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MCGRATH COMMITTEE REFORMS TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS:

A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS

By

Michael Beatty

Graduate Program in Political Science

An MA Research Paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

The University of Western Ontario

London, Ontario, Canada

© Michael Beatty 2016

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Abstract:

In 1985, the McGrath Committee proposed reforms to the House that were considered to be the most significant reforms to the House in Canada’s one–hundred plus year history. There were three key reforms that altered the House rules and legislative procedures, which ultimately affected how Members of Parliament conducted their business and what type of issues were brought to the floor of the House. Given these broad reforms, it is compelling to investigate how the McGrath Committee has influenced academics and their study of Canadian legislative behaviour. Specifically, this study examines how literature relevant to the three key issues in the McGrath Committee’s report have evolved over time. In addition, this study seeks to understand how party institutions, as forces impacting parliamentary behaviour, are treated in the same literature. This study reveals key insights into the discourse surrounding the literature since the paper’s introduction in 1985 until the time of publishing. This study finds that there is, indeed, an evolution in the examined body of literature, and this evolution concerns both the quantity of literature and its substance.

Keywords: Canadian House of Commons reform, McGrath Committee, Canadian confidence convention, legislative committees, parties, dissent

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Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 4

Chapter 1: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Mulroney Era, 1985 to 1992 ........................................................................................................................13

The Confidence Convention ............................................................................................. 14Dissent in the House and Party Discipline ...................................................................... 17Committees in the House ................................................................................................. 20Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 24

Chapter 2: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin Liberal Governments, 1993 to 2005 ............................................................ 26

The Confidence Convention ............................................................................................. 27Dissent in the House and Party Discipline ..................................................................... 30Committees in the House ................................................................................................. 38Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 44

Chapter 3: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Stephen Harper Era, 2006 to 2016 .......................................................................................................... 47

The Confidence Convention ............................................................................................. 48Dissent in the House and Party Discipline ...................................................................... 54Committees in the House ................................................................................................. 65Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 69

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 72

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Introduction

Canadian federal legislative reform has captured the attention of academics in the

political science sphere throughout Canada’s one–hundred plus year history. Several legislative

reforms have punctuated the history of the Canadian legislature, and reforms occurred largely

because of changes to Canadian federalism and the increase of government responsibilities.

Subsequently, the role of the legislator in the House of Commons has transformed from one that

created policy initiatives to one that refined policies.1 The most substantive reforms made to the

House of Commons was proposed by the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of

Commons, informally known as the McGrath Committee.2 The McGrath Committee reforms

touched on all areas of the House where private members have the opportunity to help shape

policy. Given these sweeping reforms, academics have found the recommendations from the

McGrath Committee particularly important for the study of and changes to the role of the private

member.

From December 1984 to June 1985, three reports were proposed in the Canadian federal

Parliament by the McGrath Committee.3 The McGrath reforms altered the House rules and

legislative procedures, which ultimately affected how Members of Parliament (MPs) conducted

their business and what type of issues were brought to the floor. The reforms proposed in the

reports primarily were concerned with restoring a meaningful legislative function for private

members.4 The McGrath Committee focused on the environment of the legislature because the

1 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons” (paper presented to the House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, June 1985).

2 Ibid.3 Jack Stillborn, “Parliamentary Reform and the House of Commons.” Parliamentary Information and

Research Service (2007): 6–7. http://www.lop.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/prb0743-e.pdf. It is important to note that the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons was founded in 1982 with Lefebvre as the chair of the committee and should be called the Lefebvre/McGrath Committee. However, for the purpose of the core question, the committee will herein be referred to as the McGrath Committee because it is the latest committee and the primary literature is the third report of the McGrath Committee.

4 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” xi.

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private members’ role in policy making had been “seriously reduced,” according to the

committee.5 The third report suggested three main reform categories: reforming the use of, and

changing attitudes towards, the confidence convention; changing attitudes towards dissent and

party discipline; and reforming legislative committees.6 The recommendations of the McGrath

reports were considered largely successful because they were enacted in the House and

influenced scholars’ work on Canadian legislative behaviour.7 It is interesting to see how

literature on Canadian legislative behaviour has evolved since the McGrath Committee; the

McGrath Committee’s three main reforms help organize this Masters Research Paper.

Given these broad reforms, it is compelling to investigate how the McGrath Committee

has influenced scholars and the study of Canadian legislative behaviour. There are two questions

and two sets of analyses in this study. The first question this study examines is: since 1985, how

has the literature on the relationship between parliamentary behaviour and the three McGrath

reforms evolved over time? The second question to be addressed is: in the same body of

literature, are political party institutions, as a force impacting parliamentary behaviour, given the

same amount of consideration as parliamentary reforms? It is important to further deconstruct

these questions and the study. For the purpose of this paper, institutions can be defined as a

congeal set of rules formed from repetitious behaviour and tradition. The study examines the

Canadian federal Parliament from 1985 to early 2016. I chose the year 1985 as the starting point

because this was the year when the McGrath Committee tabled its reports, and the committee

5 Ibid.6 Bill Blaikie and Gary Levy, “Reform of the Commons Thirty Years After McGrath” (paper presented at

the annual conference for the Canadian Political Science Association, Ottawa, Ontario, June 2, 2015). https://www.assocsrv.ca/cpsa-acsp/2015event/Blaikie-Levy.pdf. The McGrath Committee was also concerned with the election of the speaker by secret ballot. However, the selection of the speaker is not salient to the core question although there is research on the relationship between speaker selection and dissent. See Zachary Spicer and John L. Nater, “Legislative Dissent without Reprisal? An Alternative View of Speaker Selection,” The Journal of Legislative Studies 19(4) 2013: 505–525.

7 Blaikie and Levy, “Reform of the Commons,” 2.

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argued that its recommended reforms were the most ambitious attempt to pursue major reform in

the one–hundred plus year history of the Canadian House of Commons.8 This study analyzes

works up to the latest publications on the topic in 2016. The first question focuses on the

evolution of the literature: has there been an evolution in the literature over time and, if so, how

the literature has evolved? When analyzing the evolution of the literature, this study pays

attention to changes in the legislative powers of the backbench MP and democratic

representation over time. The analysis of the second question employs the same literature that is

examined for the first question to investigate how Canadian federal political parties are treated.

To answer the core questions, it is important to note two key elements of this study as

well as contextualize the three reform categories of the McGrath Committee. First, since 1985

there have been subsequent reforms to the House that have impacted the three proposed reforms

of the McGrath Committee. These reforms are examined in the literature and are discussed when

necessary. Second, the two questions and analyses examine a set of literature predicated on an

institutional approach to studying parliamentary behaviour and acknowledge that parliamentary

behaviour can also be shaped by both preference–driven and sociological variables.9 These two

questions, and the three key McGrath reforms, are the focus of this study.

It is important to contextualize the McGrath Committee’s three reforms in order to

answer the core questions. The first category concerns the confidence convention. The McGrath

Committee proposes two main areas of reform with regard to the confidence convention: the

frequency of its use; and the type of issues that can be deemed a vote of confidence.10 An

8 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” xi.9 Christopher Kam, Party Discipline and Parliamentary Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2009), 11; Daniel Diermeier, “Formal Models of Legislatures,” in The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, ed. by Shane Martin, Thomas Saalfeld, and Kaare W. Strøm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 28–50; Heirich Best and Lars Vogel, “Sociology of Legislators and Legislatures,” in The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, edited by Shane Martin, Thomas Saalfeld, and Kaare W. Strøm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 51–68.

10 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” 10.

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increase in the use of free votes would allow individual MPs to freely express their opinions

more often.11 In addition, the third report specifies that an attitudinal change is necessary to

liberate private members from parliamentary and party institutions.12 The frequency of use of the

free vote historically has been low, yet a change in the attitudes towards its use by both

governing parties and opposition parties would allow its use to become more frequent. This calls

for a relaxation on the type of issues confidence votes are attached to and a reduction in party

discipline. Furthermore, in order to advocate for the relaxation of party discipline, the McGrath

Committee argues for the positive effects of dissent.13

The second reform category – changing the attitudes towards dissent – can have positive

effects on the ability of an individual MP to represent her or his constituents, as argued in the

McGrath’s third report.14 The McGrath Committee states that dissent can have a “significant

influence on policy” because governments will “modify or withdraw certain measures.”15 There

are two aspects of attitudinal change towards dissention: the amount of dissent; and cross–party

pressures and cooperation.16 The McGrath report recommends that the private member should

not be afraid of party discipline or the costs of dissent for two reasons. First, the government

cannot ignore “a sizable body” of dissenters.17 The idea is that if there is a greater amount of

dissenting MPs, the punishments for dissent will not be as harsh as if there is a small amount of

dissenting MPs. The second is that private members “could exert their own pressures” in their

party and across parties.18 A change of attitude is necessary for private members to influence

policy outcomes.

11 Ibid.12 Ibid, 9.13 Ibid, 10.14 Ibid.15 Ibid.16 Ibid.17 Ibid. 18 Ibid.

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The third reform category, which captures recommendations aimed at the committee

system, aims to create an environment in which private members can become influential over

shaping policy.19 This set of reforms entail three main areas of recommendations regarding

legislative committees: their role; their structure; and the financing of standing committees.

These reforms include less flexible substitutions of members, smaller numbers of committee

members, and an obligation for governments to respond to committee reports.20 These

recommendations are likely to increase the role of the private member by creating a more equal

ground to influence policy.21

Each chapter focuses on a specific time period. The organization of this study is based on

these three reform categories, and the analysis of the literature is based on the main areas of

reform within each reform category. Chapter 1 analyzes the evolution of the literature from 1985

to 1992. This chapter examines six sources of literature. Chapter 2 analyzes the evolution of the

literature from 1993 to 2005, examining ten sources in the literature, and Chapter 3 analyzes the

evolution of the literature from 2006 to 2016, examining 14 sources of literature. These dates

coincide with a clear division in governing parties over time since 1984.22 From 1984 to the end

of 1992 was the era of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives; 1993 to 2005 features the

Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin Liberal governments, and 2006 to 2015 concerns the Stephen

Harper Conservative government.23 Organizing the analysis below in this manner allows for a

comparison across these three shifts in party government, and this comparison will be set in the

discussion after the three chapters. All three chapters pay attention to whether the literature

19 Ibid, 27.20 Ibid, 61–64.21 Ibid, 27.22 Steve Patten, “The Evolution of the Canadian Party System,” in Canadian Parties in Transition, 3rd

edition, ed. by Alain Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 55-82.23 Ibid, 70; Lawrence LeDuc, “The End of the Harper Dynasty,” in Canadian Election Analysis, 2015, ed.

by Alex Marland and Theirry Giasson (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 8-9.

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focuses on parliamentary reform and how party institutions influence private members. For each

chapter, the study proceeds chronologically to demonstrate the evolution of the literature.

In order to answer both core questions, two paragraphs are dedicated for each author

throughout the three chapters. The first paragraph features a description of the author’s main

arguments and supporting evidence, as well as a justification of why each author’s study is

categorized in the section of the chapter. My justifications for the categorization of each author is

based on the author’s main argument. 24 Some authors write about more than one reform category

in their work, and therefore authors could be examined in more than one section. To be clear, this

means that these authors are categorized by the topic of their study, article, or book; if the topic

of their study addresses one of the three reform categories, then the author is classified within

that category. This is important for examining the evolution of the literature because at the end of

each chapter, I count how many authors study each reform category. By counting how many

authors study or examine each reform category, a comparison can be made across time, and

trends over time can be analyzed.

In the second paragraph for each author, the authors and their studies are categorized into

three camps: one emphasizing parliamentary barriers to individual MP autonomy; one

emphasizing that party institutions are barriers to individual MP autonomy; and one emphasizing

both parliamentary and party barriers equally. The scholars are organized into these three camps

because the McGrath report features reforms that target both parliamentary procedures and

party’s institutions. Both parliamentary rules and attitudes within parties are argued to be barriers

to individual MP autonomy in the McGrath reports. To categorize authors into these three camps,

I assume that the author’s main arguments are the focus of their study, article, or book. Some

24 Some authors are more descriptive than argumentative, and in these cases, I examine how the author describes the reform category. If the description emphasizes one reform category over another, they are deemed to be a part of that camp.

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authors definitively state their main argument or findings, and some authors are not as explicit.

This is important because I make assumptions on their categorization. By categorizing the

authors into these three camps, the temporal analysis can indicate shifts and changes in the

literature surrounding the core questions. As well, this study reveals the gaps in the literature

across all three reform categories. Gaps in the literature are due to the small number of authors

who contribute to the study of the relationship between parliamentary reform and MPs’

individual autonomy. Throughout the analyses, I portray how gaps in the literature may be

explained by the authors’ focus on parliamentary reforms and party institutions.

An exhaustive search method was used to extract the literature salient to the core

questions and to operationalize my study. From studying the primary literature, the McGrath

Committee’s third report, there were five main keywords and phrases used to locate further

research. These keywords and phrases include: Canadian House of Commons reform; McGrath

Committee; Canadian confidence convention; legislative committees; parties; and dissent. I

began my research in May of 2016 by doing a preliminary search through the UWO Library

catalogue, using these keywords and phrases, and found 17 peer reviewed books. I narrowed

these down by examining only those published between January of 1985 and April of 2016.

From these books, I searched their bibliographies to refine my research; I also found journal

articles and other academic studies, along with newspaper articles and government documents. I

then refocused my search from books to peer reviewed journal articles. I accessed Google

Scholar and the Web of Science. A search on the Web of Science yielded 21 results; I narrowed

my search by using the keywords as the topics and refining the search to include only English

language, peer–reviewed articles from 1985 to 2016 under “government law” and “public

administration” categories. The Web of Science does not compile a database for books, yet

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Google Scholar and the UWO Library amply accomplish the search for books. This research

method extracted an exhaustive list of the scholarly literature salient to my study.

As well, this study also examines some non–scholarly literature, such as newspaper

articles, blogs from both sitting and ex–MPs, government documents and research, and research

organizations like Samara Canada. I accessed the websites of three major newspaper databases:

the Globe and Mail; the Toronto Star; and the Montreal Gazette. There were not many sources in

this search. A second resource was to access research from Samara Canada. Samara Canada has

a series on redesigning Parliament and conducted exit interviews with MPs, compiling these

interviews in 2009 and 2010. I also found sources and research in the Library of Parliament

website, specifically the Parliamentary Research and Information Service. Using non–scholarly

sources allows for a broad and holistic view of the literature on parliamentary reform. There are

30 studies from scholars discussed in my study, and I am confident that these 30 studies are a

good representation of the literature on Canadian legislative behaviour.

