Stephen Harper: The Straw That Broke the Back of Responsible Government

Tell me if you remember any of these quotes from the 2008 Parliamentary crisis:

"Conservatives would go over the head of Parliament and of the Governor General." - John Baird, MP

"It's a kind of coup d'état." - Jean-Pierre Blackburn, MP

A coalition government would be "irresponsible and undemocratic." - Jim Prentice, MP

The Conservative government "will use all legal means to resist this undemocratic seizure of power." - Stephen Harper, MP

Please note the letters behind the names of each of these Ministers of the Crown - M for Member, P for Parliament.

Stephen Harper and his whole caucus are elected Members of Parliament.  It's by virtue of convention that, in Canada, the leader of the Party with a majority of seats in the House of Commons forms government.

By convention.  

By law - by our Constitution - whoever forms government is accountable to Parliament.  By law, the Prime Minister must be able to retain the confidence of Parliament, the people's elected representatives.  Government, legally speaking, is the Crown and her advisors - the Ministers of the Crown.

What we have now are the people's representatives who's job is to hold government to account being government, and keeping Parliament at bay.  It's as though the lawyers, the jury and the judge were all one and the same.  They aren't serving two masters in this fashion; they're strictly serving their own interests.

As I will be telling several Grade 10 classes today, a responsible government, that pillar of our Westminster Parliamentary/Constitutional Monarchy system that came out of Magna Carta, is one where government is responsible to Parliament - not citizens.  Citizens elect Parliaments, not governments.

Here's another gem of a quote for you: Stephen Harper responding to a reporter's comment that his government had been found in contempt of Parliament, to whom he is accountable:

"That was a Parliamentary motion, passed by the Opposition Parties.  That is not the substance of this election or what the Canadian public care about.  The Canadian public don't care about the maneuvers in Parliament and the wording of various motions."

Harper was probably right about that.  But that's a big part of the problem.

There is no legal mechanism by which Canadians can hold our government to account except through our elected Parliament.  When we disengage from how Parliament operates and focus strictly on government, we're essentially shutting the door on our levers of control.  Is it any wonder our current government is encouraging us not to care about Parliament?  Or putting the responsibility for electoral engagement strictly in the hands of partisan interests?  

First, you tell people not to care about their only means of holding government to account.  Then, you ensure that only partisan interests can promote voting - which they will do, but only to those they want to vote.  If that's not irresponsible and undemocratic, I don't know what is.

When we donate to Political Parties with a growing amount of money, we are essentially delegating the power that is constitutionally invested in our democratically elected Members of Parliament and giving it over to political operatives who are, at best, elected by partisans only - though most of them aren't elected at all.

Let's be clear - we, as Canadians, don't elect government - we elect Parliamentarians to hold government to account.  

Government is the employee, Parliament is the boss, we are the Board.

As Stephen Harper has increasingly consolidated power, he has done everything within his power to undermine Parliament and any body that is designed to hold government to account.  

He and his partisan team have gone above and beyond to attack and marginalize any and every Opposition leader in Parliament who has the job of holding government to account.

I'm less worried about whether Trudeau is "in over his head" - that's just a line, a message point crafted by un-elected PMO staff that is now being parroted by Conservative MPs that seem to be partisans first, the people's representatives second.

I''m more troubled by how this Conservative government is increasingly going over the head of every legal tool that exists to hold them accountable.

Because in the system of government we have right now, on paper and in practice, when government doesn't account to Parliament and Parliament answers to Political Parties, not citizens, then there is no accountability to Canadians at all.  

Unless, that is, you pay the price of admission and join a Political tribe.  But that wouldn't be very democratic, would it?

It's supposed to be the House of Commons, not the House of Partisans.  If access to the system comes at the cost of a Party membership, it's not democracy.

Team Harper aren't to blame for the gradual erosion of our Parliamentary democratic system - but it's quite possible they have broken it beyond repair.

It took Magna Carta and later, the English Civil War to deliver a responsible government; it may just be possible that we need something similar to give us the responsible democracy we both need and deserve.

Team Harper To Commit Sociology

"It's something that they've needed over the last several months as well.  If they had been able to look ahead, ... would you (the PMO) have sent the Prime Minister out to defend Pamela Wallin?  I don't think so.  You would have said, 'Okay, this doesn't look good, before we say anything and support her, let's let the story run a little bit, let's get more facts,'" he said.

Now they come to that conclusion.  But with so many Members, so many potential scandals yet to emerge and so many threads still being woven together on existing ones like the Senate, Robocalls, etc., how on earth are the New/Old/New Harper Government staff to get ahead of the curve and predict where accidents are waiting to happen?

By committing sociology, naturally.  

They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble - and still can.  Reading this blog wouldn't be a bad way to start.  To make it easy for them, if they're serious about looking ahead and controlling narrative of the next debate, here's something they should consider.

The PMO's revolving door: Why Harper has a staffing problem (Don Martin)

 

Stephen Harper's government has recognized the impact of occupational mental health on performance, productivity and individual well-being; they even created voluntary standards.

 

Maybe it's time they implement them internally.  Leaders practice what they preach, etc.

 

The PMO's revolving door: Why Harper has a staffing problem

Prime Minister Stephen Harper waves to people after speaking at the opening of the World French Language Forum Monday, July 2, 2012 in Quebec City. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Don Martin, Power Play Host                                      
             

Published Friday, July 19, 2013 1:59PM EDT                                     

The Prime Minister has a staffing problem: Stephen Harper has trouble keeping them.

