing forward legislation to vacate the office of Alberta's independent electoral commissioner, who is currently investigating the unseemly processes by which now-premier Jason Kenney secured the leadership of the United Conservative Party of Alberta earlier this year. Across the country, party leadership contenders routinely change the rules, overspend the limits, defy the reporting requirements, and buy votes ("memberships" they call them), and then retroactively give themselves a free pass.  Somehow, this culture of corruption rarely becomes much of an issue for the political science academy or the media. And by winning power, the winning contenders have the means to exculpate themselves.

Nevertheless, we should hope that Rachel Notley's call for the lieutenant-governor to refuse to assent to Kenney's bill is simply a performative protest, one Notley feels she can make to express her revulsion without expecting the lieutenant governor to take her seriously. Lieutenant governors do not get involved in political decisions, and we'd have a whole new crisis if they did.

Cleverer, and more seemly, is Notley's latest proposal -- asking the Alberta ethics commissioner to rule that members of the UCP caucus, having a vested interest in avoiding the electoral commissioner's investigations, should note vote on the government's bill. If legislatures are going to create these appointed commissioners, they ought to be prepared to abide by their judgments. 

Update, same day:  the post has been slightly reordered for clarity.    

History and Politics

This isn't a partisan blog.  You have never seen an electoral prediction here, and certainly no electoral endorsements, in all the time it has been running.

But there is one party in the current Canadian election that has me thinking -- historically, I hope, not trying to be a pundit -- about the role of one of our major parties in how we deal with the world we live in.

This came to me after I opened the door the other day to an election canvasser seeking support for the local Conservative Party candidate.

"Not going to find any support in this house," I said and then, without really expecting to, found myself saying "I don't know how anyone can support the Conservatives and look themselves in the mirror these days."

Then I thought I had said enough to this poor guy, and wished him luck or something. He seemed quite willing to back away from the door, actually. People put up with a lot for their party loyalties.

This was right around the time of the students' climate strike.  It underlined, not that it was unclear previously, that deciding how to respond the climate crisis is the great issue of our time. In a strange halting kind of way the world is beginning to accept that.  even if we are not exactly taking decisive action.

But the Conservative Party of Canada? Its standout policy on climate issues is a pledge to cancel the federal climate carbon levy.  The day of the students' climate strike Andrew Scheer announced a highway building policy, because better highways would... save energy and reduce emissions.

I'm not keen on their indigenous policy, their ambiguous position on minorities and immigrants, their spending and tax policies, or even their Senate policy. (Back to patronage? Srsly?)  But it's the climate issue that really has me thinking about reality-based policy making.

You know that line about conservatives standing athwart history yelling stop?   It does seem relevant to this election.

History of ethics in politics

This tries to be a history blog, not a current events commentary. With regard to the Ethics Commissioner report of yesterday, I just want to say:

The unusual thing about this whole SNC-Lavalin contretemps is not that the prime minister and PMO attempted to apply inappropriate pressure upon a minister attempting to do her job.  It's that the minister resisted and pushed back -- the rarest event in Canadian politics, and one not at all encouraged by our political culture. One imagines all the cabinet ministers (of all parties, in all provinces as well as Ottawa) who, when inappropriately pressured by the boss, have said, "Yes, sir, how high?"  And thereby averted a scandal -- or rather prevented us from being scandalized by hearing of it.

The remarkable part of last winter's committee hearings on this matter was seeing the prime minister, the staff advisor, and the head of the civil service all saying (not in so many words, but quite clearly) the same thing: that when the prime minister's office applies presssure, it is never inappropriate. The elected politician, the hired gun, and the apolitical public servant are all steeped in the conventional wisdom of Canadian politics:  a prime ministers and party leaders are a leader, not accountable to those who follow them.

The referendum threat

I don't know anything of Jesse Tumblin, professor of history at Boston College, but what he says about to what caused Britain's current crisis and the dangerous folly of referring almost anything to referendum makes more sense than almost anything else coming out of Brexit commentary.

[Referendums] invert the accountability of representative democracy by holding voters themselves responsible for the misinformation, deception and manipulation of those elected to lead them. Instead of delivering effective policy and renewed unity, referendums leave voters confused and alienated from one another and their governments. What they reveal most clearly is that the elected representatives who authorize them would prefer not to do their jobs.

This scepticism about referendum politics is something John Ralston Saul has been arguing for years, but it seems to have almost vanished in contemporary political analysis.

I don't follow Tumblin on devolution of power to Scotland and Wales -- a good and useful step even though it has encouraged nationalist spasms that could be managed -- though indeed more referendums on the question are indeed likely to be divisive and manipulative.

All that Tumblin might have added is some attention to the even more fraudulent process by which Boris Johnson became prime minister. The Brits are still quite new to the Canadian-style of selecting party leaders by mass competitive vote-buying. So now it is being observed that barely 0.2 percent (a self-selected 0.2 percent) voted in the "election" that made Johnson prime minister.  In Canada we take those kinds of outcomes for granted, and often call them "democratic."

But in the same way as referendums, mass party leadership votes undermine the legitimacy and function of responsible, accountable parliamentary government. And Canada is the prime evidence for that.

Addenda:  There is a new book by Toronto progressive social activist and political organizer Dave Meslin, who wishes all the best things for Toronto and Canadian democracy -- and seems to proceed to fall into every trap of participatory democracy that Tumblin is warning about.  I haven't finished Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up. On first glance it seems both terrifically well-intended and terrifyingly dangerous.  More to come, I hope.

Hat tip to History News Network, which picked up the Washington Post op-ed

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.