Given how many problems within parliament intersect, naturally there is a large set of

literature that indirectly engages with the McGrath reforms. I recognize that there is a large body

of literature, and my research strategy picks out the most relevant literature. I also recognize that

many scholars rewrite on the topic of parliamentary behaviour and topics that indirectly engage

with the McGrath reforms; however, the purpose of this study is not to compare the same

scholars over time but to compare a body of literature over time. I am confident that the literature

I employ is a full representation of scholars’ views on parliamentary behaviour and the McGrath

reforms. Now that the outline of the study is set and the research methodology is summarized,

the discussion turns to the first proposed reform in the McGrath Committee report: reforming the

use of the confidence convention.

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Chapter 1: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Brian

Mulroney Era, 1985 to 1992

This chapter analyzes literature from 1985 to 1992, and the body of work is divided into

three main reform categories. The first section examines literature germane to the confidence

convention, the second examines dissent, and the third examines committees. Each section

proceeds chronologically from 1985. As mentioned in the Introduction, there are two paragraphs

for each author or source. The first justifies the categorization of authors into one of the three

reform categories; some authors or sources examine a mixture of the reform categories or all

three. The second categorizes each author into one of three camps: one emphasizing

parliamentary barriers; one emphasizing party institutions as barriers; and one emphasizing both

sorts of barriers. This chapter examines four scholarly studies and two seminars and necessarily

is shorter than Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 owing to a shorter time period.

It is important to discuss the context of each era before presenting the corresponding

literature because the issues and leadership styles of differing governments may influence

legislative behaviour which in turn could impact the findings of this study. A couple of months

prior to the publication of the first McGrath reports, Mulroney won the 1984 election with

majority of seats in the House, and in 1988, Mulroney won another decisive electoral victory,

again with a majority.25 During the Mulroney era, there were three primary issues that concerned

the mainstream media and Mulroney’s government: the changes to the Canadian Constitution

and federalism; Quebec nationalism; and the free trade agreement.26 The Meech Lake Accord

and the NAFTA agreements are generally seen as Mulroney government’s major political

initiatives.27 Mulroney’s leadership style is described as a type of “brokerage politics” because 25 George Feaver, “Inventing Canada in the Mulroney Years,” Government and Opposition, 28(4), 1993,

463-478.26 Ibid, 473.27 Ibid.

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Mulroney is accommodating to all interests.28 Mulroney’s majority government, the issues his

government dealt with, and his leadership style influence the evolution of the literature. The

confidence convention is the first point of discussion.

The Confidence Convention

The McGrath Committee stated that the confidence convention is the foundation of

“responsible government,” which “requires that cabinet be responsible for its actions to an

elected legislature.”29 The confidence convention is important to the McGrath Committee

because if the confidence of the House is lost, “it spells the end for the ministry unless the

government is granted a dissolution and is sustained by the electorate.”30 As argued in the

McGrath report, the confidence convention affects private members’ autonomy in the House by a

party’s willingness to allow private members to deviate from party policy positions. The

McGrath Committee recommended an increase in the amount of free votes used in the legislature

and a change of attitudes on the use of the confidence convention as a means to maintain party

discipline.31 The following literature examines the McGrath Committee’s understanding of the

confidence convention and its implications on Canadian legislative behaviour.

In 1987, C.E.S. Franks wrote a descriptive book called The Parliament of Canada and

contended that the underlying concern for “a lack of influence of the private member” had

continued “despite the passage of time and the many changes” and reforms to the House.32 The

McGrath Committee’s report states that “private members must again become instruments

28 Donald Savioe, Thatcher, Reagan, and Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 10.

29 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” 5.30 Ibid, 6.31 Ibid, 62.32 C. E. S. Franks, “Chapter 6: Procedures,” in The Parliament of Canada, ed. by C.E.S. Franks (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1987), 4.

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through which citizens can contribute to shaping laws,” as Franks notes.33 Franks explains that

the McGrath Committee “felt that too many issues were now considered questions of

confidence.”34 Franks criticizes the McGrath Committee’s proposal to increase free votes

because, and as he argues, the McGrath Committee “ignores the fundamental” problem that a

“change from tight discipline to free votes would mean a substantial shift in power from parties

to individual MPs.”35 This is a problem, according to Franks, because governments could use

free votes to their advantage on issues that the government is indifferent to the outcomes,

therefore taking no responsibility for outcomes.36 Because of the nature of his arguments, Franks

is categorized as reviewing the confidence convention influencing individual MPs.

According to Franks, parties influence the autonomy of individual MPs more often than

parliamentary institutions. Franks argues that the “dominance of parties over […] all aspects of

parliamentary life” is an “overwhelming obstacle for real reform.”37 The McGrath reforms salient

to the confidence convention are hindered by parties’ ability to enforce discipline, and because

Franks is critical of the dominance of the political party, he maintains that it is “impossible to

make the changes” outlined in the McGrath reports.38 For this reason, he predicts the future of

parliamentary reform will be concerned with the “lack of influence of the private member.”39

Therefore, Franks is categorized as belonging to the Party Camp, where parties are viewed as the

driving force of legislative behaviour, and Franks’ arguments influenced further scholarship by

Jonathan Lemco.

33 Ibid. 34 Ibid, 139.35 Ibid.36 Ibid, 140.37 Ibid.38 Ibid, 141.39 Ibid, 4.

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In 1988, Lemco wrote an article titled “The Fusion of Power, Party Discipline, and the

Canadian Parliament: A Critical Assessment” that was concerned with the relative power of

backbench MPs to shape policies.40 Lemco described how the McGrath reports proposed reforms

surrounding the confidence convention, and argued that the lack of free votes in the legislature

create a high levels of party discipline.41 This article presents a theoretical argument that suggests

that an increase in free votes would produce a relaxation of party discipline. Lemco explains that

the frequency of the use of free votes are limited; the free vote had only been implemented on six

occasions up to 1973, and party discipline has remained stringent because of the infrequent use

of free votes in the legislature.42 Therefore, Lemco can be categorized as reviewing both the

confidence convention and party discipline.

Although Lemco argued that the confidence convention theoretically has the potential to

shift the tradition of strong party discipline in Canadian federal parties, the main argument in his

article is that there is a difference in each party’s attitudes towards the McGrath Committee’s

proposals on free votes.43 Since the McGrath Committee’s third report was published, Lemco

stated that governments have advocated for an increase in the use of free votes in the House.44

The examples Lemco presented include Joe Clarke’s promise that his “leadership would allow

free votes on all but the most major policy points.”45 This example is related to Prime Minister

Mulroney’s announcement that “he would consider a one–year experiment based on the McGrath

recommendations.”46 Lemco compared the Liberals and the NDP to the Conservatives. The

40 Jonathan Lemco, “The Fusion of Power, Party Discipline, and the Canadian Parliament: A Critical Assessment,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 18(2) 1988: 282.

41 Ibid, 284.42 Ibid, 295; Eugene Forsey, “Government Defeats in the House of Commons,” in Freedom and Order:

Collected Essays, ed. by Eugene Forsey (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974) 123-128.43 Lemco, “The Fusion of Power,” 282.44 Ibid, 282.45 Ibid, 295.46 Ibid.

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Liberals, he stated, held the position that the McGrath suggestions are “an attempt to increase the

governing party’s control of the House, and the NDP stated that the McGrath recommendations

with free votes “will make no difference” because there is “no political will.”47 Therefore, Lemco

emphasized that party discipline impacts caucus members more than reforms to the confidence

convention and an increase in the use of free votes. So Lemco also belongs to the camp

emphasizing that party institutions are barriers.

In this short section, two scholars are examined and analyzed: Franks and Lemco. Both

scholars are counted as studying the confidence convention. When examining the confidence

convention, both scholars are categorized into the camp that emphasizes that parties are the

dominating force controlling individual MPs. The arguments presented in their works are telling

of their position on the McGrath reforms: that the reforms are not enough to quell the power of

parties and to increase the role of the individual MP. It is also interesting to note that there is a

small gap in the literature between 1988 and 1997. In Chapter 2, the literature continues to 1997,

and this five year difference may be explained by a change in government, where the Mulroney

era ended in 1992. Furthermore, from 1985 to 1992 there were only two scholars writing on the

topic of the confidence convention. The small amount of literature reflects a minimal concern

among academics at this time. Next, the discussion turns to dissent in the House and party

discipline.

Dissent in the House and Party Discipline

The McGrath Committee defined dissent as occasions, during voting in the House, where

MPs do not vote according to party policy preferences, and they argued that dissent can have

47 Ibid, 297.

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positive effects “on the institution of Parliament and its members.”48 For the McGrath

Committee, party discipline and dissent are important institutions that are necessary to change

because they hinder the autonomy of the individual private member.49 Party institutions affect

private members by restricting how they vote in the House, and according to the McGrath

Committee, this is a problem because private members cannot vote in favour of policies that may

aid their constituents. Because the McGrath Committee could not formally make reforms to party

institution, they recommended that parties change their attitudes towards dissent and party

discipline.50 The following literature examines dissent and party discipline in the House.

On December 2nd, 1992, the Canadian Study of Parliament Group (CSPG) held a seminar

in Ottawa called Year 7: A Review of the McGrath Committee Reforms. The first session of the

seminar consisted of the procedural reforms to the House and had three panelists: W.F. Dawson,

from the University of Western Ontario; Franks, from Queen’s University; and Paul Thomas

from the University of Manitoba.51 The panelists in the seminar disagreed with each other and

explicitly stated so. This seminar is a review of the McGrath Committee and focuses on all

aspects of the reforms, so therefore, it is considered to examine all three reform categories. I

include this seminar in this section on dissent because all three panelists were concerned with

private members’ business as a means to provide the private member with more autonomy, and

to quell party discipline.

The three panelists made critical arguments against the McGrath reforms and did not

agree about the success of the reforms, yet all three scholars suggested that party discipline is the

48 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” 10.49 Ibid.50 Ibid.51 Canadian Study of Parliament Group, “Year 7: A Review of the McGrath Committee Reforms,”

(seminar presented by the Canadian Study of Parliament Group to government general proceedings, Ottawa, Ontario, December 2, 1992), 4. http://cspg-gcep.ca/pdf/1992_12-b.pdf. The second session regarded the future of House reforms.

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main force restricting private members. Dawson suggested that “party voting” still exists,

particularly in the election of the Speaker.52 Because of this, dissent on speaker selection is

minimal, so Dawson can be categorized into the camp that emphasizes party discipline over

parliamentary reform. Franks maintained that “change” has occurred since the McGrath

Committee’s work on “freeing up the private member from party discipline.”53 This suggests that

Franks advocated the same position as Dawson. Thomas argued that the “conditions outside of

the institution (parliament) play a much bigger role” in shaping legislative behaviour than the

institution itself.54 Thomas remains neutral during this seminar because he does not argue

whether parliamentary institutions or party discipline are the main influence on private members.

In 1992, Michael Atkinson and David Docherty wrote an article called “Moving Right

Along: Roots of Amateurism in the Canadian House of Commons.”55 In this article, Atkinson

and Docherty studied the nature of parliamentary careers, the life–expectancy of MPs’ careers,

and the determinants of turnover. Atkinson and Docherty found that “for many MPs ‘the job will

only become attractive once they are permitted more freedom of expression and greater

responsibility for legislative outcomes.’”56 From this finding, the authors argued that “a major

reduction in the force of party discipline” would accomplish this goal.57 Atkinson and Docherty

can be categorized as studying the effects of party discipline because of their findings and their

arguments.

Atkinson and Docherty treat parties as a force that drive MPs’ careers because their main

arguments suggest that party discipline is a major causal mechanism vis–á–vis to the frustration

52 Ibid.53 Ibid.54 Ibid, 19.55 Michael Atkinson and David Docherty, “Moving Right Along: The Roots of Amateurism in the

Canadian House of Commons,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 25(2) 1992: 295-318.56 Ibid, 317.57 Ibid.

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of MPs’ ambition. However, Atkinson and Docherty also argue that the parliamentary factors

play a key role in MPs’ career longevity. As the authors state, the research reported in their

article supports “those who believe that changes to Parliament’s opportunity structure will help

lengthen legislative careers.”58 Therefore, Atkinson and Docherty can be categorized into the

camp that emphasizes both parliamentary and party barriers to individual MP autonomy.

To summarize, in this section there is an analysis of a seminar hosted by CSPG and a

study by scholars Atkinson and Docherty. The seminar consisted of panelists that reviewed the

McGrath committee reforms and are counted as examining all three reform categories yet

emphasize discipline. Two panelists, Dawson and Franks, are categorized into the camp that

emphasizes how parties shape legislative behaviour, and one panelist, Thomas, is categorized as

advocating neither the Parliamentary Camp nor the Party Camp. Through their study of

legislative careers, Atkinson and Docherty are counted as examining the effects of party

discipline and are also counted as emphasizing both parliament and parties as barriers to MPs’

autonomy. It is also interesting to note that there is a gap in the literature between 1985 and

1992.59 The small amount of literature available during this time period is similar to the amount

of literature on the topic of the confidence convention. Next, the discussion turns to the

committee system in the House.

Committees in the House

58 Ibid.59 This is not to say that dissent and party discipline have not been studied in the past; yet, during this

seven–year period, literature on the study of dissent and party discipline was only available in 1992. Alan Kornberg, Canadian Legislative Behaviour: A Study of the 25th Parliament (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967); Allan Kornberg and Norman Thomas, “The Political Socialization of National Legislative Elites in the United States and Canada,” The Journal of Politics 27(4) 1965: 761–775.

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The McGrath Committee contended that the role, structure, and financing of the House

committee system had weakened private members’ ability to influence policy outcomes.60 The

committee system in the House is an important area where private members can voice their

opinion and make suggestions on how to proceed with policy recommendations.61 The committee

system’s structure historically determined which recommendations and policies should be tabled

in the House.62 The McGrath Committee proposed numerous reforms to change the state of the

committee system in the House. The three main recommendations included: a reduction of the

number of committee members for each committee; that committees must reflect the

organization of the House; and that committees should be given a wider authority on reviewing

draft legislation.63 The following literature examines the committee system in the House as

regards the McGrath Committee’s recommendations.

