Across Canada, elected representatives are opting to toe the party line on major discussions about the future of the country — or even to sit out the debates entirely.

Take recent events in Alberta. Bill 2 (the Back to School Act) ended a provincewide teachers’ strike by imposing a contract and ordering more than 50,000 teachers back to work. Most government members of the Alberta legislature (MLAs) chose to remain silent throughout the entire dispute.

The incident drew national attention because the government also invoked the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause to remove the teachers’ Charter right to strike.

Read more: The history of the notwithstanding clause

But the other half of the story is the process: party discipline helped push the law through the legislature in record time. For Canadians elsewhere, Bill 2 is a window into how hyper-partisanship and polarization can weaken the checks and balances meant to restrain premiers and prime ministers from acting unilaterally.

Here’s what happened in practical terms: the government moved the........

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