Tag: government

An Ancient Parliamentary Right

I learned something about constitutional and Parliamentary tradition yesterday, and decided I’d post about because I was probably not alone in my ignorance of this quirk. Apologies to those in the know already!

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Each session of the mother of parliaments, at Westminster, and her daughters throughout the Commonwealth, starts with a Speech from the Throne, which sets out the Crown’s – so, by convention, the cabinet’s – agenda for the session. Debate on the government’s agenda as outline in the Speech from the Throne is the first order of legislative business, and the vote on the Address in Reply – the formal response of each House of Parliament to the Speech from the Throne – is a vote of confidence. So far, so familiar.

But, it turns out, not exact. Actually, the first order of business, in the House of Lords and the House of Commons at Westminster, the Senate and the House of Commons of Canada, and the Ontario Legislative Assembly (and perhaps others – I haven’t researched other provinces) is not debating the Speech from the Throne, but the introduction and first reading of a bill that has nothing to do with the Speech from the Throne. In the U.K. House of Commons, it is the Outlawries Bill. In the House of Lords, it’s the Select Vestries Bill. In the Canadian House of Commons, it is Bill C-1, An Act respecting the administration of oaths of office. In the Senate, it is Bill S-1, An Act relating to railways. The British bills seems to have a substantive content relevant to their titles. Canadian ones do not have anything to do with oaths of office, or railways, or anything else. Their only section reads:

1. This bill asserts the right of the House of Commons [or Senate, in S-1] to give precedence to matters not addressed in the Speech from the Throne.

This wording is revealing. It is unusual, indeed strange, for an act of Parliament to “assert,” although this is not altogether unique in Canadian legislation: the National Horse of Canada Act, S.C. 2002 c. 11, “recognize[s] and declare[s].” More importantly, it probably is unique for an Act of Parliament – even for a bill – to refer to itself as a “bill” rather than as an “Act”.

The reason for this unique wording is that these are bills that are not meant to become Acts. The preamble to C-1 explains this tradition:

Whereas the introduction of a pro forma bill in the House of Commons before the consideration of the Speech from the Throne demonstrates the right of the elected representatives of the people to act without the leave of the Crown;

Whereas that custom, which can be traced to 1558 in the Parliament at Westminster, is practised in a number of jurisdictions having a parliamentary form of government;

And whereas it is desirable to explain and record the constitutional relationship represented by that custom …

That of S-1 is similar, though of course it makes no reference to “the elected representatives of the people.” It also does not specify the date on which the custom of the pro forma bills originated.

This is perhaps as well, since there seems to be some confusion on this point. The latest iteration of Ontario’s version of the pro forma bill, more transparently named An Act to Perpetuate an Ancient Parliamentary Right, also refers to 1558. But the earliest version available on the legislative assembly’s website, dating back to 1998, claims that

[t]his practice dates back to the reign of Elizabeth I, when on March 22, 1603, (just two days before her death), Parliament made this assertion of independence from the Crown for the purposes of legislation.

The British bills seem to actually have a traditional substantive wording, related to their titles. But their purpose is exactly the same as that of the Canadian pro forma bills, for which they have served as a model (though as you can see, we have somewhat innovated on it).

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This is all quite amusing, as are many other constitutional traditions originating in Westminster. But it in a way, it is also rather sad. Pro forma bills are bald assertions of power, not intended to lead to its exercise. Having won its independence from, and then control over, a once-powerful Crown, Parliament has become the servile instrument of the Cabinet. The executive is once again in control of the agenda, and whatever Parliament says at the beginning of each of its sessions, it does not give precedence, or indeed almost any consideration, to matters not put before it by the Cabinet. (Indeed, it is the Prime Minister who tables Bill C-1 in the House of Commons.) Legislative supremacy, or even autonomy, is not much more real now than under the Tudors and the Stuarts.

One’s Day in Court: Priceless?

In 1998, British Columbia started charging litigant stiff “hearing fees” for each day of a civil trial. Last week, Justice McEwan of the B.C. Supreme Court issued a monster of a judgment declaring them unconstitutional. The decision is very interesting for all sorts of reasons, but it is also abusively long. Fortunately for you, I have read it – well, much of it – so you don’t have to.

