Crisis or Reform: The Choice Facing Canada’s New Parliament | The Walrus

As I write this, Donald Trump is four months into his second term as president of the United States. The implications for American democracy are grave. Trump has never accepted the results of the 2020 election, and attempted, by a combination of force and fraud, to have it overturned. Had he lost in 2024, few doubt he would have tried to do the same again. The only question is whether he will be willing to yield power in 2028. Some fear that, notwithstanding the constitutional prohibition on presidents serving more than two terms, he will attempt to run again. Others wonder whether he and his party will dispense with elections altogether, at least of the free and fair kind.

If these sound like extravagant fears, they are no more than a reflection of what Trump and the people around him have been saying for some time. And overturning or ignoring or rigging of elections is only one of the fears people have about a second Trump presidency. Trump has said he will use the powers of the presidency to “go after” his political enemies—including prosecution and jail. He has already seen to it, with the help of a friendly Supreme Court, that he cannot be prosecuted for any crimes he might commit as president, provided these are committed in his “official capacity.” His vice president has mused about defying court orders. The prospect is for a level of presidential lawlessness unknown even in Trump’s first term.

Surveying all this from our vantage point to the north, it is tempting to see our own problems as relatively mild. Whatever our democracy’s imperfections, we are in nowhere near the difficulty Americans face. We need to reform our democracy, but no one fears we are about to lose it. Maybe not. But America’s problem is about to become our problem. Well before he took office, Trump had threatened to impose a devastating 25 percent tariff on all exports from Canada (and Mexico), then escalated that into a threat to forcibly annex the country, albeit using “economic force”—a threat that, after Greenland and the Panama Canal, nobody is treating as a joke. And yet, because of the failings in our own democratic system, we are in a peculiarly weak position to respond.

That weakness was underscored in our most recent election. Rather than lead to renewal, the events that triggered it exposed how brittle our democracy has become and the few tools we have to hold political power to account.

How was Justin Trudeau able to hang on as party leader, despite having lost the support of not only the country but much of his own caucus? Because the caucus did not choose him: thousands of temporary enthusiasts who signed up to vote more than a decade before did. And because the Liberal Party constitution contains no mechanism for removing a leader—not, at any rate, until after an election defeat.

True, the caucus was eventually able to persuade him to leave, but why did it take so long? Because, unlike the Conservatives, the Liberal caucus did not vote to assume the powers available to it under the Reform Act, including the power to remove the leader. In the absence of the rules of procedure set out in the act—no triggering mechanism, no secret ballot, no agreed-upon threshold for forcing the leader’s resignation—MPs were left to stumble about, as it were, in the dark, unsure of who was friend and who was foe, holding clandestine meetings and swearing each other to silence.

Why couldn’t they just declare their opposition openly? Because of the immense power of a party leader, to say nothing of a prime minister—power that could snuff out their careers. To the very end, long after it was clear the prime minister could not possibly carry on, very few members of the caucus dared to put their names to anything. We were told that this or that section of the caucus had held a vote, but not who voted which way. There was even a letter, supposedly signed by two dozen members, none of whose signatures were ever disclosed.

Why did the caucus finally turn on Trudeau? Because of the callous and high-handed way he treated his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland: first announcing $6 billion in new spending for two initiatives, a partial GST “holiday” and a near-universal $250 Working Canadians Rebate, that had not been approved by the cabinet, caucus, or her, then telling her she was fired as finance minister but insisting she stay on long enough to deliver the fall economic statement with its embarrassing $62 billion deficit. Why did the prime minister think he could get away with treating his finance minister this way? Because he always had. Because prime ministers are free to treat their cabinet ministers any way they like, and generally do.

Why did it take the Liberals so long, notwithstanding the accelerated schedule adopted for this occasion—only two months!—to choose a new leader? Because the party insisted on putting the matter to a vote of the instant members, non-citizens, and children who decide such matters in Canada, even in the middle of a national crisis, even in the face of warnings from the commissioner of the public inquiry into foreign interference and others that the lax rules governing parties’ internal elections make them vulnerable to manipulation by foreign powers. The party had the option of letting the caucus choose. Nevertheless, it decided to stick with the process that had created the problem in the first place.

Why was a prime minister who had plainly lost the confidence of the House allowed to prorogue for three months rather than face Parliament and the music? Because, in the absence of an explicit vote of no confidence, the governor general is obliged to follow her prime minister’s advice—but more because it is the prime minister who has sole authority to decide the matter.

So Parliament remained dark, the government carried on in defiance of its wishes, and the prime minister clung to a job no one wanted him to have, while his party spent precious weeks choosing a new leader, all in the middle of one of the gravest political crises of our lifetimes. And yet to complain about this state of affairs, to demand Parliament’s immediate recall, was to invite quizzical stares, even hostility. Parliament! What do you expect Parliament to do? Oh, I don’t know: debate? Give voice to people’s fears? Buck up their nerve? Build consensus on how to proceed? Provide government with the money and the lawful authority it needs to deal with the crisis? Isn’t that what we expect of our Parliament in such times? Apparently not.

We have allowed Parliament and other institutions of our democracy to decay to such an extent that people no longer attach any importance to them or their doings. Lacking any notion of what these institutions once did, or might, they cannot conceive of what they are missing.