On October 20th and 21st, 1986, the CSPG conducted a seminar on liberating the private

member. In the second session of the seminar concerning legislative committees, there were

three panelists: Franks from Queen's University; Jean-Robert Gauthier, MP; and Robert Marleau,

Clerk Assistant in the House of Commons.64 This session solely concerned the committee

reforms proposed by the McGrath report. Franks stated that a problem arose from government

control over committees: majority governments control the majority of roles played in

committees. All three panelists were critical of the McGrath Committee’s recommendations,

arguing that the recommendations had “logistical problems” with the number of members a

committee should have, the financing of committees, and the selection of the chair.65 Because the

60 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” 16.61 Ibid.62 Ibid, 14-16.63 Ibid, 63.64 Keith Penner, “Liberating the Private Member” (paper presented at the Canadian Study of Parliament

Group seminar on Liberating the Public Member, Ottawa, Ontario, October 20-21, 1986). http://cspg-gcep.ca/pdf/1986_10-b.pdf.

65 Ibid.

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main topic of the second session of the seminar is a critique of the McGrath recommendations on

committee reform, all three panelists are counted studying the post–McGrath committee system.

The three panelists’ main contention is that, under the McGrath recommendations,

committees are subjected to government control. Franks argues that by changing the number of

committee members to seven would produce a committee system that lacks opposition

representation; governments would have five members, with two seats designated for opposition

parties.66 Gauthier contends that the governing party usually has more control over committees,

yet when government members have a majority of members in a committee, many of the

government members are not heard.67 The reforms, as maintained by the two panelists, have

implications on party representation; however, the main concern is that the committee reforms,

not parties, are the primary force limiting individual MPs’ autonomy. Therefore, these two

panelists are considered to be examining parliamentary reform as the main force restricting

individual MPs.

In 1991 – which is a sharp jump from 1986 – Sharon Sutherland wrote Responsible

Government and Ministerial Responsibility: Every Reform Is Its Own Problem. Examining the

McGrath reports, she argued that “flawed reforms may well make government less accessible to

the influence of elected ministers.”68 Sutherland’s study analyzes how ministerial responsibility

has been diminished by the recent reforms to the committee system in the Canadian Parliament.

She states that committees in the House were “even more fundamentally irresponsible” due to

the McGrath reforms.69 Therefore, the critical nature of Sutherland’s article conveys that the

topic she is primarily concerned with is the committee system in the House.

66 Ibid.67 Ibid.68 S. L. Sutherland, “Responsible Government and Ministerial Responsibility: Every Reform Is Its Own

Problem,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 24(1) 1991: 92.69 Ibid, 119.

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Parties are not examined in Sutherland’s article. Her main argument is that the

parliamentary reforms suggested by the McGrath Committee are insufficient for responsible

government, which is defined as the government’s ability to maintain the confidence of the

elected MPs and, “thus […] to the electorate.”70 Yet under the “new regime,” post–McGrath,

Sutherland contends that committees cannot provide “unitary focal points for public questions

and potential redress in the House;” that is to say, committees cannot provide a means for

individual MPs to meaningfully address electorate needs.71 Further to this, Sutherland states that

committees “barely worked” from the beginning of the 1988 election to the second session of the

34th Parliament because they were influenced by the volatility of elections.72 This means the

outcome of an election dictates how many members are in committees from a single party. The

arguments Sutherland presents focus on how the parliamentary reforms shape the power of

individual MPs, and therefore, Sutherland can be counted in the camp emphasizing

parliamentary reforms.

In this section, there is an analysis of a seminar hosted by CSPG and a study by

Sutherland. The seminar consisted of panelists that reviewed the liberation of the private member

and the McGrath reforms, and all the panelists are categorized into the camp that emphasizes

parliamentary control over party control. This is compelling because Franks is categorized into

the Party Camp on the topic of the confidence convention, yet on the topic of committees, he

does not examine parties as a controlling force to private members. Sutherland is counted as

examining committees and is also counted as emphasizing that parliamentary reforms are the

most important force influencing MPs behaviour. It is also interesting to note that there is a gap

70 Ibid, 92.71 Ibid, 119.72 Ibid, 118.

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in the literature from 1986 to 1991. From 1985 to 1992, there were only two scholars writing on

the topic of the committees, and the amount of literature reflects academics’ interest on the topic.

Discussion

This chapter analyzes the literature salient to the three reform categories outlined by the

McGrath Committee between 1985 and 1992. There are two main findings in this chapter. The

first finding is that there are six sources that examine the three reform categories, of which two

were seminars hosted by CSPG. Most of these sources specifically reference the McGrath

reforms; Atkinson and Docherty’s study does not. It is interesting to note that there are gaps in

the literature, and these gaps portrays the trend in the academic popularity of these topics. This

shows that the evolution of the literature during this time period is minimal which could

potentially be caused by a lack of interest. The study of the effects of parliamentary institutions

and party institution on the private members’ autonomy in the House has been infrequently

examined during this time period, and academics had little interest in the topic during the

Mulroney era.

The second finding is that four out of six of the sources are counted as treating parties as

the main barrier to MPs’ autonomy. The scholars examining the confidence convention and

dissent are counted in the Party Camp, and although scholars examining committees do argue

that the governing party usually controls committee work, they also argue that this is a function

of the parliamentary system. The evolution of the literature on the confidence convention,

dissent, and committees seems to be minimal during this seven–year period, and I observe that

the same scholars are writing on or debating these topics, specifically Franks. This could also be

a function of an increase of academic interest on the changing face of Canadian federalism

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during this period and the 1982 Constitution Act. The Mulroney government faced issues

concerning federalism, Quebec nationalism, and economic transformation, which could be a

potential reason as to why so few scholars had studied legislative behaviour with respect to

parliamentary and party institutions.73 This may be because academics were focused on other

major issues of the time. This chapter is important for setting a basis of comparison for the next

two chapters and examining the evolution of this body of literature. With the Mulroney era now

summarized, the study shifts to the discussion of the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments.

73 Raymond Benjamin Blake, Transforming the Nation: Canada and Brian Mulroney, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 10.

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Chapter 2: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Jean Chrétien

and Paul Martin Liberal Governments, 1993 to 2005

The McGrath Committee’s reforms have, so far, been specifically mentioned in the

literature, and the evolution of the literature has been slow up to 1992. It is interesting to

examine the time period between 1993 and 2005 to compare the amount of literature on

parliamentary and party effects on private members’ autonomy in the House. Another interesting

comparison of the literature is to analyze the change in the substance of the literature and

theorize potential causes of those changes. There is an analysis of the literature on the three

reform categories taken from McGrath’s third report in this chapter. This chapter is sectioned by

the three reform categories. The first section examines literature salient to the confidence

convention; the second examines literature on dissent, and the third examines literature on

committees. Each section proceeds chronologically beginning in 1993. As with Chapter 1 there

are two paragraphs for each author or source. The first justifies the categorization of authors into

one of the three reform categories. The second categorizes each author into one of three camps:

one emphasizing parliamentary barriers; one emphasizing that party institutions are barriers; and

one emphasizing both. At the end of each section, there is a paragraph discussing the analysis of

the authors, and at the end of the chapter, there is a discussion of the findings. There are ten

scholars and sources examined in this chapter. I examine two scholars studying the confidence

convention, five studying dissent and party discipline, and three studying House committees.

The Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments lasted from 1993 to 2005. Chrétien won

177 seats in the 1993 election and, having a majority government, Chrétien dealt with the issue

Beatty 27

of maintaining the confidence of the House and loyalty within his party.74 Chrétien won two

more elections: his second election in 1997, again, with a majority; and a majority in 2000.75

Chrétien’s leadership style demanded loyalty, and he had strict policies on party discipline even

though his government had a majority in the House which generally would allow a relaxation of

party discipline.76 Parliamentary reforms are Chrétien’s legacy, and this is generally understood

to be a function of his leadership style.77 Chrétien’s majority turned into a minority government

when Martin won the Canadian federal general election in 2004.78 This change of prime

ministers contributes to the literature on private members’ autonomy in the House. This study

begins with a discussion of the confidence convention.

The Confidence Convention

In regard to the McGrath recommendations on the reforms of the confidence convention,

see Chapter 1. The reforms salient to the confidence convention, again, are examined throughout

this section, beginning with Franks. In 1997, Franks wrote an article called “Free Votes in the

House of Commons: A Problematic Reform.” Franks argued that the magnitude of free votes in

Canada was limited, and only on “rare” occasions do free votes actually take place.79 Because

free votes are rare in Canada, their use is “restricted to matters of morality” and where the

dividing forces cross party lines.80 To support his argument, Franks examined the issue of

74 Lois Harder and Steve Patten, The Chrétien Legacy: Politics and Public Policy in Canada, (Montreal:

McGill University Press, 2006), xx.75 Ibid.76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.78 Stephen Azzi and Norman Hillmer, “Paul Martin,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed July 7, 2016,

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/paul-edgar-philippe-martin/. 79 C. E. S. Franks, “Free Votes in the House of Commons: A Problematic Reform,” Policy Options

(1997): 33.80 Ibid, 34.

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abortion, which is one of the most divisive issues where free votes were used.81 In 1988, the

Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Criminal Code surrounding abortion regulations,

specifically dating to the 1969 provisions, were unconstitutional, and this left Canada with no

law on abortion.82 Throughout 1988, the Mulroney government proposed potential abortion

policies.83 Five amendments were made to the initial policy on abortion, yet not one of the five

amendments gained a majority of votes.84 Franks stated the government declared that the vote

was free and that because of the use of the free vote there are no abortion policies in Canada.

Because Franks argued that an increase in the use of the free vote in the House creates a problem

for passing bills, this article can be counted as examining the confidence convention.

Franks can be considered as emphasizing how both parliamentary and party institutions

influence the autonomy of private members. Franks maintained that the free vote in Canada has a

positive relationship with party cohesion, yet there are differences between parties and their use

of the free vote. In the case of abortion, the vote was not free for the NDP because it was a

matter of “party policy.”85 The NDP remained cohesive because there was no “substantial cross–

party voting,” yet the Liberals and Conservatives allowed free votes which resulted in cross–

party voting .86 There is a negative relationship between the increase in frequency of the use of

free votes on certain issues and party cohesion, and parties behave differently when using the

free vote on certain issues. Although Franks examined the 1988 abortion policy proposals in the

House, he made arguments about the nature of the legislature at the time he was writing in 1997,

contending that policies are not produced because of an increase in the use of free votes.

81 Ibid.82 Ibid.83 Ibid.84 Ibid.85 Ibid.86 Ibid.

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Because of his arguments, Franks is counted as emphasizing how both parliamentary and party

institutions affect legislative behaviour.

In 1999, Jennifer Smith, in her article “Democracy and the House of Commons at the

Millennium,” argued that “reforms that are made to any particular element [of Parliament] are

bound to affect” responsible government.87 J. Smith identified two main “camps” of reformers:

“the cautious reformers” and the “radical reformers.”88 Both reformers want to “reinvigorate the

role of ordinary members of Parliament,” and they “also want to maintain responsible

government, the central convention of which is the requirement that the government be

supported by the majority of the members of the legislature.”89 J. Smith argued that the “radical

reformers […] are far-reaching and would have the effect of undermining responsible

government.”90 She defined the radical reformers as the Reform Party.91 To conduct her study, J.

Smith examined and described examples of incremental reforms made recently, particularly in

the 1980s, including the confidence convention, changes to attitudes surrounding party

discipline, and committee reforms.92 However, J. Smith’s main concern was how reformers

overlooked the fundamental aspects of responsible government and the confidence convention,

and therefore, J. Smith is counted as studying the confidence convention in this study.

As well, J. Smith can be categorized as emphasizing parliamentary reforms, specifically

the confidence convention, over parties or party discipline. The reason for this categorization is

because J. Smith contended that party discipline cannot be examined in “isolation” from

responsible government, and she also stated that party discipline “must be viewed in relation to

87 Jennifer Smith, “Democracy and the Canadian House of Commons at the Millennium,” Canadian Public Administration 42(4) 1999: 399.

88 Ibid, 400. There are two scholars with the last name Smith in this study: Jennifer Smith; and David E. Smith. I refer to Jennifer Smith as J. Smith, and David E. Smith as D.E. Smith to avoid confusion.

89 Ibid.90 Ibid.91 Ibid.92 Ibid, 401–402.

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the parliamentary structure.”93 To support this view, she analyzed the Reform Party and showed

that the Reform Party, since its advent, has launched a campaign to promote “change in the

House.”94 She stated that these changes were proposed to “liberate the MP from the thrall of

party discipline.”95 However, these reforms “are far-reaching and would have the effect of

undermining responsible government.”96 Therefore, J. Smith is categorized as subscribing to the

Parliamentary Camp.

To conclude, in this section there is an examination of two scholars: Franks and J. Smith.

Franks emphasizes how both parliamentary reforms and party institutions influence legislative

behaviour. This categorization is not surprising, however, because during the Mulroney era,

Franks’ work and argumentative position is categorized as examining party institutions which

dictate the level of private members’ autonomy. Smith is categorized into the camp that

emphasizes parliamentary reforms over party institutions. These findings portray the slow

evolution of literature salient to reforms of the confidence convention. Next, the discussion

continues with the literature on dissent in the House and party discipline.

Dissent in the House and Party Discipline

In respect to the McGrath recommendations on the reforms of dissent and party

discipline, see Chapter 1. The reforms salient to dissent and party discipline are examined

throughout this section, beginning with David Docherty. In 1997, Docherty wrote Mr. Smith

Goes to Ottawa, and in his book, Docherty outlines the socialization process of new MPs in the

Canadian Parliament, explaining that throughout an MP’s legislative career, she or he will

93 Ibid.94 Ibid, 417–418.95 Ibid, 399.96 Ibid.

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experience strong party discipline.97 The main argument Docherty makes concerning

socialization and legislative behaviour is that the bonds new MPs make with their fellow party

members is a “first but important stage in developing the partisan cohesion.”98 Of particular

importance to dissent and party discipline is Docherty’s “Chapter 6: Coming to Terms with

Parliament: Views on Leadership and Party Discipline”.99 Docherty compares data on interviews

with MPs from both the 34th and 35th parliaments, finding that “men and women seeking office in

1993 held a much more sceptical view of party discipline” than those in the Mulroney era.100

Although Docherty’s book examines the parliamentary careers through both the confidence

convention and committees while specifically mentioning the McGrath reforms, the observations

and arguments Docherty makes suggest that he is writing on party discipline and the

determinants of dissent. The questions Docherty asks MPs during the 34th and 35 parliaments

specifically question how they perceive party discipline, and therefore, he is counted and

categorized as studying party discipline.

