Canadians were told (and many probably believed) that we were in Afghanistan to promote “human dignity”.

Now, it seems that senior cabinet ministers knew all along that “human dignity” was not going to come to Afghanistan any time soon. The real aim of the mission was to replace thuggish Al-Quaeda sympathizers with thuggish drug lords who, while equally cruel to their own people, would not harbour terrorists.

That might have been tough for “soft” Canadians to hear, so the gov’t had to dress the mission up as having a genuine “do-gooder” component.

So, is it really imprudent for Canadians’ to know the truth? Or is Stephen Harper a “noble liar”?

But if a remnant of belief in the sovereignty of Parliament remains—pace the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Behiels’ call for a last-ditch recourse to the Supreme Court of Canada—then the remedy lies within the House of Commons itself.
In the age before strict party discipline, when MPs were grouped loosely along general political affiliations, no leader was safe from the backbenches: Sir John A. Macdonald was laid low by fellow Conservative Donald Smith in the Pacific Scandal, and more recently Margaret Thatcher resigned from office when she lost the confidence of her parliamentary party.

Do MPs agree with the prorogation? With a minority Parliament, it’s a good bet that the opposition parties do not, though it would be interesting to know the views of the Conservative members.

Ultimately, Moore and Tomkins and Ajzenstat are right: our elected representatives must not allow partisanship to trump the conventions of Parliament, nor sit by passively while others assume their responsibilities to hold the Executive to account.

Physicians—err, Legislators—heal thyselves!

“A poster session?” he said.”You mean like in a science fair? Who made that decision? Widdowson could fill an auditorium! Crowds would come. Whoever made that decision is missing an opportunity,”

Just a couple of one-liners from the days when political science and political humour were good friends.

The North Atlantic Triangle:-

“Britain had virtue; America had institutions; Canada has neither virtue nor institutions.”

Two Democracies:-

“In America the people hate the government. But Canada is different – there the government hates the people.”

-CP

…………….

Professor Ajzenstat suggests that what we need at this point is a new science of “Canada/U.S. Comparative Defectology.” Just quickly let me suggest that if this is the case then all roads lead to John C. Calhoun, the greatest American political theorist after “Publius.” Calhoun’s whole self-professed endeavour was to remedy the defects of the United States Constitution which he thought had manifestly come to sight after several generations of its operation. One scholar has recently weighed in on the thought of Calhoun and in doing so reveals him to have been amazingly influential around the world in recent decades. I wrote a review for “Choice” which seeks to give a brief account of the book’s treatment of Calhoun’s effort to complete and correct the work of Madison and his colleagues.(See below).

Read, James H. Majority Rule Versus Consensus: The Political Thought of John C. Calhoun. University Press of Kansas 2009. 276p bibl index afp isbn 978070061350, $34.95

The author of this interesting and important book justifies his attention to John Caldwell Calhoun on the premise that Calhoun’s “consensus model” remains an exceedingly influential “ideal” in contemporary world politics. Read explains this influence via the intervening connection of Arend Lijphart and his idea of “Consociational Democracy” which makes Lijphart “probably closest to Calhoun in theoretical approach” of all contemporary political scientists (p.199). In Read’s presentation Lijphart’s work has been a conduit of Calhoun’s political philosophy to contemporary “founders” in such places as Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and South Africa. With respect to America itself it is President Clinton’s nominee for Assistant Attorney-General for Civil Rights, Lani Guinier, who emerges as the major contemporary intellectual disciple of Calhoun. Read describes the “clear parallel between Calhoun and Guinier” as rooted in her assumption “that political elites will be more willing and able to bridge racial, social, and political divides than members of the voting population as a whole” (p.223.p.225). While Read is clear that Calhoun’s “broader political theory cannot be reduced simply to a defense of slavery” and that it was intended to be “modern, progressive and fully consistent with current advances in science, economics, and constitutional law” (p.150) he is nevertheless forced to the conclusion that “Calhoun’s remedy…is workable only in ways that are less fair or just than majority rule” (p.236). But at the same time Read is persuaded that Calhoun’s skepticism about “simplistic democratic evangelism” (p.236) remains of great educative value in the current climate of opinion.

Colin D. Pearce
University of Guelph-Humber

Professor Ajzenstat is sure that her disagreement with Professor Russell is more than “an antiquarian matter, of interest to historians only.” Indeed she says “we are quarrelling about something that affects the Canadian understanding of parliamentary government today, our understanding of individual liberties and indeed, our understanding of Canadian citizenship.” In the clearest terms – “If Russell’s right we’ll have to conclude that Canada got off to a bad start, and is still unstable. If I’m right we’ll conclude that we had a good start, that the Canadian Constitution is one of the political world’s great accomplishments, and that the future’s promising.”