Before getting into the substance of the case, I want to say a few words about the decision; specifically, about its length. First, the facts: about 175 pages; 432 numbered paragraphs, many of them including multi-paragraph block quotations; more 70 000 words. That’s the length of a mid-sized novel. For a judgment, well, jugement-fleuve is a polite way of saying it. Perhaps it is a severe case of ‘I didn’t have the time to write a short decision so I wrote a long one’, except that it took Justice McEwan more than two years to produce it. Be that as it may, judges impose limits on the length of written submissions by lawyers. They should impose the same limits on their own work. Justice McEwan  makes much of the courts’ work being for the benefit of the public. It’s not when the product is of such length that no reasonable member of the public can be expected to read it. (I’m not exactly a reasonable member of the public. But I must admit that I barely skimmed the restatement – I cannot call it a summary – of the parties’ submissions, which runs for something like 250 paragraphs. I did read all of the judge’s analysis though.)

Now to the case. The facts are simple. A couple separates, and there is a dispute over whether the plaintiff, who wants to move back to Spain, can take their daughter with her. They go to trial, unrepresented by lawyers, and the trials takes up 10 hearing days. The plaintiff is hit with a “hearing fees” bill of over 3500$ (some of which the defendant might have to cover). The fees are so high, in part, because they are imposed on a sliding scale – the longer a trial is, the higher the fee imposed for each additional day. She cannot pay, and asks the court to relieve her. The court might do this by finding her to be “indigent”. Indigent litigants have traditionally been exempt from having to pay court fees. But, Justice McEwan insists, ‘indigent’ means really, really poor. So poor one can’t afford to pay a $100 filing fee, for instance. “It is an awkward word to use to describe a middle class family’s inability to pay a month’s net salary for the two-week ‘rent’ of a courtroom” (par. 26). The exemption does not apply. The only way the plaintiff can get out of having to pay is if the fee is unconstitutional. That’s what the decision is about.

There are at least three strands of argument running through Justice McEwan’s reasons. He does not distinguish them, but they are in fact quite different. One is that the fees infringe an individual right – access to justice, the right to have one’s day in court. Another is that there is something wrong with a chooser-user-payer model of government services; a court is a public service, and should be available to all, regardless of ability to pay. The third – and I think the most significant for Justice McEwan – is that the imposition of the fees proceeds from and results in a redefinition of the courts’ role by rationing access to courtrooms and trying to steer dispute settlement to other venues. This, in Justice McEwan’s view, subordinates courts to the legislature and violates the separation and equality of the branches of government.

All of these reasons lead Justice McEwan to conclude that hearing fees are unconstitutional because they violate unwritten constitutional principles and the federal division of powers. Limiting access to courts runs counter to the Rule of Law. It is also undemocratic because court participate in the elaboration of law, and going to court thus amounts to participating in the democratic process (which is not limited to voting). A redefinition of the courts’ role, especially one that limits people’s access to courts, is beyond of provincial powers over “the Constitution, Maintenance, and Organization of Provincial Courts” under subs. 92(14) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Justice McEwan did not consider the applicability of the Charter, which was also raised in argument.

Well, that’s enough for a summary, though this only skims the surface of the judgment. I will have some comments tomorrow.

It’s Not a POGGrom!

Canada’s “newspaper of record” has published an ignorant rant by Neil Reynolds, savaging alleged abuses, rhetorical, legislative, and jurisprudential, of  the “Peace, Order, and Good government” (a.k.a. POGG) clause of s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which sets out the powers of the federal Parliament. While the words “peace, order, and good good government” are indeed sometimes used to draw, or rather to provide rhetorical cover for, expansive and unwarranted conclusions about Canada and its constitution, most of Mr. Reynolds’ claims about the clause’s use by Parliament and courts are flat out wrong.

Mr. Reynolds’ first target is a “Canadian myth[] [that] holds that our constitutional mandate for peace, order and good government has made Canada a kinder, gentler place than the United States – debauched by its licentious pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  I’ve heard that line before, and I agree that it is silly. Mr. Reynolds is right that “POGG … was imperial boilerplate,” a perfunctory introduction to a clause vesting the legislative power in Parliament. It certainly does not give courts the right he strike down laws on the basis that they are not conducive to peace, order, and good government. (We might not have much of a statute book if it did.) It does not tell us much of anything about the sort of country we are. (I will have more to say about this in another post shortly.) [UPDATE: that post is here.]