Docherty argues that it is up to the party to assimilate MPs on appropriate behaviour in

the parliament, and each party holds different standards on party discipline.101 As Docherty

observes, not only do parties assimilate new members differently, but they also may not have a

large pool of veteran MPs to guide new party members.102 This was the case for both the Bloc

Québécois (BQ) and the Reform Party during the 35th parliament, and members of these two

parties had to branch out and ask for advice from Liberal and NDP veterans.103 Parties and intra–

party socialization are “key variables in determining how much freedom members have” to act

97 David Docherty, Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 84.

98 Ibid, 83.99 Ibid, 136.100 Ibid, 137.101 Ibid.102 Ibid, 83.103 Ibid, 88–89.

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within the legislature.104 Beside the occasional ask for advice from a veteran of a different party,

“there is little cross–party socialization,” and this contributes to the competitive nature of

parliament.105 Docherty is categorized as emphasizing how parties shape individual MP

autonomy over parliamentary reforms.

In 1998, Tom Flanagan wrote a book called Game Theory and Canadian Politics, which

studied the Canadian Parliament through formal modelling and rational choice theory.106 In

Flanagan’s “Chapter 8: The Staying Power of the Status Quo”, Flanagan presented his formal

model that outlined the rules under which legislatures operate in Canada, and these rules and

procedures produce a determinate outcome – “a structure–induced equilibrium” – that favours

the status quo.107 He applied his formal model to the subsequent proposed legislation on abortion

after the 1988 Morgentaler court case. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Criminal

Code surrounding abortion regulations, specifically dating to the 1969 provisions, were

unconstitutional, leaving Canada with no law on abortion.108 In this case, there were five

amendments made throughout the process, yet all five amendments were voted against because,

as Flanagan argued, there was no unity in the House due to the process of the legislature.109

Through the application of his formal model on the process of the legislature, Flanagan’s chapter

can be categorized as studying the legislative process and its effects on policy outcomes.

Flanagan can be counted in the camp that emphasizes parliamentary procedures over

party institutions. Party institutions are not considered in Flanagan’s study, and instead, Flanagan

argues that the reason there was no enactment of legislation is because the legislature is formed

104 Ibid, 261.105 Ibid, 252.106 Ibid.107 Tom Flanagan, “Chapter 8: The Staying Power of the Status Quo.” in Game Theory and Canadian

Politics, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 138.108 Ibid, 120–121.109 Ibid.

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to only enact legislation that is widely accepted; thus, the process of enacting legislation

maintains the status quo.110 Based on these findings, Flanagan is categorized into the

Parliamentary Camp, maintaining that the legislative process prefers the status quo.

In October 2000, William Cross wrote an article for CSPG called “Members of

Parliament, Voters, and Democracy in the Canadian House of Commons.”111 In this article,

Cross is concerned with the question of how to make the House more responsive to the needs of

the electorate.112 Cross argued that there is little evidence to support the claim that MPs, if given

the opportunity, “will work to reflect their constituents’ views in order to improve their re–

election chances.”113 Cross’ supporting evidence is from the 1993 Chrétien government, where

Warren Allmand, a long-time MP and former cabinet minister, was removed from his position as

Chair of the Commons’ Justice Committee for voting against the government’s 1995 budget.114

Many senior MPs in the Liberal Party during the 35th government were demoted due to Chrétien

enforcing “party discipline” and punishment to “those who dare break party ranks on important

issues.”115 Cross’ work is categorized as examining party discipline.

Cross can be counted as an advocate of party reforms as a means to increase the

individual MP’s autonomy. Cross argued that parliamentary reforms are not sufficient to increase

the role of the individual MP. Cross explained that “individual MPs today have no mandate from

their voters to deviate from their party’s policy positions”, and to overcome this, parties need to

reform their candidate selection methods.116 That is to say that MPs have no motivation to cater

110 Ibid, 138.111 William Cross, “Members of Parliament, Voters, and Democracy in the Canadian House of

Commons,” Canadian Study of Parliament Group 2000: 3-16. http://cspg-gcep.ca/pdf/Bill_Cross-e.pdf.112 Ibid, 1.113 Ibid, 9; Carty, Cross, and Young, Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics, 148. Carty et al. make the

claim that “voter sentiment has not, however, led to substantial change in the role of the MP in Parliament.”114 Ibid.115 Ibid, 8.116 Ibid, 1.

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to their constituency’s needs, and electoral pressures are not the main concern when MPs make

legislative decisions. One of the closing statements to the article is that brokerage parties “have

little interest in having members nominated on the basis of their individual policy

preferences.”117 This is shown through the actions of the 1993 Chrétien government. Chrétien’s

government announced that they wanted the 35th government’s “incumbents re–nominated

without facing any opposition.”118 The case of Ontario’s Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke MP, Len

Hopkins, faced considerable opposition. Ontario campaign chair David Smith opened and closed

riding nominations on the same day and gave notification to local associations “30 minutes after”

closing nominations.119 Cross’ supporting evidence here shows that the nomination process does

not cater to local needs, and catering to constituency needs is not an MP’s priority, according to

Cross.120 Therefore, Cross is counted in the Party Camp.

Kam wrote his article “Do Ideological Preferences Explain Parliamentary Behaviour?

Evidence from Great Britain and Canada” in 2002. In this article, Kam answered the question:

“Are parliamentary parties cohesive because leaders successfully impose discipline on their MPs

or because MPs prefer – hence support – the same policies as their leaders do?”121 Kam

specifically studied bill C–41 in order to answer the question. Bill C–41 was brought before the

House in 1995 under the Liberal government, which sought controversial reforms to the

Canadian criminal code, specifically hate–crimes against homosexuals.122 The main study is to

find if ideological preferences affect legislative behaviour, yet the findings indicate that

117 Ibid, 16.118 Ibid, 12.119 Ibid.120 This also reflects how the amendments to the Canadian Elections Act of 1970 that gave power to the

prime minister to sign off on all nominations.121 Christopher Kam, “Do Ideological Preferences Explain Parliamentary Behaviour? Evidence from

Great Britain and Canada,” Journal of Legislative Studies 7(4) 2002: 89.122 Debates of the House of Commons of Canada (Hansard), (Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer, 1994), 5871.

www.parl.gc.ca/cgibin/hansard/e_hansard_master.pl.

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ideological preferences “only partially explain” dissent and, as Kam contended, party discipline

can explain a greater degree of variance in his model. Therefore, Kam is categorized as studying

party discipline.

Kam can be counted as emphasizing that parties control MPs decisions in the legislature,

and governing parties use discipline as a mechanism to maintain confidence in the House. Kam

found that “MPs’ ideological preferences affect their behaviour,” yet he also admitted that the

amount of variance observed in the Canadian case in 1995 under bill C–41 showed that there are

more variables that can help explain the case, and ideologies can explain a small portion.123 The

Prime Minister and the Justice Minister refused to allow a free vote.124 There were three

amendments, yet one amendment is salient to Kam’s study, and this amendment proposed to

completely delete the clauses that “defined groups against which hate crimes might be

committed.”125 This is important because after controlling for the party variable, Kam found

statistical significance in ideology as a causal mechanism to party dissent and party cohesion.126

Kam also found that the party variable produced a stronger statistical significance in his

regression than did the ideology variable, meaning that party variables can explain a greater

amount of variance in dissent in the House than can ideology.127 When voting on the

amendments to bill C–41, “22 percent” of Liberal MPs voted against their party, while only 4.3

percent of Reform MPs voted against the majority of their party.128 These findings indicate that

ideology plays a role in individual legislative behaviour, yet parties play a larger role as a

motivating factor to MPs’ voting behaviour.129 Therefore, this study does not dichotomize the

123 Ibid, 115.124 Ibid.125 Debates of the House of Commons of Canada, 13 June 1995, 13769.126 Kam, “Do Ideological Preferences Explain,” 111.127 Ibid, 113.128 Ibid.129 Ibid.

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Parliamentary Camp versus the Party Camp, yet the main findings are that parties play a larger

role in influencing legislative outcomes.

In 2003, another scholar, Jonathan Malloy, produced an article called “High Discipline,

Low Cohesion? The Uncertain Patterns of Canadian Parliamentary Party Groups”, describing the

parties’ high use of “discipline” and their “limited ideological cohesion”.130 The trends of high

discipline are historically prevalent as argued, yet this trend has also been challenged by the

emergence of a multiparty system in the 1990s, namely the advent of the Reform Party and the

BQ. The main argument in this paper is that Canadian parties are generally well disciplined but

“lack strong cohesion,” specifically in “ideological ways”.131 To argue this, Malloy analyzes the

“Reform/Canadian Alliance Party” and how it has departed from the traditional trend of high

discipline. He begins his analysis by explaining the state of ideological cohesion within the

parties, stating that Canadian parties are “ideological chameleons”.132 Malloy means that

ideological heterogeneity within the parties is a common factor of Canadian parties.133 This state

of ideological cohesion plays a direct role in the amount of discipline Malloy finds within the

parties. Therefore, Malloy can be counted as studying party discipline.

Malloy does not consider parliamentary reforms as a driving force hindering private

member autonomy and instead considers the impact of parties and parties’ use of discipline. The

extent and amount of discipline, according to Malloy, varies across the parties. Malloy maintains

that party discipline is “quite high” within the House because the level of dissent is very low.134

The main finding of the study is that the amount of discipline across the parties is not equal. The

130 Jonathan Malloy, “High Discipline, Low Cohesion? The Uncertain Patterns of Canadian Parliamentary Party Groups,” The Journal of Legislative Studies 9(4) 2003: 116.

131 Ibid.132 Ibid, 121.133 Ibid; R. K. Carty et al., Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics (Vancouver: UBC Press); J. Jenson. and J.

Brodie, Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class in Canada (Toronto: Methuen, 1980); Harold C. Clarke, Absent Mandate: Interpreting Change in Canadian Elections, 3rd edn. (Toronto: Gage Educational Pub. Co, 1996).

134 Ibid, 117.

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Reform/Alliance MPs were more likely to vote against their party, and the BQ were more likely

to vote with their party.135 These two parties had virtually identical numbers of members in the

Parliament from 1993 to 1997,136 yet there were “259 dissenting Reform votes over 58 divisions

in that period, but only 21 BQ dissenting votes in nine divisions.”137 The Liberal Party, with 177

MPs, had “five–times as much dissent” as Reform during 1993 to 1997; however, most of the

dissention was because the party whip was relaxed on “32 of the Liberal divisions and 782 of

private members’ bills,” according to Malloy.138 The importance of these findings throughout the

article is that “Canadian parties are generally tightly disciplined, although some more than

others.”139 Malloy stated that Kam’s work is consistent and supports his own arguments and that

“party discipline is more important in determining legislators’ behaviour than MPs’ individual

ideological preferences”.140 Because Malloy focused on parties and their use of discipline, he is

categorized as following the Party Camp.

In this section, there has been an examination of five scholars: Docherty, Flanagan,

Cross, Kam, and Malloy. Four out of five of the scholars are categorized into the camp that

emphasizes that party institutions are the main force hindering individual MPs’ autonomy in the

House; Flanagan emphasizes that the parliamentary processes are the driving force of legislative

outcomes. This section finds that there is an increase in the amount of scholars and literature

interested in dissent and party discipline. This is an interesting finding because a comparison to

the Mulroney era shows that the literature has evolved; there are no large gaps in the literature

135 Ibid, 120.136 Reform had 52 while BQ had 54.137 Ibid, 121; Joseph Wearing, “Guns, Gays, and Gadflies: Party Dissent in the House of Commons

Under Mulroney and Chrétien,” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Ottawa, Ontario, 1998). Malloy actually recycled Wearing’s data for his own analysis on the variations of ideological preference across the parties.

138 Ibid. 139 Ibid.140 Ibid, 122; Kam, “Do Ideological Preferences Explain Parliamentary Behaviour? Evidence from Great

Britain and Canada,” 2002.

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during this period as opposed to the gaps in the literature salient to the confidence convention.

The scholars point to various explanations for this increased interest in the subject of dissent.

Docherty, Kam, and Malloy point to the change in both government and the party system in

1993. The Chrétien government, as Docherty showed, had different party discipline than the

Mulroney government before it, which could be the cause of an increase in the amount of

scholarly literature on dissent.141 Malloy maintained that the multiparty system allows for an

interesting comparison of discipline across parties. This indicates that the literature salient to

changing the attitudes of dissent and party discipline as a means to overcome the suppression of

private members has, indeed, evolved in amount and substance. With the literature on dissent

and party discipline now summarized, the discussion now turns to the committee system in the

House.

Committees in the House

As regards the McGrath recommendations on the reforms of the committee system in the

House, see Chapter 1. The reforms salient to the committee system in the House are discussed

throughout this section, and Malloy is the first scholar examined in this section. In 1996, Malloy

wrote an article called “Reconciling Expectation and Reality in House of Commons Committees:

The Case of the 1989 GST Inquiry”, and in this article he explored the committee system,

specifically the financial committee, as it relates to the Goods and Service Tax proposed during

the Mulroney era.142 Malloy began his article by describing some MPs’ belief that the House

“should play a more direct role in policy making.”143 Malloy described that “in 1985-86, a

141 David Docherty, Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 84.

142 Jonathan Malloy, “Reconciling Expectation and Reality in House of Commons Committees: The Case of the 1989 GST Inquiry,” Canadian Public Administration 39(3) 1996: 314–335.

143 Ibid, 314.

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number of reforms were made to the Commons committee system, following the

recommendations of the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons.”144

Malloy stated that changes were made to the committee system during the McGrath reforms,

specifically the splitting of the committee “system into (permanent) standing and (temporary)

legislative committees”.145 Therefore, Malloy can be categorized as examining the committee

system and the division in the types of committees.

Malloy treated parties and party institutions as a source that shapes the effectiveness of

committees. Malloy stated that both “governments and parties could relax their hold on

committee members” and actively seek out areas where committees can play a role in the policy-

making process.146 Through the examination of the case study of the committee of finance’s

inquiry in the 1989 “government’s GST technical papers”, Malloy found a gap between MPs’

expectations and the reality of Parliament” and showed that this gap formulated from the

attitudes of governments and parties.147 The main argument in Malloy’s article was that the new

committee system, post–McGrath, constricted the contribution of committees towards policy

making because of the “government and party dominance”.148 Malloy concluded by referring to

the McGrath Committee’s principle that “attitudinal changes” to both parliamentary reforms and

party institutions were necessary and achievable to increase the role of parliamentary committees

in policy making.149 Therefore, Malloy’s argument considered parliamentary reforms and party

institutions as sources hindering individual MP autonomy, and he contended that MPs’

perception of the inefficiency of committees could be remedied through a shift in attitudes.