But do these two alternatives – the “Russellian” and the “Ajzentatian” – exhaust all the possibilities? Might we readily hand the olive wreath to Professor Ajzenstat in her “agon” with Professor Russell and nevertheless still come to the conclusion “that Canada got off to a bad start”? Why should it necessarily follow that Professor Ajzenstat’s historiographical victory over the competing “Russellian” account constitutes proof positive that Canada got off to a “good start”? Could one not fully allow all her claims against Professor Russell and yet still conclude that Canada was “Crippled at Birth” to borrow the title of one professor’s book that came out under a less controversial title?

In evidence of a third possibility here which is neither “Ajzenstatian” nor “Russellian” consider Professor Ajzenstat’s post on the Citizenship Guide entitled “Discover Canada.” Professor Ajzenstat explains that this is a document which depicts a country that “makes demands on its citizens” and which “sets out what Canada expects of them” including “respect for human equality, and obedience to the law…(g)etting a job, taking care of one’s family, working hard in keeping with one’s abilities, volunteering, serving in the armed forces or the police, or local militias.” These are all “important Canadian values” according to the Guide. (“When did they ever cease to be?” we might ask). But then Professor Ajzenstat moves on to a comparison of “Discover Canada” with the guide it replaced issued by the Liberals in 1995 entitled “A Look at Canada.” After confessing to “a little exaggeration” she describes this effort as “a whimpy affair” which, while “(a)pplauding Canada’s role as international peacekeeper,” nevertheless “listed fewer obligations” than does the new guide, while suggesting that “saving the environment …planting trees, tidying up, carrying out the garbage” were the truly Canadian “thing(s) to do.”

One could of course hasten to say that the previously unsatisfactory situation with respect to the “Citizenship Guide” has been rectified at last and that in any case the “whimpy” version of the Canadian experience has no relation to the Canadian Founding as it is of comparatively recent vintage dating from the 1970’s or 1960’s at the earliest. As such it bears no relation to the “good start” made by the Fathers at Confederation. But then the inevitable question arises: “How could it be that for twelve years between 1995 until Minister Kenney’s reforms the Government of Canada was foisting on the Canadian people an account of their own history that was at best superficial and at worst misleading and ‘Orwellian’ in its intention? How could such a version of the Canadian experience have worked its way into the governmental bloodstream such that it became the ‘official’ account of this experience for no small period of time? Shouldn’t Canada’s ‘good start’ have been a prophylactic against any effort to convince the Canadian people of a history that is not in fact their own and which only reflects the ideological predilections of a certain elements in Canadian politics and nothing more? How did a fraudulent account of their past gain ‘official’ status when the Canadian people would not recognize themselves in this portrait of it?” Surely if their sovereignty was in full extension they would have never allowed this effort (which must have taken no small amount of time to consummate) to distort the meaning of what it means to be Canadian to proceed.

That this should have been the course of events with respect to an aspect of Canadian civic education certainly raises questions that go beyond “an antiquarian matter” in the direction of the matter of Canada’s “good start.” Whatever else one might say “True Patriot Love” should not induce us to insist on a “good start” if there is a persistent array of constitutional and policy problems, perhaps symbolized by the issue of the “Citizenship Guide,” which might suggest Canada has been “handicapped” in certain key ways right from the very outset of her modern political life.

But for all that what elements indeed would “a good start” contain if not the ones we had? Here one might think of any number of possibilities allowed by the luxury of 20/20 hindsight. But I’ll try one from Article IV section 2 of the Constitution of the State of South Carolina: “No person shall be eligible to the office of Governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being.” Now that’s a start!

Colin D. Pearce
University of Guelph-Humber

Perter Russel edited a book called Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, I am assuming you have read it in full or at least some of it. In this book there is an article by Jean Leclair and Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens where the authors, quoting Alexis Tocqueville, try to highlight the effects that an “individual rights mentality” have on our parliamentary democracy.

Although I am incline to agree with you concerning popular sovereignty argument expressed in your two books, I was struck by the authors claim of the “hardening properties” that equality can have on a society.

Would you have any comments on that subject? Would the claim of the authors, contradict the assumption that when all individuals work for their self-interest, inside the frame work of a constitution, society is better of?

In my view the most concerning claim made by the authors is the rise of a “non-com possibility” situation where compromise between conflicts of interests would be made impossible.

Regards

Marcos