Beyond that, however, Mr. Reynolds’ argument does not disclose much of an understanding of Canadian constitutional law. He claims that “POGG has been used from the very beginning to override” the division of powers between Parliament and provincial legislatures. Apart from bald assertions, his evidence for this claim consists of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Anti-Inflation Act, Pierre Trudeau’s application of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis, Parliament’s creation of Employment Insurance, and its use of the spending power to  “fund everything (or almost everything) and disperse it directly and indirectly, hither and yon, as they deem fit.” This is almost entirely wrong. Continue reading “It’s Not a POGGrom!”

Don’t ask, don’t tell?

No, it’s not a post about gays in the U.S. armed forces. That’s so passé anyway. Actually, what I want to talk about is co-operative federalism again, the fascinating topic of the least-read post on this blog. (To the one brave soul who did read it: I love you, whoever you are!)

More specifically, it is about the question whether one level of government in a federation has to accede to the demand of the other for information in its possession. (My title is not totally gratuitous.) This question was raised in the recent judgment of the Superior Court of Québec on the validity of a subpoena issued by a provincial commission of inquiry demanding that the RCMP hand over large amounts of information it collected while investigating organized crime in Québec’s construction industry. Coincidentally, it is also the topic of an interesting forthcoming article by Robert Mikos, of Vanderbilt University Law School.

As prof. Mikos points out, for one government (that of a U.S. state in his paper) to hand over information it has collected to the other government has certain costs. The most obvious, albeit often not a large one, is the direct cost of the time government employees spend working, in effect, for someone other than the people paying them. More subtly, citizens might be discouraged from handing over information to one government if they know that it can end up in the hands of the other. Most importantly, the government which complies with the request for information thereby participates in the enforcement of the policies of the other government, which might be at odds with its own. For example, if a state which allows the medical use of marijuana hands over information about its users  to the federal government, which does not, it possibly helps the federal government arrest and imprison the people who in the state’s opinion are entitled to use the drug. Finally, “such commandeering of the states’ information-gathering apparatus blurs the lines of accountability for unpopular enforcement actions.”

Yet so far, American courts have not accepted these arguments, explains prof. Mikos. He argues that they are wrong, and that federal requests for information held by the states should be considered equivalent to the “commandeering” of their executives by federal authorities, which the U.S. Supreme Court has held to be unconstitutional. This would allow states to resist federal policies with which they disagree and better to give effect to their own.

Compared to these high-minded concerns, the questions at issue in the Québec case, Canada (Procureur général) c. Charbonneau, 2012 QCCS 1701, might be rather pedestrian. At least it does not appear from the judgment that the federal government or the RCMP are opposed, as a matter of principle or policy, to Québec’s inquiry into the shady dealings in its construction industry and that industry’s unsavoury links with the provincial government. (Might this change if the inquiry uncovers links between that industry and the federal government, as a report by the Globe & Mail suggests it well may ?) But given the sheer volume of the information it is asked for, the RCMP is probably concerned about the costs of complying with the request, as it is with preserving the secrecy of its inquiry methods and sources. The court, however, suggests that these concerns are overstated and/or capable of being addressed by the RCMP’s co-operation with the commission of inquiry and with provincial police. As for the constitutional position, the court holds that a commission of inquiry set up pursuant to provincial law can validly subpoena the RCMP and request information in its possession, so long as it does not inquire about the RCMP’s administration. The RCMP, as the Supreme Court has held, is not part of the civil service, and does not enjoy the same immunities from provincial inquiries as the federal Crown or its servants.

Unlike, it would seem, in the U.S., such immunities do exist in Canadian law, and there seems to be no reason for their not applying to provincial, as well as federal government, since provinces and the dominion are constitutionally equal. As the Supreme Court held in A.G. of Québec and Keable v. A.G. of Canada et al., [1979] 1 R.C.S. 218, provincial law cannot authorize a provincial commission of inquiry to force the federal Crown, its ministers or servants, to answer questions or to hand over information. I would assume that the limits that apply to commissions of inquiry also apply, a fortiori, to the federal or provincial civil administration. But this is an area of the law with which I am not familiar, so I have many questions that I do not the answer to, and cannot, at the moment, investigate. For example, if the RCMP is not a part of the civil service, what other federal and provincial agencies could be forced to hand over information? How frequently does this happen? Are issues of policy disagreement between provincial and federal authorities as serious in Canada as in the U.S.?