144 Ibid, 319.145 Ibid, 319–320.146 Ibid, 314.147 Ibid, 331.148 Ibid.149 Ibid.

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In 2002, Jack Stillborn wrote The Roles of the Member of Parliament in Canada: Are

They Changing? for the Parliament Information and Research Service at the Library of

Parliament.150 In his piece, Stillborn studied the changes to the role of the individual MP and

Parliament in facilitating the roles of MPs. Stillborn began his study with an examination of the

traditional understanding of MPs’ roles, stating that the traditional role of the MP consisted

mainly of catering to constituents and their needs by representing them and proposing bills on

their behalf in the House.151 However, this role changed, as Stillborn maintained, due to the

changing nature of the Parliament since 1867.152 Stillborn described the evolution of reforms in

the House, beginning with the McGrath Committee’s recommendations and the reforms that

were subsequently produced through these recommendations, specifically focusing on

committees.153 There are four main activities that Stillborn outlined in his piece: law making

activities, surveillance activities, constituency services, and party responsibilities.154 Although he

outlined these four types of activities, the reforms have focused on the “enhancement of the

contribution of MPs to policy and legislation” through which committee reforms may be the

greatest area of reform because “virtually all legislation is considered in detail by standing

committees”.155 Therefore, Stillborn is considered to have studied committee reform and its

contribution to the role of the individual MP, by being focused on only one particular element:

the process of readings and investigations concerning legislation.

150 Jack Stillborn, “The Roles of the Member of Parliament in Canada: Are They Changing,” Parliament Information and Research Service (2002). http://www.lop.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/prb0204-e.htm.

151 Ibid.152 Ibid; R. H. S. Crossman, “Introduction,” in The English Constitution, ed. by Walter Bagehot (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1966), 30; C. E. S. Franks, The Parliament of Canada, 143.153 Ibid.154 Ibid.155 Ibid.

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Stillborn considered parties as a major problem to the committee structure because they

impede MPs’ abilities to contribute to policy outcomes based on their own conscience and the

needs of their constituents. Party discipline, as argued, was a barrier to meaningful discussions

and debate about policy outcomes within committees.156 Stillborn stated:

Even where committees are involved in legislation before second reading, party discipline applies within committees, and limits the independence with which Members can contribute once the Government has committed itself to legislation or a legislative objective.157

This statement is important to Stillborn’s main argument that reforms which focus on the

traditional role of the MP have both positive and negative effects on how MPs act within

committees. Paradoxically, the contribution of the individual MP is dictated by the attempt to

revert back to the traditional role of MPs – to free the individual MP “may merely establish new

processes that will ultimately be subject to the same constraints that continue to apply to policy

and legislative roles”.158 This indicates that Stillborn was both optimistic and sceptical of reforms

surrounding committees and the enhancement of the role of the individual MP. Stillborn

suggested that party discipline was the main culprit deterring individual MPs in committee work,

yet he did not suggest that parties could change this type of behaviour, and therefore, Stillborn is

included in the Party Camp.

In 2003, Thomas wrote an article called “The Past, Present and Future of Officers of

Parliament”, and in this article, he analyzed the officers of Parliament as an institution “holding

responsible ministers and bureaucracy accountable”.159 This is a sharp change in substance

compared to Stillborn because Thomas argued that the central issue his article dealt with was

how to “balance” both the independence and accountability of these offices; he also examined

156 Ibid.157 Ibid.158 Ibid.159 Paul Thomas, “The Past, Present and Future of Officers of Parliament,” Canadian Public

Administration 46(3) 2003: 287.

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the relationship between committee oversights of the officers of Parliament. Thomas began his

examination of this relationship by showing how there was a “lack of clarity surrounding the

term officers of Parliament”.160 Thomas reported that the McGrath Committee, in their third

report, “referred to the clerk and the sergeant-at-arms as ‘House of Commons Officers’”.161 This

is important for Thomas’ study because he stated there was a lack of clarity in the McGrath

reports on the role of the offices of Parliament, and this lack of clarity contributed to the failure

of the McGrath report’s recommendation on the oversight of parliamentary offices.162 The

McGrath Committee recommended that committees review government nominations to fill

parliamentary office positions.163 Each year the officers of Parliament must file a report, and

these reports are examined by the “appropriate committee”, yet Thomas’ main concern was that

most reports never underwent thorough review because of the “weakness of the committee

system”, specifically with “tight government control” and “partisan divisions”.164 Thomas stated

that the main objective of his paper was to examine the little known roles of the offices of

Parliament and their relationship with committee work, and thus, his work could be considered to

be studying committees.

Thomas described parties as a factor shaping the balance of independence and

accountability for offices of Parliament, yet he contended that partisanship was a concern for

committees to oversee officers of Parliaments’ reports. Thomas stated that the future of the

officers of Parliament may be enhanced by his own recommendations to the House committee

system. Before Thomas recommended reforms, he outlined factors that could “influence the

future of the institution”; one of these factors is “the attitudes of government towards procedural

160 Ibid, 295.161 Ibid; Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” 33.162 Ibid, 296163 Ibid.164 Ibid, 302.

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reform in Parliament”.165 This language is similar to the language used in the McGrath reports,

and Thomas’ main recommendation for improving the oversight of offices of Parliament was

that “governments should allow members of Parliament more freedom” to conduct investigative

work in committees.166 To do this, committees must become less partisan.167 Thomas argued that

these organizations could be improved through a change in attitudes towards the freedom of

individual MPs within committees. Because Thomas recommended reforms and changes to both

parliamentary procedures and party attitudes, he could be considered a part of both the

Parliament Camp and the Party Camp.

In this section, there has been an examination of three scholars: Malloy, Stillborn, and

Thomas. All three scholars argued that party institutions and partisanship play a crucial role in

the effectiveness of committees while performing their role and function within Parliament.

Malloy and Thomas offered suggestions and recommendations for reforms, and they argued that

the effectiveness of committees can increase if parties and governments shift their attitudes on

the freedom of the individual MP’s role within committees. These reforms were targeted at the

role and structure of committees. Stillborn did not offer ideas for reform, and he maintained that

if the reforms continued to reach for the traditional role of the MP, then this could lead to both

positive and negative externalities of Parliament’s ability to include MPs’ policy preferences.

This section finds that there is continuity in the amount of literature and scholarly work on the

subject of the relationship between committee reform and individual MP autonomy. However,

the substance of the literature has changed since the Mulroney era. The authors of the Liberal

government era maintain that parties play a large role in the success of reforms, and this deviates

from the Mulroney era where scholars largely focused their attention on parliamentary

165 Ibid, 306.166 Ibid.167 Ibid.

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procedures. This indicates that the substance of the literature regarding the reform of committees

as a means to overcome the suppression of private members has evolved over time.

Discussion

This chapter analyzes the literature germane to the three reform categories outlined by the

McGrath Committee in the period 1993 to 2005. There are three main findings in this chapter.

The first finding is that there are ten sources – nine scholars because Malloy is discussed twice –

that are examined, and among these ten sources five were salient to dissent and party discipline,

while three were salient to committees and two to the confidence convention. Out of these ten,

only four specifically mention the McGrath reforms or the reforms of 1985–1986: Docherty,

Malloy, Stillborn, and Thomas. The literature is moving away from specifically mentioning the

McGrath reforms: 100 percent of the scholars examined in Chapter 1 mention the McGrath

reforms compared to only forty percent from 1993 to 2005 specifically. This could be a function

of the advent of the multiparty system where reforms from the Chrétien government and the

party platform of the Reform Party became major political issues at the national stage, as

suggested by Malloy.168 The multiparty system could be a potential cause for the continuity and

change in the amount of literature salient to each of the three reform categories.

The second finding is that there is continuity in the amount of literature germane to both

the confidence convention and committees, while there was a drastic increase in the amount of

literature dedicated to dissent and party discipline in the House. The main concern in the dissent

category is the comparison between the 34th and 35th governments, and Docherty shows that there

is a difference between governments in the attitudes they hold towards party discipline.169

168 Malloy, “High Discipline, Low Cohesion,” 121.169 Docherty, Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa, 137.

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Docherty also suggests that this could be a function of the arrival of the multiparty system

because the Reform Party advocated major changes to the House, including reforms that would

shape party discipline, in their party platform during the 1993 election.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, there is a gap in the literature from 1988 to 1997. In addition,

one of the same scholars writes back on the topic of the confidence convention, suggesting that

reform to the confidence convention has not been a popular area of study. This indicates that the

evolution of the literature salient to the reform of the confidence convention as a means to quell

party discipline has not changed. From 1993 to 2005, there has been a small amount of

contribution to studying the confidence convention, yet the studies that are examined in this

section suggest that the confidence convention has not changed under the Mulroney era.

The third finding is that there is a change in the substance of the literature from the

Mulroney era to the Chrétien and Martin governments. Eight out of ten of the authors examined

argue that party institutions are the main source hindering individual MPs’ autonomy and

suggest that changes to party institutions can help alleviate the hindrance. There is also

continuity in the rhetoric used in the McGrath reports. J. Smith, Malloy, and Thomas all argued

that a change in parties’ attitudes toward dissent, party discipline, and the freedom of MPs’

autonomy is necessary for parliamentary reforms to be successful.170 Even though there are

examinations of new reforms, particularly from the Reform Party platforms of 1993, the

literature continues to maintain that a shift in the attitudes within parties is necessary for

meaningful change to occur within the House. Now that there is a summary of the literature of

the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments, this study now turns to the literature in the Harper

era.

170 Smith, “Democracy and the Canadian House of Commons,” 399.

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Chapter 3: Literature Salient to the McGrath Reform Categories during the Stephen

Harper Era, 2006 to 2016

Thus far, this study shows that the literature on the three key McGrath reforms has

increased in amount and has evolved in substance. Because of the stark difference in attitudes

between the Mulroney government and the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments, it is

interesting to compare these governments to the Harper government. The literature on the

McGrath Committee reforms has changed over time, and this change is, theoretically, caused by

the advent of the multiparty system, the changes in leadership styles, and the issues that

governments have faced. This chapter analyzes how the literature has evolved and theorizes

about potential causes of change or continuity. This chapter is sectioned by the three reform

categories. The first section examines literature salient to the confidence convention; the second

examines literature on dissent, and the third examines literature on committees. Each section

proceeds chronologically with literature closest in year to 2006. There are two paragraphs for

each author or source. The first justifies the categorization of authors into one of the three reform

categories. The second categorizes each author into one of three camps: one emphasizing

parliamentary barriers; one emphasizing that party institutions are barriers; and one emphasizing

both. At the end of each section, there is a paragraph discussing the analysis of the authors, and

at the end of the chapter, there is a discussion of the findings. There are 14 scholars and sources

examined in this chapter. I examine four scholars studying the confidence convention, eight

studies on dissent and party discipline, and two studies on House committees.

The context of the Harper era is relevant to the analysis of each study. A change of

government brings with it a change of leadership style and how the party will handle issues.

Harper won three consecutive elections: a minority in 2006; a minority in 2008; and a majority in

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2011.171 Harper is generally characterized as having been a controlling political leader, and his

government is described as having maintained a centralization of power, where the legislature

was controlled by Harper and the ministry.172 This characterization of Harper’s leadership style

shaped legislative behaviour and the level of autonomy of private members. Every government

faces different politics problems; the Harper government faced the economic crisis of 2008 and

subsequent oil price crashes since 2008. From this, an Economic Action Plan was created to

quell the recession.173 The evolution of the literature can be attributed to Harper’s leadership style

and the problems that faced the Harper government. Now that the Harper era is summarized, this

study now shifts to the discussion on the confidence convention.

The Confidence Convention

Chapter 1 outlines the main McGrath reforms concerning the confidence convention in

the House. The reforms salient to the confidence convention in the House are discussed

throughout this section, and Howard Chodos is the first scholar examined in this section. In

2006, Chodos, an analyst for the Parliamentary Information and Research Service, published an

article called Party Discipline and Free Votes.174 In this article, Chodos described the confidence

convention as an institution that allowed “virtually every vote” to be a “test of the government’s

right to govern”.175 The McGrath proposal was enacted and stipulated that only certain issues

should be salient to the confidence convention, which in turn would “permit a relaxation of party

171 Alex Marland, Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control (UBC Press, 2016), 5.

172 Ibid.173 Ibid, 23.174 Howard Chodos et al., “Party Discipline and Free Votes” (paper prepared for the Parliamentary

Library of the Canadian Federal Government, Ottawa, Ontario, July 13, 2006). http://www.lop.parl.gc.ca/ content/lop/ResearchPublications/tips/PDF/tip81-e.pdf.

175 Ibid.

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discipline and provide more occasions for free votes”.176 The embodiment of this

recommendation took form during the Martin government because, in February 2004, there was

the implementation of the “three–line vote system” to ensure power to individual MPs.177 Chodos

explained the use and frequency of the free vote and, therefore, can be counted as having

described the new use of the confidence convention.

Chodos explained that strict party institutions and party discipline can be quelled by a

relaxation of the types of issues free votes can be used on. From the Martin government, the

“three–line vote system” was established to provide individual MPs more power in forming

policy outcomes.178 One–line voting allows freedom to all MPs; two–line voting allows private

members to deviate from party lines, yet cabinet members must vote in accordance with party

lines; three–line votes are votes where every party caucus member must vote in accordance with

party lines. The free vote can be implemented by party leaders when the issue is likely to be a

divisive force and occurs when a “party frees its members from the usual expectation that they

will vote according to party lines”.179 However, not all parties allow a free vote on the same bill;

for example, in June 2005 the NDP did not allow a free vote on bill C–41, a bill on same–sex

marriage, when other party leaders did allow a free vote for their party.180 The three–line voting

system used in the Canadian Parliament restricts MPs’ voting decisions. Chodos remained

optimistic about Parliament’s future in regard to the effect of free votes on individual MPs’

influence on policy outcomes. He stated that “the government explained that most votes would

be either one-line or two-line free votes, meaning that support by government members would

not be taken for granted”.181 This, as argued, will result in the necessity of ministers to earn the 176 Ibid.177 Ibid.178 Ibid. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid.181 Ibid.

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“support of Members through hard work and consensus building”.182 Chodos can be categorized

in the Parliamentary Camp because he emphasized how free votes could be used as a means to

relax party discipline.

In 2006, Donald Desserud wrote an article for the CSPG called “The Confidence

Convention under the Canadian Parliamentary System”, which described the implications of the

confidence convention of Canadian government.183 Desserud examined the 38th Parliament and

the use of the confidence convention in three votes – dated on May 10, November 21, and

November 28, 2005.184 Prime Minister Paul Martin was defeated on all three of these votes yet

only conceded a failure on the last vote of confidence. As Desserud explained, for Martin to act

on the third failed vote of confidence speaks to the nature and use of the confidence convention,

and Desserud can be categorized as having studied the confidence convention.