 

The soundtrack of the PMO is the combination of boxes being packed and the whirling noise of a revolving door as barely-started staff move on, voluntarily or otherwise.

 

The latest to be reassigned from the overheated PMO kitchen is one Chris Woodcock. Never heard of him? Me neither.

 

He was head of issues management which, coupled with communications, represents PMO Control Freak Central.

 

What prompted Woodcock to be barge-poled away from the Prime Minister was allegedly being linked -- directly or indirectly -- to the Mike Duffy affair and the much-maligned senator’s monetary bailout by Harper’s top aide.

 

Thus, to illustrate the busy departure lounge in the PMO, a former issues manager joins a former legal adviser as the two departing PMO staff who knew about a cheque from a former chief of staff to a former Conservative senator to pay off improper housing claims.

This exodus is not just a recent phenomenon.

 

After seven years as Prime Minister, Harper is now on his fourth chief of staff and his sixth (and best) director of communications. (Nobody expects workaholic Andrew MacDougall will set the mouthpiece longevity record by sticking around until the 2015 election.)

 

About the only staffing constant is the long-suffering couple who have toiled as Harper’s grin-and-grip photographers for about ten years. 

 

Partially driving the turnover is the fact Harper’s not exactly an empathetic boss. He works insanely hard and expects the same from everyone inside his organizational chart. Being in the PMO is seen as sufficient compensation for all those long seven-day workweeks tethered to a Blackberry.

 

(The parting gift for a middle manager who couldn’t take the endless overtime and working weekends any longer was to have Harper breeze into her office with official photographer in tow for a pose and a handshake. Total time for the sendoff: one awkward minute).

 

But what’s worse than having little lingering political memory in the PMO is how the ones who last the longest seem to be the paranoid powertrippers who are causing so much trouble.

 

They do silly things like anonymously leak smear material on Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and get carried away by advising new ministers to craft enemy lists. They are the Koolaid-drinking true believers who notoriously bully senior political and public servant staff, which has morale sliding throughout government ranks.

 

That’s the real staffing problem confronting Harper. The good ones quit.

 

Those who thrive inside the PMO bunker relish their power and see non-existent enemies lurking behind every grassy knoll on Parliament Hill.

 

Harper's Inbox

The existence of Harper’s enemies list was revealed last week when an e-mail sent from the PMO to ministerial aides ended up in the wrong inbox. The e-mail cheerfully requested that lists of enemy bureaucrats, as well as lists of “enemy stakeholders,” be developed for incoming ministers and their staffs.

Sigh!

It's definitely not positive that Team Harper is keeping an enemies list, for all the reasons Kinsella describes.  It'll be interesting to see whose names have made it on to that list - will a lot of random blogs with little traction find themselves under the watchful eye of the PMO, or will a lot of folk who fancy themselves as worthy enemies of the state be disappointed that they don't merit a mention?  Probably a bit of both.  If there has been illegal activity engaged by this government to suppress its perceived opponents, justice should be served for all parties.

But it's not the fact that a list exists that makes me shake my head in dismay so much as the sheer, ignorant overconfidence on the part of the PMO that made them think they could compile such a list in this day and age without it leaking out.

The risks of sending something to the wrong inbox are huge and well documented - how many people did Team Harper plan to send this out to?  More than that, what if anyone on the recipient list had a personal connection to one of these enemies?  Might they not have felt compelled to send it to that person as a warning?  What are the odds that one of the staff on the receiving end could be thrown under the bus and decide to leak this in revenge?  What if a recipient feels at some point that the Conservative Ship is going down and decides to use the leaking of the list as their saving grace? 

What if, horror of horrors, one of the recipients had a conscience and questioned themselves whether it was appropriate at all for a Political Party to keep a hit list?

It is exasperating how short-sighted this all is, as was the Senate shenanigans, the Committee Disruption Manual, the Cadman Affair, etc, etc.  There's a small cadre of hyper-confident and marginally oblivious crew of insiders somewhere, chuckling to themselves about how in control of everything they are.  They think people won't notice, won't care or that there's always an underling to throw under the bus or a distraction they can throw out to keep the consequences of their actions at bay.

I have written at length about the fallacy of overconfidence, the illusion of conscious control, how the assumption of success leads to sloppiness and of the importance of looking at the entire map of potential consequences rather than assuming "we are smart, they are dumb."

I've also laid down a suggestion as to why this kind of thing keeps happening; players of old have mental models of what they used to be able to get away with and keep trying to recycle - the horses and bayonets of political tricks.  Or, aggressive but not overly creative newbies look for tricks that have worked before without considering how changes in media might have altered the playing field.  Of course, I'm a back-of-the-class kid, so why should any of the really successful people - like Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright and Stephen Harper - pay attention to me?

The fact is, I'll bet dollars to Tim Horton's doughnuts that if the PMO actually got to know some of these enemies of theirs, they'd learn something beneficial.  Maybe even make some allies or pick up on some policy ideas to crib that could even help keep them in power.

Here's the thing, though - to correct destructive behaviours and evolve as an individual means accepting it isn't about us and them and realizing it's not such a bad thing to commit sociology.

What can I say - the truth hurts.