Two observations in conclusion. First, the gun-registry data litigation, about which I have blogged profusely, is in a sense an example of a government trying to get information from another, albeit with a (big) twist, in that its claim is largely (but not entirely!) based on its own contribution to the collection of this information. And second, whatever limits there might be on what one government can force another to do, there are probably none on what they can agree to.

Constitutional Structure and Economic Outcomes

A few days ago, F.H. Buckley, a professor at the George Mason School of Law (and McGill law graduate and former professor) published in the National Post an op-ed arguing that the Canadian constitutional system, and in particular its lack of separation of powers, serves us rather well by helping maintain a free economy and a fiscally prudent government, especially compared to “America’s second-rate constitutional system.” His colleague, Ilya Somin, has a reply at The Volokh Conspiracy, arguing that those economic outcomes would, on average, be more secure in a “separation of powers system” like that of the United States. I am skeptical of both claims. Continue reading “Constitutional Structure and Economic Outcomes”

In Defence of Offensive Government

The Volokh Conspiracy’s Randy Barnett points to an essay by Matt Welch arguing that the more government expends, the more  it gives offence to this or that person or group, because its intervention conflicts with someone’s moral views. It’s not just penal laws and regulatory mandates (which prohibit people doing something they find morally required or require something they find morally offensive); so are various tax breaks and incentives, because “built into each tax or subsidy goodie for Hollywood (or Detroit, or the Farm Belt) is an explicit value judgment: This industry is inherently more valuable, more worthy of support, than” some other one. And that judgment is also bound to be offensive to some. Libertarians come out the worst, it seems: they “have their values stomped on by governments every day.” (Right- or left-wingers, I guess, only every other day, or election cycle.) Mr. Welch argues that we need to realize that “[a]ny power that government has to do something you like will invariably be used for something you abhor.” The way out of this conundrum is to “[r]educe the scope of government,” which limits its ability to give offence and helps “promot[e] true tolerance of diverging viewpoints.”

I have some instinctive sympathy for this argument, but it cannot take us very far. One obvious weakness in it is that government inaction is itself often offensive to lots of people. Government inaction on abortion is offensive to the pro-life crowd; government inaction on inequality is offensive to the “Occupy” crowd (and many others besides). Perhaps less obviously, but not less pervasively, there is widespread (and morally charged) disagreement over how to do even things which (almost) everyone agrees the government needs to be doing, whether its policing, raising money to pay for common defence, or ensuring that every child can and does get some decent schooling.

I don’t think that there is much to be gained by trying to get the government to give less offence. One thing we might do instead is get a little less offended. Perhaps not every disagreement over public policy is, or should be regarded as, morally charged and thus grounds for the losing side being offended. Disagreements over policy are often reasonable; and even when the other side is dumb, it is not necessarily wicked, so that its winning is cause for regret, but not offence. But I doubt that this argument can be taken very far either. Many policy questions do involve moral judgment, and many policies will not unreasonably be seen as offensive by those who disagree with them. For the most part, the only thing we can do is to grow a somewhat thicker skin. Let’s get offended if we like, but let’s try not to get so exercised about it. And let’s try to be polite with each other, no matter how offended we feel.

Dreaming Double

As promised, some thoughts on Jeremy Waldron’s new paper on bicameralism, which I summarized last week.

First, Waldron’s take on bicameralism reflects his usual fondness of and optimism about legislatures. Legislatures can really be great at making policy, resolving disagreements, and protecting rights, he is convinced, if only they function well. “Legislative due process” is an important concern of his; he is sharply critical of legislatures that do not properly scrutinize and debate the bills they enact into law, for example.