Desserud clarified the use of the confidence convention in the 38th Parliament and argued

the confidence convention has two important features. First, motions of non–confidence are

usually moved by the leader of the opposition, which in this case was Stephen Harper.185 Second,

the governments maintained party discipline and cohesion through the use of the confidence

convention.186 To show this, Desserud stated that MPs did not deviate from their party’s policy

position, and all parties voted in their own blocs.187 The confidence convention is exercised by

party elites to maintain party cohesion while voting in the legislature; the confidence convention

is a mechanism for organizing the House. As a traditional and unwritten institution within the

Canadian legislature, the confidence convention restricts MPs from acting on their individual

182 Ibid.183 Donald Desserud, “The Confidence Convention under the Canadian Parliamentary System,”

Canadian Study of Parliament Group 2006: 3–30. http://cspg-gcep.ca/pdf/Parliamentary_Perspectives_7_2006-e.pdf.

184 Ibid, 4.185 Ibid, 9. Non–confidence motions can also be moved by other party leaders and executives.186 Ibid, 14.187 Ibid, 7.

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preferences, and so shapes legislative behaviour, according to Desserud. Desserud argued that

“confidence is a political rather than legal event, a practical recognition of the ability, or lack

thereof, of a government to have its legislation passed in the House of Commons”.188 The

confidence convention, and its two features, play the largest role in demarcating and organizing

the House, yet the Martin government did not recognize the confidence convention’s traditional

authority.189 The confidence convention cannot be “reduced to a specific vote, but must be seen

instead as an on-going process”.190 Desserud’s study of the use of the confidence convention in

relation to the Martin Liberal minority government can be considered a part of the Parliamentary

Camp as it examined the features of its use.

In 2007, David E. Smith wrote a book called The People’s House of Commons: Theories

of Democracy in Contention, and in this book, he examined three theories of democracy that the

Canadian House is modelled upon: parliamentary democracy; constitutional democracy; and

electoral democracy.191 D.E. Smith maintained that these three theories of democracy influence

the use of the confidence convention and the understanding of responsible government.192

Responsible government, as argued, performs its duty to unify the country, and the confidence

convention is a traditional way of maintaining responsible government.193 D.E. Smith focused on

the representative qualities of the House, specifically relating to how responsible government

manifests within its institutions.

D.E. Smith argued that reforms to the House are unnecessary because the House is

performing its constitutional duties well, and public criticism is shaped by a misunderstanding of

188 Ibid, 16.189 Ibid.190 Ibid.191 David E. Smith, The People’s House of Commons: Theories of Democracy in Contention, (University

of Toronto Press, 2007).192 Ibid, 30.193 Ibid, 25.

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the purpose of the House.194 As stated, the transition in public attitudes towards government and

politics is crucial to understanding the attraction of constitutional democracy today and the

criticism directed at parliamentary democracy.195 D.E. Smith maintained that Canadian politics

has become values oriented, even values driven.196 D.E. Smith’s main concern was on the

fundamental question of what this transformation implies for the people’s house and

parliamentary democracy.197 According to D.E. Smith, government traditionally was about

rewards and support, and political parties distributed rewards and attracted support.198 D.E. Smith

argues that neither media, nor Parliament, nor Canada's educational system is doing an adequate

job of explaining Parliament's functions.199 However, D.E. Smith maintained that reconciliation

is possible; the people’s House incorporated the nation and enfranchised its inhabitants, and it

could, as D.E. Smith argued, accommodate a parliamentary system that has, as its fundamental

characteristic, a respect for a higher law and enhanced popular participation in politics.200 D.E.

Smith’s book is interesting because in it he argued that there is no need for reforms to the House

because the House performs its duties well, and therefore, he is categorized in the Parliamentary

Camp.

In 2015, two of the members of the McGrath Committee, Bill Blaikie and Gary Levy,201

wrote an article entitled Reform to the Commons: Thirty Years After McGrath.202 In this article,

the authors chronicled the major reforms to the House of Commons, noting that the major 194 Ibid, 31.195 Ibid, 43.196 Ibid, 44-45.197 Ibid.198 Ibid, 45.199 Ibid, 142.200 Ibid, 143.201 Bill Blaikie was a member of the NDP at the time of 1985, and at the time of writing his article, he

was working as the Director of the Knowles-Woodsworth Centre for Theology and Public Policy at the University of Winnipeg. Gary Levy, in 1985, worked at the Library of Parliament as a researcher for the McGrath Committee, and at the time of the article, he worked as a Fellow with the Bell Chair in Canadian Parliamentary Democracy in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University.

202 Blaikie and Levy, “Reform of the Commons Thirty Years After McGrath,” 2.

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changes were relevant only in the time the reforms were enacted, and the McGrath Committee

failed according to the standards in 2015.203 In this report, they highlighted the three key

McGrath reforms and argued that these three key reforms are still a relevant part of the House

and private member’s business.204 These three features are important for the authors’ examination

of the success of the McGrath Committee. Blaikie and Levy’s article examined all aspects of the

McGrath Committee recommendations, including the confidence convention and committee

reform. The reason why it is included in this section is because this article gave context to the

Martin government’s failed confidence votes and also because it examined the successes and

failures of McGrath reforms.

Blaikie and Levy considered the effects of party discipline, yet they focused mostly on

the success of the confidence convention and changes to it over time. Blaikie and Levy stipulated

that the parliamentary crisis under Martin’s government was the result of “the absence of a

proper procedure to deal with the expression of non-confidence”.205 Blaikie and Levy stated the

McGrath Committee “never anticipated the lack of respect for fundamental parliamentary

conventions” that characterized the Martin minority government.206 The authors stated that

“confidence needs to be put back in the standing orders” in such a way that both majority and

minority governments maintain the confidence of all parties in the House.207 They suggested that

one “possibility would be to follow the example of the Quebec National Assembly which found

all party agreement during a minority parliament and codified the confidence convention in its

Rules”.208 Blaikie and Levy believed that the McGrath reforms have failed to provide the House

with reforms flexible enough to cater to recent public standards of the House, and parliamentary 203 Ibid.204 Ibid.205 Ibid, 11.206 Ibid.207 Ibid.208 Ibid, 12.

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reforms may become more flexible for future Parliaments, particularly when defining the use of

the confidence convention under minority governments.209 Blaikie and Levy stated that there

were confidence failures under the Martin minority government, and thus, the McGrath

Committee did not anticipate failed confidence votes under minority governments.210 They

concluded by hoping to see the October 2015 election usher in new MPs with a positive mindset

for parliamentary reform and the inclusion of the private member.

To summarize, in this section there is an examination of four studies: Chodos, Desserud,

D.E. Smith, and Blaikie and Levy. Chodos described the evolution of the confidence convention,

its frequency of use, and the types of issues it can be applied to.211 Desserud focused on the

effects of a weak understanding of the confidence convention upon minority governments,

specifically the Martin government.212 D.E. Smith argued that the House performs its

constitutional duties well and there is no need for its reform.213 Blaikie and Levy argued that the

McGrath committee failed in its attempts to promote an understanding of the confidence

convention that encompasses minority governments and, in 2005, there was a parliamentary

crisis under the Martin government.214 Now that the confidence convention literature has been

summarized for the Harper era, the discussion turns to literature on dissent in the House and

party discipline.

Dissent in the House and Party Discipline

In respect to the McGrath recommendations on the reforms of dissent and party discipline

in the House, see Chapter 1. The reforms salient to dissent and party discipline in the House are 209 Ibid.210 Ibid.211 Chodos et al, “Party Discipline and Free Votes.”212 Desserud, “The Confidence Convention under the Canadian Parliamentary System,” 16.213 Smith, The People’s House of Commons: Theories of Democracy in Contention, 30.214 Blaikie and Levy, “Reform of the Commons Thirty Years After McGrath,” 16.

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discussed throughout this section, beginning with Kam’s study. In 2006, Kam wrote an article

called “Demotion and Dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party” that analyzed the Canadian Liberal

Party’s transition to government which “provides important insights into the motivational bases

of parliamentary behaviour and the character of intra-party politics”.215 Kam began his study by

describing the Liberal Party’s rise to power in the 1993 election; he then described a series of

promotions and demotions made by Chrétien. These demotions, Kam hypothesized, contribute to

the level of dissention in the Liberal Party during the 35th Parliament, and thus, Kam’s work is

categorized as having studied dissent in the House.

Kam examined intra-politics and how leadership selection affects dissent in the House,

and he treated parties as the main force affecting legislative behaviour. Kam observed that

leaders were “demoting a set of incumbent MPs almost solely on the basis of their opposition to

[Chrétien’s] leadership”, and he noted that there was no observable causal relationship between

dissent and demotion.216 That is to say that the demoted MPs were demoted because of their

dissention; however, because they were demoted, they “cast more dissenting votes in the

subsequent term than their more fortunate peers”.217 This article differs from Kam’s previous

article because it is focused on the level of dissention in the Liberal Party during the 35th

Parliament, whereas the last article focused on the ideological ramifications on dissent and

legislative decisions and is aimed at understanding this through bill C–41. Kam’s work on

dissent is categorized as emphasizing party institutions and their effects on legislative behaviour.

In 2011, Godbout and Høyland wrote an article called “Legislative Voting in the

Canadian Parliament”, and in this article, the authors studied dissention in the 35th, 38th, and 39th

215 Christopher Kam, “Demotion and Dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party.” British Journal of Political Science, 36, (2006): 561–574.

216 Ibid, 574.217 Ibid.

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Canadian Parliaments.218 The authors attempted to explain the variance in dissention across the

three parliaments through examining party policy preferences. Godbout and Høyland located the

policy preferences of “MPs and their parties in a two-dimensional geometric model”, and were

“primarily interested in estimating party policy positions by relying on legislators’ optimal

classification coordinates”.219 The authors coded Hansard data for the 38th and 39th parliaments

and incorporated Kam’s data from his work on the 35th Parliament.220 Godbout and Høyland

observed the same level of preference separation within the 35th and 38th Parliaments, where the

NDP and Liberal party were “occupying the centre of the preference space”.221 This is significant

because within the 39th Parliament, the “ordering changed”, where the Conservatives and the

NDP occupied the centre, and the Liberals and BQ occupied the extreme ends of the preference

space.222 The observation in Godbout and Høyland’s study was “related to the government’s

capacity to control the agenda”.223 Godbout and Høyland can be considered as having studied

dissent through party policy preferences.

Godbout and Høyland focused on parties and the variance of party policy positions across

parties, and treated parties as the central function of dissention. They stated that the governing

party generally applies more and has greater control over the legislative agenda than any of the

other parties.224 Governing parties have a strong incentive to control which policies are

introduced and tabled, and by controlling the agenda, governments can maintain party cohesion

218 Jean–Francois Godbout, Bjørn Høyland, “Legislative Voting in the Canadian Parliament,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 44(2), 2011: 367–388.

219 Ibid, 377. For a specific outline of the methodology and voting model employed in the study, see page 375.

220 Ibid, 376; Stuart Neil Soroka, Agenda–setting Dynamics in Canada, UBC Press, 2002, 55.221 Godbout and Høyland, “Legislative Voting in the Canadian Parliament,” 369.222 Ibid.223 Ibid, 385.224 Godbout and Høyland, “Legislative Voting in the Canadian Parliament,” 385; Michael Laver and

Kenneth A. Shepsle, Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 3.

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within their own ranks.225 Godbout and Høyland showed that the Liberal Party employed this

“strategy in the 35th and 38th Parliaments, by pitting Reform members or Conservatives against

BQ members on an important proportion of government votes”.226 The Conservatives gained

control of the legislature in 2006 forming the 39th government, and they too employed the same

tactic as the Liberals, using legislative agenda control to split members of other parties.227 The

Conservative party also had the power to introduce bills to divide the Liberals on “issues related

to Québec’s interest”.228 Godbout and Høyland’s findings in their study showed that the literature

on dissent refocused on the powers of parties, specifically on agenda control and party policy

preferences. Because their study considered parties to be the driving force of dissent, the two

authors are counted in the Party Camp.

In 2011, Matthew Kerby and Kelly Blidook presented a paper at the European

Consortium for Political Research Joint Session in Rennes, France that was eventually published

in 2011.229 In this paper entitled Determinants of Voluntary MP Turnover in the Canadian House

of Commons, the authors employed an “historic event model” that showed that Canadian

legislators from 1945 to 2006 consistently had “high turnover” rates.230 The authors tested “the

hypothesis that an MP’s career duration is related to parliamentary roles”, and this study was

meant to contribute to existing literature from Atkinson and Docherty.231 Kerby and Blidook

specifically mentioned Atkinson and Docherty’s examination of MPs’ “frustration” with “party

discipline,” and they suggested that MPs’ expected “roles” were related to turnover.232 They are

225 Godbout and Høyland, “Legislative Voting in the Canadian Parliament,” 2011: 385.226 Ibid.227 Ibid.228 Ibid.229 Matthew Kerby and Kelly Blidook, “Determinants of Voluntary MP Turnover in the Canadian House

of Commons,” Legislative Studies Quarterly, 36(4) 2011: 621.230 Ibid.231 Ibid.232 Ibid, 631.

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categorized as having studied legislative turnover as it relates to MPs’ frustration with party

discipline.

Kerby and Blidook treated parties as the main source causing MPs’ frustration with their

roles in the legislature. Kerby and Blidook tested their hypothesis that MPs in governing parties

usually have higher rates of turnover after a defeat. They found that “MPs not affiliated with a

political party […] possess very little power” in the legislature, and that there is a difference

between the turnover of MPs in government and opposition parties.233 They argued that high

turnover rates in Canada impact legislative behaviour because, their model indicated that the

“expected effect of the role variables was confirmed”.234 The higher the chance of promotion, the

more likely MPs will stay in office. Their second model dealt with the parliamentary role

variable, yet they stated that the results were somewhat spurious; regardless, they maintained that

results would “improve” when survey respondents confirm their status and role in the

Parliament.235 Although the results of their study were not as strong as they had hoped, Kerby

and Blidook continued to expand the literature on legislative turnover as it related to the

frustration of individual MPs, and they considered parties to be a source of frustration. Kerby

and Blidook are counted in the Party Camp because they have attempted to further formulate

variables based on party institutions.

In 2011, Royce Koop and Amanda Bittner, in their article “Parachuted in Parliament:

Candidate Nomination, Appointed Candidates, and Legislative Roles in Canada”, examined the

effects of parties’ candidate selection rules and how they relate to MPs’ roles in the legislature.

