And we thought Justin Trudeau was a sanctimonious autocrat who found dealing with Parliament too tiresome.
Mark Carney has been prime minister for all of a weekend, and he already can’t be bothered with the conventions of Canadian democracy. Carney has not led his party to an election victory, nor has he even tested the confidence of the House of Commons, and yet, despite this almost comical lack of democratic legitimacy, he is behaving like a normal head of government, making policy and going on high-profile international trips. It is sheer madness that this is happening.
When Trudeau prorogued Parliament in January, he escaped a confidence motion that he was sure to lose, and which would have led straight to an election. It was a disreputable and irresponsible use of the prime minister’s executive powers, especially given the fact the reason for putting the House on pause was for the Liberals to select a new leader. As always, party before country because Liberals seem to assume their interests and the country’s interests are one and the same.
It would be one thing if Carney ascended to the head of a government with a clear mandate to execute its agenda, but that isn’t the case here. Despite this, Carney set the price of the carbon tax to zero and travelled to Europe to meet with the prime minister of Britain and the president of France. These were not pre-arranged meetings that Carney was honouring, they were choices, and choices he has no business making until he can prove he commands the confidence of the House.
As my colleague Tristin Hopper outlined in his First Reading newsletter Monday morning, Carney is breaking the conventions of a “caretaker government.” Normally reserved for government ministers campaigning during an election, constitutional experts argue that it applies to Carney’s admittedly unique case, because he has not faced Parliament, and the government he leads cannot credibly claim to have the confidence of the House.
As Hopper notes, citing a Privy Council Office guide, “until a prime minister is able to ‘command the confidence of the House of Commons,’ he’s not allowed to wield the full powers of his office.”
The Privy Council guide specifies that government ministers must “defer to the extent possible such matters,” as “policy decisions, new spending or other initiatives, announcements, negotiations or consultations, non-routine contracts and grants.” They must also “avoid participating in high-profile government-related domestic and international events, including federal/provincial/territorial events, international visits, and the signing of treaties and agreements.”
It is interesting that Carney, who holds Irish and British citizenship, and is a former Bank of England governor, took off to Europe, the first chance he could get. The prime minister has previously described himself as a “European” and on Monday called Canada “the most European of non-European countries.”
More importantly, though, the prime minister had no business making this trip in the first place. Carney isn’t just breaking parliamentary conventions, he is stomping all over them.
Philippe Lagassé, an expert on the Westminster System at Carleton University, told Hopper, “This is a new ministry and it’s not evident that it will hold confidence, so caretaker should apply until there is a confidence vote.”
The caretaker convention allows for government to attend to emergencies, or matters requiring urgent attention. Attempting to negotiate or meet with the Trump administration, which has repeatedly threatened annexation, arguably falls into this category, but Carney, the “European” wanted to go to Europe first.
When Trudeau prorogued Parliament in January, it was merely the latest example of his well-documented contempt for the House of Commons, most evident during the Covid years when the House went months without sitting and the government failed to deliver a budget for two years.
And the Trudeau government’s new spending announcements for high speed rail and the CBC were executed by an executive with dubious claims to a mandate. But at least Trudeau can claim he held the confidence of the House as late as December — even as he ducked Parliament in January.
Carney, on the other hand, can make no such claim, and he seems genuinely annoyed that anyone would question him on it. When asked by a reporter Friday when Parliament would meet, Carney dismissed the question as bothersome and responded that the new cabinet sworn in was all that mattered. “The news today is behind me; an exceptional group of individuals who are serving Canada,” he said.
If Carney wants to govern, he should introduce a Speech from the Throne and test the confidence of the House. It has been reported that Carney will instead seek an election, which would also resolve the issue.
Some of the government’s critics are concerned that Carney became prime minister without an election, which is merely a feature of the Parliamentary system Canada inherited from Britain. But the fact he is legally prime minister doesn’t mean that the democratic conventions that do exist can be ignored.
National Post