He presents bicameralism as a means to enhance “legislative due process” by introducing a second locus of debate about bills and also possibly by adding different points of view to the mix by virtue of making the two chambers of the legislature representative in different ways. In theory, this sounds great. In practice, I wonder whether bicameralism can live up to its promise. Bicameralism will not serve to increase the amount of debate unless both chambers are in fact committed to fully debating the bills before them. But – to take up the mischievous-or-superfluous argument that Waldron criticizes – if there is commitment on the part of one chamber to debate bills in full, how much is there to be gained by then adding a second full debate? Different modes of representation need not produce different perspectives (as the increasing similarity of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the U.S. shows), especially if the process of representation, however it is organized, is dominated by political parties. Representatives’ views are likely to be function of their partisan commitments much more than of the way they are elected.

Waldron is aware of this danger. Although he accepts that party politics are here to stay, he worries about the executive dominating the legislature, and thinks that an executive-dominated second chamber would be worse than useless. He has two (closely related) solutions for this problem. First, prevent members of the second chamber from serving in the Cabinet. Second, make the second chamber not about government, but about oversight, and hope that voters notice the difference (and vote accordingly). But here again, I have strong doubts about the effectiveness of his proposals. The Canadian Senate shows that even people without any prospect of serving in the Cabinet can be quite partisan. In the U.S. too, many Senators probably lack executive-branch ambitions, yet are fiercely partisan (as are, of course, members of the House of Representatives, for the vast majority of whom the Senate is the height of their ambitions). And I wonder about the possibility of a second chamber exercising good -faith scrutiny – not tainted beyond redemption by partisan affinity or hostility – over the work of a first.

So, Waldron’s arguments in favour of bicameralism seem more hypothetical than real; and there are other problems with bicameralism that he does not fully address. The main one is that of conflict between the two chambers, for which the responsible-government constitutional system is simply not equipped. The lack of any provisions to address this issue, by the way, is a disastrous flaw in the current Senate reform proposal in Canada. Of course, any such provisions would profoundly affect the working of Parliament and require constitutional amendment (even if, and it’s a big if, the current proposal does not).

The problem is this. If the second chamber does exercise its scrutiny role properly (even more if it is motivated by partisan opposition to the government), it will sometimes reject important government bills. What then? If the bill is a matter of confidence (as are all money bills, and possibly some others), its defeat by convention triggers the government’s resignation or dissolution of Parliament, usually the latter. But is it a good idea to hand to a second chamber with a “will of its own” (as Waldron wants it) the power to threaten and eventually to force dissolution at any disagreement? If this power can be exercised for partisan purposes, as it seems bound to be, this is a recipe for disaster, with elections coming as often as the second-chamber majority thinks it can install its allies in power. On the other hand, so long as the government thinks it has more to gain from an election than the second-chamber majority, it will be able to ride roughshod over the second chamber’s scrutiny by making any bill a matter of confidence and thus threatening dissolution if it is rejected.

Now we might specify that defeat of a bill in the second chamber never constitutes a loss of confidence in the government, so that it does not trigger resignation or dissolution. But then, we need a mechanism other than an election for getting over the conflict between the two chambers, at least for those bills that need to be passed, such as budgets.  How this is to be done is not obvious (though not impossible), but whatever mechanism is, its existence dilutes the power of the second chamber to reject the government’s proposals and thus diminishes the benefits Waldron hopes for it.

Thus I think that meaningful bicameralism in Westminster-style constitutional systems is bound to remain a dream, and attempts to realize it might turn into nightmares. It would be better, I think, to try to work on the hugely important issues Waldron is concerned about – legislative due process, executive domination of the legislature – by improving existing Houses of Commons (and unicameral provincial legislatures in Canada). Because, as Waldron notes, executives don’t like sharing power, this will be difficult enough.

Waldron on Bicameralism

The ever brilliant and ever productive Jeremy Waldron has posted three new papers on SSRN this week: one on “The Principle of Loyal Opposition,” one on separation of powers, and one on bicameralism. They all look very interesting, and also very relevant to the current Canadian events. I hope to blog on all of them, but I will start with the one on bicameralism, which of course is most relevant given the Harper government’s interest in Senate Reform.

I encourage you to have a look at the paper itself; I cannot hope to do justice to it in a blog post. In addition to being very intelligent, it is also quite funny. I won’t retell the jokes here, but suffice it to say that it starts off “with some observations about alcohol and sex.” Still, if that’s not incentive enough, here’s a summary of Waldron’s argument. Continue reading “Waldron on Bicameralism”