They stated that candidate selection has “always been characterized by extremely decentralized

233 Ibid.234 Ibid, 637.235 Ibid.

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candidate selection methods”.236 However in 1970, the Canada’s Election Act was “amended to

require the party leader’s approval of each candidate”, meaning that party leaders could now

“refuse to sign the nomination paper” of the candidate.237 This selection rule also allows party

leaders to appoint and parachute candidates into certain ridings.238 Parachuted candidates are

hypothesized to have high profile positions within the legislature.239 Koop and Bittner stated that

MPs who do not have a “high profile” role inside the legislature seek to build their “personal

vote” through constituency service.240 Although the study focused on candidate selection rules

and their effect on the role of MPs in the legislature, this study is categorized in this section on

dissent because the authors argued that strict party discipline contributes to the role of the MP

both inside and outside of the legislature.

The authors treated parties as the controlling mechanism for the role of the MP in the

legislature. The main argument that Koop and Bittner presented in their article is that after 1970,

the role and behaviour of members depends on the selection strategy of each party.241 They

concluded that legislators who have been appointed are more likely to be given “high–profile

legislative positions” while locally nominated members are given backbench positions and

engage in “low–profile legislative activities”.242 Koop and Bittner showed that party institutions

shape the role of the MP in the legislature, and the authors can be categorized in the Party Camp.

In 2013, Kendra Anderson wrote an article for Samara Canada called Loosening the

Control of the Political Party: Part of the Redesigning of Parliament Series, in which she argued

that both parliamentary rules and party institutions have “the effect of permitting the political

236 Royce Koop and Amanda Bittner, “Parachuted in Parliament: Candidate Nomination, Appointed Candidates, and Legislative Roles in Canada,” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 21(4), 2011, 436.

237 Ibid.238 Ibid, 434.239 Ibid, 431.240 Ibid, 434.241 Ibid, 431.242 Ibid.

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party to control who speaks”.243 In a series on redesigning parliament, Samara Canada conducted

exit interviews with MPs from the 2011 election and observed “many times that the power of

parties must be curbed”.244 From the interviews, Anderson found that parties could stifle

dissent.245 Before 1977, the question period did not have cameras, and MPs asked their own

question “just by catching the eye of the Speaker”.246 When cameras were introduced to

parliament, each party whip, along with the Speaker, produced a list of MPs who were to speak

during question period. Anderson contended that this mixture of parliamentary and party

institutions reduced the amount of dissent during question period because party elites could

control who speaks and what they speak about.

Anderson examined both parliamentary reforms and party institutions as the driving force

hindering individual MP autonomy. Anderson’s interviews showed that individual MPs were

unhappy with the state of centralization and control in the hands of parties. The centralization of

power in both parties and government has been outlined in the literature to have influence over

legislative behaviour. Similar to the power of candidate appointment in the hands of party elites,

during legislative voting, control of question period is also centralized. Anderson concluded that

curbing the power of parties “is not going to be easy”, and therefore she can be categorized as

emphasizing both parliamentary reforms and party institutions.

In February of 2013, Stuart A. Thompson and Bill Curry began an investigation into how

often MPs “break rank”. The project consisted of an aggregation of votes in the parliament,

specifically “162,280 votes between June 2, 2011 and Jan. 28, 2013”.247 The authors needed to

243 Kendra Anderson, “Loosening the Control of the Political Party: Part of the Redesigning of Parliament Series,” Samara Blog, February 6, 2013, http://www.samaracanada.com/samarablog/blog-post/samara-main-blog/2013/02/07/loosening-the-control-of-the-political-party-part-of-the-redesigning-parliament-series.

244 Ibid.245 Ibid.246 Ibid.247 Bill Curry and Stuart A. Thompson, “Conservative MPs Break Rank More Often than Opposition,”

Globe and Mail, February 4, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/conservative-mps-break-ranks-

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determine whether the MP voted with or against her or his party where the majority was 50

percent plus one.248 This study examined changes across time in respect to the level of dissent in

the House and can be categorized as such.

Parties are the focal point of comparison for Thompson and Curry because the amount of

votes examined only span across the 41st Parliament. Thompson and Curry found the NDP had

perfect unity on private members’ bills; the Liberals were “united 90 percent” of all private

members’ bills, and the Conservatives had 76 percent unity.249 The amount of dissent in Canada

is low however, and even “Conservative MP James Bezan, the MP who voted the most times –

eight – against the majority of his fellow caucus members, votes with his party nearly 99 per cent

of the time”.250 These findings, as argued, show the differences across parties in the 41st

Parliament and the amount of dissent overall, and this study can be categorized as emphasizing

the cross party differences in dissent.

In April of 2014, Policy Insider: The Magazine of the MacDonald–Laurier Institute

released an issue with an article by Michael Chong which described the need for power in the

parliament to be put back in the hands of the MPs.251 Chong is the Conservative MP for

Wellington-Halton Hills, and he argued that there is an inherent problem with the state of the

parliamentary rules governing the House that have deleterious effects on MPs and their ability be

more-often-than-opposition/article8156279/. Both authors write for The Global and Mail.248 Stuart A. Thompson, and Bill Curry, “How We Crunched the Data on MPs who Broke Rank,” Globe

and Mail, February 4, 2013. A full outline of the methodology the authors used to crunch the numbers can be found here http://www.theglobeandmail.com/multimedia/how-we-crunched-the-data-on-mps-who-break-rank/article8158674/.

249 Curry and Thompson, “Conservative MPs Break Rank More Often than Opposition,” Globe and Mail, February 4, 2013.

250 Ibid. The authors also formulated an interactive voting map on how members have dissent and on what votes they dissent on, and this map can be found here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/breaking-rank-how-often-do-mps-vote-against-their-own-party/article8141646/?from=8156279.

251 Michael Chong, “Restoring Canada’s Parliament by Returning Power to MPs,” Inside Policy, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, April 2014, 16.

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autonomous.252 He stated that there are three changes to the parliamentary rules that have

weakened MPs and Parliament.253 These three changes are: the powers given to party leaders to

approve candidates; the written and unwritten rules of parliament that advantage party leaders

and disadvantage MPs; and the sparse use of the parliamentary party reviewing leadership.254

Chong focused on “restoring democratic checks and balances on power” because they are “vital

to our future peace, order and good government”.255 Chong can be considered to be writing about

the imbalanced nature of the centralization of political authority and how the individual is

subjected to parliamentary and party rules and conventions. Chong did not specifically state the

levels of dissention, but he did outline the “unchecked power” of the party leader and party elites

and the potential paths for MPs to vote more freely in the House.256 For this reason, I categorize

his article in this section of dissent and party discipline.

Chong treaed both parliamentary rules and party institutions as the underlying factors

controlling MPs’ freedom in the House. Chong maintained that these problems can be reformed.

In December of 2013, Chong introduced his private member’s bill, the 2013 Reform Act, which

proposed three major reforms to the Canadian Parliament. First, the power of candidate

nominations would be restored at the local level, where a nominations officer would replace the

Prime Minister.257 Second, appointments to caucus chairs would be legitimated through a secret

ballot in the caucus, and party leaders would no longer hold the power to expel MPs from this

office. Third, the bill would reinforce “the accountability of party leaders to the parliamentary

party by specifying the rules of review”.258 The 2013 Reform Act passed in the Senate in 2015,

252 Ibid.253 Ibid. Note These changes came about in the evolution of the unwritten conventions that govern

Parliament while others were implemented through legislation like the Canada Elections Act.254 Ibid, 17.255 Ibid, 18.256 Ibid, 17.257 Ibid. 258 Ibid.

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and the implications of these reforms will hold powerful “rebalances” for MPs and

backbenchers.259 For instance, legislative behaviour might see more shifts than it has when other

institutional changes occurred in the past.260 Chong can be counted as emphasizing both

parliamentary rules and party institutions to control MPs’ autonomy in the House, and he argued

that this imbalance of power can be changed by reforms to the Parliament.

In June 2016, Scott Pruysers and William Cross wrote an article called “Candidate

Selection in Canada: Local Autonomy, Centralization, and Competing Democratic Norms” that

outlined the differences in selection practices across the three major parties: Liberals,

Conservatives, and NDP.261 In the analysis, the authors found three key elements that affect the

selection of a candidate: the lack of a legal framework; the organizational structure; and the

electoral system.262 All three elements are argued to have ramifications on the role MPs’ play in

the legislature, particularly in regard to the lack of a legal framework and the organizational

structure. The authors are categorized as examining the centralization of power in parties and

how parties can control MPs’ political participation.

Pruysers and Cross considered parties as being the main source of power, shaping which

candidates can run in elections and show that, through parties’ constitutions, candidates are

selected on precise criteria.263 They analyzed the constitutions of all three major parties and

concluded that the parties compare and contrast on six types of selection rules.264 The first rule

requires that candidate approval is a centralized process, due to the Canadian Elections Act of

259 Ibid.260 Joan Bryden, “Michael Chong’s Reform Act Passed by Senate,” Toronto Star, June 22, 2015,

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/06/22/michael-chongs-reform-act-passed-by-senate.html.261 Ibid. These parties were chosen because from the 2011 and 2015 elections, all three parties combined

won 630 out of 646 local electorates.262 Pruysers and Cross, “Candidate Selection in Canada,” 782–784.263 Ibid.264 Ibid.

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1970 that stipulated that party leaders must approve candidates.265 In the second rule, all parties

set preconditions for candidates. In the third rule, all parties have a minimum age requirement to

be a member of the selectorate.266 The fourth rule applies to candidate eligibility; the

Conservatives require that candidates be a member of the party for six months, while the NDP

requirement was 30 days, and the Liberals have no specification.267 The fifth rule is the

protection of incumbents’ seats, meaning that incumbents have priority over other potential

candidates. This rule is a part of the Conservatives’ party constitution, yet protection for

incumbents in not in the Liberal’s or NDP’s constitutions.268 The sixth requires that parties freeze

nominations to fulfill equal representation of gender and diversity in their party, yet this only

applies to the Liberals and NDP.269 These rules are important to outline because the method used

to nominate candidates shapes their role and behaviour in the legislature.270 The comparison

across parties’ constitutions shows the differences between the parties and how the parties

control who can be allowed into the House under a party banner. Pruysers and Cross can be

categorized as emphasizing that parties wield enormous power and can control how legislators

behave in the House through candidate selection strategies.

In this section, there is an examination of eight studies with nine scholars, two journalists,

one analyst from Samara Canada, and one MP. All studies emphasized that party institutions are

the main force driving legislative behaviour, except Anderson, who argues that parliamentary

rules and conventions also hinder individual MP autonomy. This section shows that there is

continuity in the amount of literature salient to dissent and party discipline for two reasons. The

265 Ibid, 785.266 Ibid. The NDP allows members 13 years of age to vote.267 Ibid.268 Ibid.269 Ibid.270 Pruysers and Cross, “Candidate Selection in Canada,” 785; Koop and Bittner, “Parachuted in

Parliament,” 431.

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first is that the amount of literature from 2006 to 2016 is abundant and is similar in quantity to

the amount of literature from 1993 to 2005. Dissent and party discipline have captured the

interest of not only scholars but also journalists and organizations. Second, I found that the

substance of the literature focused on how parties are the main mechanism controlling individual

MP behaviour in the legislature. There are two studies that focused on the 35th parliament: Kam’s

study; and Godbout and Høyland’s study. This is an interesting finding because it seems as

though the 35th Parliament captured scholars’ attention for over 15 years. I also noticed that these

scholars did not examine the McGrath Committee reports when analyzing dissent and party

discipline, which may not be surprising given the amount of time that passed since 1985. This

portrays an evolution in the literature on dissent in the House; dissent in the House has gained

considerable attention since the McGrath Committee reports, specifically in the past twenty

years. This study now shifts its attention to the literature salient to committee system in the

House.

Committees in the House

As regards the McGrath reforms on the committee system in the House, Chapter 1

provides an outline of the main reforms. The reforms salient to the committee system in the

House are discussed throughout this section, and Alexis Dubois is the first scholar examined in

this section. In 2007, Dubois wrote an article called “House of Commons Committee Chairs:

Perspectives of Two Members of Parliament,” and in this article, she described the “disciplinary

mechanisms influencing the behaviour of committee members”.271 To conduct her study, Dubois

interviewed two chairs of House Committees on May 8 and 16, 2012: Chong, Chair of the

Standing Committee on Official Languages, and Pierre-Luc Dusseault, the then Chair of the

271 Alexis Dubois, “House of Commons Committee Chairs: Perspectives of Two Members of Parliament,” Canadian Parliamentary Review 37 (2014): 26-33. http://www.revparl.ca/37/1/37n1e_14_dubois.pdf.

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Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and member of the Official

Opposition.272 Committee members “align their individual actions by working and voting

together in accordance with party allegiance”, creating an environment within committees that

clearly demarcate party lines.273 This usually has negative effects, because as Dubois notes, the

members who fail to adhere to party lines are usually sent to another committee or harsher

punishments may be involved.274 Committee chairs are the figure that deals “with this dynamic

when they balance the rights of the government and opposition, while ensuring that they remain

impartial in the performance of their duties”.275 Dubois’ study of committees and the effects of

parliamentary rules and party institutions is categorized as a study of the behaviour of committee

members.

Dubois treated both parliamentary rules and party institutions as devices controlling

committee members, hindering the effectiveness and impartiality of committees. She argued that

the governing party usually has a majority of members in committees, and committees service

the government’s policy preferences. She supported this argument by examining the 41st

Parliament, stating that the 41st government exercised “a major influence by virtue of its numeric

superiority”, which gives the executive branch control over votes and decisions within

committees.276 She made suggestions as to how these problems to the committee system can

become more effective; these suggestions pertain to parliamentary reforms. One potential reform

to the committee system would be to alter the process of selecting a committee chair. A vote by

secret ballot “would encourage many candidates to run from a single political party, making it

virtually impossible to use disciplinary sanctions towards elected members who would dissent

272 Ibid, 26.273 Ibid, 28.274 Ibid, 27.275 Ibid.276 Ibid.

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from the party line”.277 This reform would produce a committee system with increased

impartiality.278 The focus of Dubois’ article is on both parliamentary rules and party institutions,

and she remains optimistic that these changes can have a positive effect on the effectiveness of

committees.