What the current crisis ought to have demonstrated is that democratic reform is not some nicety, a matter of tidiness or aesthetics. It is an urgent practical necessity. The inadequacies of our democratic processes are not merely of academic interest. They have serious real-world consequences. When we cannot hold government to account, because the prerogatives of the House have withered in favour of the comfort of the executive, egregious errors and serious wrongdoing are what ensue.

When members of Parliament are reduced to mere footmen for the party leaders, Parliament ceases to represent the people. Important issues and interests get overlooked, resentment builds, interest in Parliament wanes. When even cabinet fades into irrelevance beside the prime minister and his all-powerful officials, decision making gets more out of touch, the people in charge get more overworked, and error multiplies.

One reason the degraded state of our democracy has not given rise to more discontent than it has is that, on the whole, Canada has done pretty well. And it’s true: we remain one of the richest, freest, fairest, most blessed places on earth. It is hard to imagine how we could have turned out otherwise, given the advantages we started with: laden with natural resources; protected by oceans on three sides and by the United States on our fourth; able to pick and choose which immigrants we admit; and with the world’s richest export market next door. Still, democracy is more likely to be an afterthought when things are ticking over relatively smoothly.

But the world is about to become a more difficult and dangerous place. The territory to which we lay claim, so vast that we cannot begin to defend it, is no longer something we can assume others will respect. Russia is eyeing our north hungrily, as is China. Once, we might have counted on the United States to come to our defence; now we cannot be sure it would not join in the plunder. As it is, we will have to make huge increases in military spending just to meet our current NATO obligations, with the prospect of more increases to come.

Spending on health care, meanwhile, will continue to soar, in line with an aging population. Revenues, given our anemic economic growth rates, are unlikely to keep pace. To the existential crisis, then, add a potential fiscal crisis. Now factor in the likelihood of the Parti Québécois winning the next election in Quebec. And the possibility of NATO becoming involved in a war in Europe. And the probability of another pandemic. And climate change. And the social media–driven “post-truth” society, with all that it portends for democratic government. Plus, whatever future artificial intelligence has in store for us.

Welcome to the age of crisis. We’ve had a lovely run of things these past 150-odd years, but our luck may be about to run out. The world that seemed so far away is now at our door. The stability we thought was our birthright is no longer guaranteed. The services we took for granted are suddenly no longer easily affordable. The neighbour we thought was our friend has turned on us. In this dangerous new world, the old model, where power was held close to the centre and orders were dispensed from on high, will no longer suffice. The challenges that confront us will require our citizens to make real sacrifices for the greater good, in a way they have not had to do for decades.

Persuading them to do so will not be easy. People are all too ready to suspect that some groups, or some parts of the country, are being let off easy while others are being forced to carry the greater part of the load. This country is given to division at the best of times. Under the strains to which it is likely to be put, it may well fall apart. Consider the fears, already being heard, that Trump’s real game plan might not be annexation, as such, but luring Alberta into leaving the federation and joining the United States.

To meet these challenges, to summon the popular will in defence of Canada, will require those in power to take the people into their confidence. To mobilize the population, they will have to engage it. Parliament can be that rallying point, but only if all of our people, no matter what part of the country they live in, feel it is their Parliament—that when Parliament is debating a matter, the whole nation is. They will need to believe that their members of Parliament truly represent them, that the government truly answers to Parliament, that elections are truly reflective of public opinion. They will need to see that the political parties, in a moment of crisis, are capable of working together in the national interest, rather than always and everywhere pursuing their narrowest partisan interests.

In other words, we will need a system radically different from the one we have now. There are solutions. We can place limits on the prime minister’s unilateral powers of dissolution and prorogation; spell out the confidence convention in legislation; subject more appointments to independent oversight; end the leader’s veto on candidates’ nominations; give MPs the power to elect their leader; clean up party membership rules; give the speaker power to decide who asks questions in Question Period or when debate should be cut short; place curbs on the use of omnibus bills; ban members from reading speeches in the House; move the benches closer and rip out the desks; get rid of the cameras or let them roam freely; cut the cabinet in half; confine the Senate to a suspensive veto; pass a Truth in Politics law; make leaders voice their own ads; hold more debates in both languages; reform campaign finance laws; equalize riding sizes; move to a more proportional system of voting; make voting mandatory.

But here you run into the biggest self-reinforcing loop of all: the system can be changed only by those who were elected under the existing system. The prime minister’s powers cannot be reduced without the prime minister’s consent. MPs dare not bring their leader to heel so long as they are under the leader’s heel. Before you can regulate the parties’ chaotic internal elections, the parties would have to enact the regulations. Reform of our electoral system requires the approval of those who benefit from the status quo. And so on. We are bound, it seems, by an iron ring of self-interest, an infinite cycle of inertia.

Is there any hope of breaking out of this? Probably not. But maybe the system will reach a point, beset by one or more of the multiple crises I’ve described, where it cracks under the strain—where the crisis of Canadian democracy, long apprehended, becomes real. Deadlocked, lacking legitimacy in one part of the country or the other, fearing the Americans might take advantage of our divisions, and understanding that our survival as an independent nation depends on the strength that comes from unity and the unity that comes from self-government, some future Parliament might decide on a radical shift of strategy; some grand coalition might emerge, some hitherto unexpected alignment of the parties, left and right, government and opposition, that would make sweeping democratic reform possible. The same approach, if memory serves, was responsible for our founding.

Excerpted from The Crisis of Canadian Democracy. Copyright © 2025 Andrew Coyne. Reprinted by permission of Sutherland House Books.