CHELSEA, QUE.—Political columnist Andrew Coyne has written a passionate, readable, brilliantly-argued book called The Crisis in Canadian Democracy that should be on every high school curricula and on every federal MP’s summer reading list.

Admittedly, the title could be zippier, but the content is alarming and the conclusion inescapable: we increasingly live in an autocratic state, in the shredded remains of real democracy, at a time when we need a vibrant, inclusive, and representative national government more than ever.

The trouble starts at the top. It’s not quite Kim Jong Un minus the tanks and silly haircuts, but the power of the Canadian prime minister—of every prime minister since Pierre Elliott Trudeau—has been steadily expanding and is now all-encompassing. Admit it, or not, we have a system of one-man rule—definitely with a majority government and, to a lesser extent, in stable minorities. 

Canada’s Blue Economy Opportunity: A Global Partnership Worth Building

All power rests within the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office; at a granular level, in the hands of few (mostly) men—the PM himself and his hand-picked senior political and bureaucratic helpers. Nothing particularly new in that, but, as Coyne notes, this concentration of power exceeds that of every other parliamentary system in the world, including the mothership in London. There are even more checks and balances on the free-wheeling U.S. president, despite the fact that those constraints are under enormous pressure in the era of Donald Trump.

To begin, a Canadian prime minister (and the current occupant has, if anything, affirmed this tendency) controls who is allowed to run for the party, which is normal, but, increasingly, dispenses with open nominations—the fiction that candidates are chosen by local riding associations—in favour of appointing favourites directly.

It happened in the recent federal byelections, in which Dr. Danielle Martin—a health-care advocate, author and head of the University of Toronto’s family medicine program—was selected by Carney’s team to run (successfully) in the federal riding of University-Rosedale. Newly-minted Liberal MP Doly Begum, a former provincial New Democrat MLA, was the PMO’s favoured candidate in Scarborough Southwest. 

Carney’s deputy chief of staff, Braeden Caley—with his boss’ blessing—is expected to be chosen to represent the Liberals in a pending byelection in North Vancouver-Capilano riding recently vacated by former Trudeau cabinet minister Jonathan Wilkinson. He was recently named ambassador to the European Union by—guess who?

This doesn’t mean all three appointees aren’t talented individuals, but, as Coyne points out, and as........

© The Hill Times