In 2015, Vincent Moscardellia and Eric McGhee wrote “Reform in the Canadian

Parliament and the US Congress: Institutional Choices and Member Power” and examined the

selection of committee chairs through secret ballot.279 Moscardellia and McGhee analyzed the

2002 rebellion against Chrétien, particularly on the issue of institutional reform to the committee

system, and as an example of parliamentary dissent, this case is employed in the study of the

committee system to understand “internal party power dynamics”.280 The authors found that there

were both endogenous and exogenous variables that contribute to individual–level support for

the 2002 reforms to the committee system.281 The endogenous variable, which the authors called

“party power,” had the highest statistical significance and affected the MPs’ support for

committee reform. One exogenous variable that had statistical significance was the MP’s

electoral independence and personal vote in her or his constituency, meaning that the “MP that

was electorally independent of their party” was more likely to be in favour of the 2002

reforms.282 The authors’ model of votes on reforming committees chair selection is a study of

reforms to committees and is categorized as such.

The authors emphasized that party power is the main causal mechanism affecting MPs’

support for reform. Moscardellia and McGhee stated that, due to internal party power dynamics,

277 Ibid, 31.278 Ibid.279 Vincent Moscardellia, and Eric McGhee “Reform in the Canadian Parliament and the US Congress:

Institutional Choices and Member Power,” American Review of Canadian Studies 45(2) 2015: 226–245.280 Ibid, 226.281 Ibid.282 Ibid, 238.

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the individual MPs “who were off the ‘Cabinet track’ opted for increased autonomy” via

committee reforms in 2002.283 The main argument was that there was a “double monopoly of

power” within the House; that is to say that the executive wields the power of and has a

monopoly over legislative outcomes.284 This “double monopoly of power” contributes to the lack

of representation of private members within the committee system.285 The authors did not make

suggestions for future reforms; however, they did suggest that tabled reforms in the House allow

private members to create cross–party pressures and vote for reforms. Moscardellia and McGhee

can be categorized as emphasizing both parliamentary rules and party institutions as equal

sources of private member suppression.

In this section, there is an examination of two studies and three authors: Dubois; and

Moscardellia and McGhee. The two studies advocated that there has been a mixture of causal

mechanisms affecting individual members’ freedom to act in committees. The main focus in this

section is the strategy used to select the committee chair and, because of this, there has been a

change in the literature in comparison to the Chrétien and Martin era. This is due to the fact that

the substance of the literature switches from focusing on the role of the committee to the

formation of the committee. The amount of literature in this section is similar across time, and it

seems as though scholars are not as interested in the House committee system reform and its

effects on the private members’ ability to effectively contribute to policies as they are interested

in dissent in the House. There is also a fairly large gap in the literature on committees. Again, the

scholars in this section did not mention the reforms from the McGrath Committee in 1985, yet

the same language is employed in the studies – that reforms to the House, via committee

structure, can contribute to the powers of the individual MP. This section conveys the evolution

283 Ibid.284 Ibid.285 Ibid.

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of the literature salient to committees in the House: the literature on the committee system is not

as popular in comparison to the literature on dissent and party discipline.

Discussion

This chapter analyzes the literature salient to the three reform categories outlined by the

McGrath Committee between 2006 and 2016. There are three main findings in this chapter. The

first finding is that there are 14 sources – four scholars studying the confidence convention, eight

studies on dissent and party discipline, and two studying House committees. Out of these 14

sources, only two studies specifically mention the McGrath reforms, and these were Chodos’

study, and Blaikie and Levy’s study, which is similar to the amount of studies specifically

mentioning the McGrath Reforms between 1993 and 2005. We see that over time the literature

begins to examine more recent reforms to the House, which is not surprising. Again, this could

be a function of the advent of the multiparty system where reforms from the Chrétien

government and the party platform of the Reform party became major political issues at the

national stage.286

The second finding is that there is continuity in the amount of literature salient to both the

confidence convention and committees; the amount of literature salient to dissent and party

discipline has been a popular subject among scholars. The literature between 2006 and 2016 also

continues to examine the 35th parliament and its comparison to other parliaments across time.

This suggests that the three Chrétien governments are a popular case to study to test hypotheses

and compare across systems.

286 Malloy, “High Discipline, Low Cohesion,” 121.

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The section on the confidence convention has a large gap in available literature between

2007 and 2015. In the first two chapters, there were smaller gaps in the literature salient to

reform of the confidence convention, and, this is the largest gap found in this study. These gaps

may be a function of the failure of three votes of confidence of Martin’s Liberal minority

government and the subsequent renewed interest on the topic. Scholarly interest peaked during

2006 on the confidence convention because of its use and the subsequent parliamentary crisis.

This portrays an evolution in the literature on the confidence convention; confidence in the

House, over time, has gained a renewed understanding since the McGrath Committee reports.

The third finding is that there is a change in the substance of the literature from the

Chrétien and Martin governments to the literature from the Harper era. Six out of the 14 studies

emphasized the effects of party institutions over parliamentary rules as a hindrance to individual

MP autonomy. The literature on dissent changed in this era because the focus was on candidate

selection and agenda control by party elites. The literature on the committee system also

changed, from a focus on the role of committees to the selection of the chair. Chong in particular

set out parliamentary reforms as a means to offset party discipline and to increase the relative

strength of the private member. This could be a function of Chong’s occupation and capacity as

an MP; he attempts to control what he can in the legislature by proposing reform to

parliamentary rules.

Harper’s controlling leadership style may be a contributing factor to changes in the

literature on committee reform and the continuity of the amount and the substance of literature

on dissent and party discipline. Harper’s control of information may be an indirect reason why

Chong advocated for committee reforms. It is interesting to note that although Harper is

generally depicted as controlling, the study conducted by Thompson and Curry shows that the

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Conservatives had the lowest amount of cohesion among the parties. This study suggests that

Harper’s controlling leadership style is not the only factor affecting dissent. These three findings

portray the evolution of the literature between the Mulroney era, the Chrétien and Martin Liberal

governments, and the Harper era. Now that all three eras of literature have been summarized, this

study turns its attention to the findings of how the literature has evolved over time.

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Conclusion

The McGrath Committee’s report has influenced the evolution of the literature germane

to the three key reforms areas: the confidence convention; dissent and party discipline; and the

House committee system. In 1985, a major concern to private members was their lack of

autonomy in the House and that they were unable to shape policies. The McGrath Committee

attempted to overcome this problem by creating a series of proposed reforms to the House while

also advocating a change in attitude towards dissent and party discipline. The McGrath

Committee maintained that their proposed reforms were the most substantive set of reforms to

date.287 It is interesting to examine how the literature salient to the three key reforms has evolved

over time. In this concluding chapter, I present the main findings of the study.

The first question this study examines is: since 1985, how has the literature on the

relationship between parliamentary behaviour and the three McGrath reforms evolved over time?

The second question this study examines is: in the same body of literature, are political party

institutions, as a force influencing parliamentary behaviour, given the same amount of

consideration as parliamentary reforms? In order to answer these questions, this study is

organized into three chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the literature salient to the three reform

categories outlined in the McGrath report from 1985 to 1992; Chapter 2 examines the literature

from 1993 to 2005, and Chapter 3 examines the literature from 2006 to 2016. The literature is

analyzed and presented in a chronological order at the beginning of each section, meaning that

the study that was closest, in year, to 1985 was presented first.

The analysis of the literature was set up into two separate analyses. The first categorized

the literature according to the three categories outlined in the McGrath report, and the second

categorized the studies into either the Parliamentary Camp – where emphasis is given to the

287 Canadian Parliament, “Report of the Special Committee,” x.

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effects of parliamentary rules on individual MP autonomy – or the Party Camp – where emphasis

is given to the effects of party institutions on individual MP autonomy. Each chapter examines

how the literature evolved over time through these two analyses.

The findings of this study are organized into two sections. The first set of findings discuss

observations surrounding the amount of literature in each section and how gaps can be explained

by the differences in governments and the issues different governments face. The second set of

findings pertain to the evolution of the substance of the literature and how parties are treated over

time. For the first set of findings, the amount of literature salient to the three key McGrath

reforms is outlined in Table 1 and is provided below.

Table 1: The Amount of Literature about the Three Key Reforms across the Three Time Periods

1985-1992 1993-2005 2006-2016

CONFIDENCE CONVENTION 2 2 4

DISSENT AND PARTY DISCIPLINE 2 5 8

HOUSE COMMITTEE SYSTEM 2 3 2

There was a substantially larger amount of literature on dissent and party discipline than on the

other topics; 15 out of the 30 studies examined were germane to dissent. This suggests that

dissent did not gain popularity until the beginning of the Chrétien government. There was a large

increase in the amount of literature on dissent and party discipline during the 1993–2005 and

2006–2016 time periods. The advent of the multiparty system in 1993 renewed the idea of

reforming the House in a radical manner via the Reform Party campaign platform. This

potentially contributed to the trends of interest on party discipline. Docherty found that there was

Beatty 73

a change in Liberal caucus members’ attitudes on dissent and party discipline between the 34th

and 35th parliaments. The advent of the multiparty system, and Docherty’s observed change in

the Liberal Party’s attitudes towards party discipline, can explain the proliferation of literature on

dissent.288 The topic of dissent and party discipline shifted from being an understudied force

restricting private members’ autonomy to a major topic in academic study.

There were eight studies on the confidence convention of the 30 examined studies. This

can be explained by the trends in the popularity of their study. Studying the confidence

convention gained popularity in certain years following its use, particularly during times of

parliamentary crisis in the Martin government. The waxing and waning of the quantity of

literature is linked to the different issues that different governments face. The Martin government

failed votes of confidence on three different occasions in 2005; these failures have renewed

academic interest on the confidence convention evidenced by the doubling in the amount of

literature regarding the confidence convention in 2006.

The literature on the committee system has major gaps that are not fully explained, and

there is no real change to the amount of literature across all time periods. Altogether, there were

seven sources of literature relevant to the House committee system. This, I suggest, can be an

area of future study; however, I suspect that the media’s attention to dissent and party discipline

is more prevalent, and will continue to be. The media could affect which areas of parliament

scholars study. Media is attracted to the problems that arise in the Canadian Parliament – which

can contribute to academics’ interests on all subjects. It would be interesting to analyze media

content from 1985 to 2016 in comparison to the findings in this study. The same scholars write

on parliamentary reform and party institutions, which is not surprising because the evolution of

the literature shows that topics are popular during certain times.

288 Docherty, Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons, 137.

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The substance of the literature has changed over time. The studies were categorized into

different camps: the Parliamentary Camp; Party Camp; and a camp that emphasizes that both

parliamentary and party institutions limit private members’ autonomy in the House. The

substance of the literature is important to investigate because its evolution reflects which

scholars target either parliamentary institutions or party institutions. The following charts

illustrate how the three camps intersect with where scholars feel are the most important factors

limiting private members’ autonomy in the House.

Chart 1: Substance of the Literature from 1985 to 1992

Parliamentary Barriers Party Institutions Both0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

1985 to 1992

Confidence Convention Dissent and Party Discipline House Committee System

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Chart 2: Substance of the Literature from 1993 to 2005

Parliamentary Barriers Party Institutions Both0

1

2

3

4

5

6

1993 to 2005

Confidence Convention Dissent and Party Discipline House Committee System

Chart 3: Substance of the Literature from 2006 to 2016

Parliamentary Barriers Party Institutions Both0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

2006 to 2016

Confidence Convention Dissent and Party Discipline House Committee System

Scholars consider party institutions to be the most important source of private member

suppression, and both scholars and politicians are concerned with party institutions. Across all

Beatty 76

three time periods, there are 15 studies that emphasize party barriers over parliamentary barriers,

which is greater than the seven that are categorized into the Parliamentary Camp and the eight

that advocate both. Over time, those who study the confidence convention in the 1985 to 1992

time period advocated that party institutions were the most important source of private member

suppression, yet between 1993 and 2005, literature concerning the confidence convention shifted

its focus to both camps, and this continued through the 2006 and 2016 period. Those who study

the dissent in the House generally advocate that party barriers are the most important factor

influencing private members’ autonomy, and this has been consistent throughout the three time

periods. Those academics who studied the House committee system from 1985 to 1992 argued

that parliamentary factors are the main cause of private member suppression, and this could be a

function directly relating to the McGrath Committee’s proposed reforms. These findings are

important because they show a clear change over time in all three key McGrath reform

categories.

MPs who contribute to the literature usually focus on parliamentary reforms; this could

be a function of how they can control parliamentary reforms because party institutions seem to

only be able to change via a shift in attitude. Academics argue for a shift in attitudes, and this

plea has been consistent through the three time periods. The McGrath reforms seem to have

influenced academics’ suggested reforms because the same literature has been used throughout

the literature. That is to say that the scholars’ suggested reforms throughout the literature aim at a

change in attitudes, which is what the McGrath Committee advocated. Some scholars do not

argue that reforms are necessary and instead remain silent on the matter. It is interesting to note

that only one academic, D.E. Smith, advocated that reforms to the House are unnecessary

because the House performs its constitutional duties well. The consensus among the examined

Beatty 77

scholars is that reforms and changes in attitudes are necessary to alleviate the suppression of

private members’ autonomy.

After 1992, scholars are less likely to specifically mention the McGrath reforms, which is

a function of the McGrath reforms’ age. It seems as though there is a negative relationship

between the McGrath reforms’ age and the number of times that it is specifically mentioned in

the literature; the older it get the less likely it is be mentioned. This is natural, and in fact, the

scholars that mention reforms during the 1993 to 2005 and 2006 to 2016 periods focused on

more recent reforms strategies, such the Chrétien Liberals Red Book and the Reform Party

campaign platforms. Blaikie and Levy were the only scholars that did specifically mention the

McGrath reforms and were themselves former members of the McGrath Committee.

From these findings, one major further study stands out. The potential study I suggest is

to conduct a case study on the Harper government and how the confidence convention, dissent

and party discipline, and the committee system were shaped in this era. The Harper government

lost the 2015 election to Liberal Justin Trudeau, and it would be interesting to analyze Harper’s

leadership style in regard to the McGrath Committee’s three key reforms. The studies that were

examined in the 2006 to 2016 time period focused their attention on the Chrétien and Martin

Liberal governments. From the case study, comparisons can be made across the three main time

periods and can contribute to the literature on MPs’ careers in parliament and to formulate

variables to increase methodological rigour.

In conclusion, the literature salient to the three reforms outlined in the McGrath

Committee report is analyzed across time from 1985 to 2016. This analysis portrays the trends

over time in all three reform categories, and shows that there is, indeed, an evolution in both

quantity and substance. The analysis also presents causal explanations for some of the findings,

Beatty 78

and the literature examined presents an interesting portrayal of how the McGrath Committee

shaped the discussion of both parliamentary reforms and changes to party institutions as they

relate to individual MP autonomy.

Beatty 79

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