For governor-general, a series of firsts
MICHAEL VALPY
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
December 1, 2008 at 10:03 PM EST
Stephen Harper and the opposition party leaders have pushed Michaëlle Jean onto a constitutional cliff-edge where no governor-general has stood before.
No governor-general previously has faced having to dismiss a prime minister.
No governor-general has had to decide whether to accept the entreaties of opposition parties and ask them to replace an elected government with their own coalition.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton made things marginally easier for Ms. Jean Monday by making public their letters saying Mr. Harper's Conservatives no longer had the confidence of the House of Commons and asking her to request a Liberal-NDP coalition to form a new government.
Otherwise, if the letters had been private, Ms. Jean would have faced the added constitutional dilemma of deciding when she could properly read them.
Historian Jacques Monet wrote that the governor-general holds the great constitutional fire extinguishers of Canadian democracy.
There are few rules or templates setting down the sovereign's or governor-general's powers in constitutional monarchies such as Canada. What conventions or traditional practices do exist have roots centuries deep in history and arcane language, but should the government be defeated, and should Ms. Jean accept a coalition agreement, Canada would see its first change of government without an election since 1926.
The fundamental rule is that the sovereign or her representative is required to accept the advice of her prime minister – do as told, in other words – unless the governor-general concludes the prime minister is violating the Constitution, or is no longer able to govern and make Parliament work.
The basis for such a conclusion, as historian H. Blair Neatby says, “is subjective.”
The convention is that if the governor-general rejects advice from a prime minister, the prime minister resigns. And if a government is defeated in the House of Commons on a confidence motion, either the prime minister asks the governor-general to dissolve Parliament – allowing an election to be held – or the prime minister resigns.
The latter occurred in 1926 when Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, leading a minority Liberal government and wanting to avoid a vote he believed he would lose, went to the governor-general, Lord Byng, and asked for a dissolution of Parliament and an election. Lord Byng refused, because an election had been held only one year before. King resigned and Lord Byng called on the Conservative opposition leader, Arthur Meighen, to form a government. It lasted three months.
Both with that precedent and an election held only a few weeks ago, Mr. Harper would almost certainly come away empty-handed if he asked Ms. Jean for a dissolution, say experts.
But one option before Mr. Harper and his advisers is to ask Ms. Jean to prorogue, or adjourn, Parliament – a manoeuvre raising the question whether Mr. Harper would be employing a legitimate parliamentary procedure or engaging in a ruse to avoid facing a confidence motion put forward by the opposition parties which the Conservatives would lose.
Normally, prorogations are granted after a government has introduced a substantial package of legislation on which Parliament has acted and there's agreement that MPs should be given time to go to their ridings and meet with their constituents.
Constitutional scholars are of two minds as to how Ms. Jean should respond.
University of Toronto political scientist Peter Russell, author of a recent book on minority governments, said Ms. Jean would be correct to refuse prorogation when Parliament has met for only two weeks since an election and accomplished nothing. Trent University political historian Dr. Christopher Dummitt, a King specialist, agrees with him.
But historian Blair Neatby, author of the definitive King biography, and University of Saskatchewan political scientist David Smith, an expert on the Crown in Canada, both say Ms. Jean would be on hazardous constitutional ground if she refused a request to prorogue.
Prof. Neatby said Mr. Harper is under no requirement to meet the House of Commons immediately – “he can get away with it for a while.”
Prof. Smith pointed out that, with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty having promised a budget in January and the Christmas holiday intervening, the government was making clear it wasn't asking for a lengthy prorogation.
“So my view would be she would be in an exposed or vulnerable position to refuse the request of prorogation.”
As for the coalition letters from Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton, Prof. Smith said Ms. Jean can't seek advice from them at the same time she's receiving advice from Mr. Harper.
But he said: “She has to be very confident that if she refuses the Prime Minister's advice that another individual would be able to accept her invitation to carry on for some period. That was one of the lessons of the King-Meighen era, that a new government has to be able to continue.”
That is likely why the Dion-Layton letters said a Liberal-NDP coalition had an agreement to govern with the supporte of the Bloc Québecois until June 30, 2010.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/s ... wgg02/BNStory/Front |
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发表于 2008-12-1 23:23:01
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