Andrew Scheer's decision to oust onetime leadership rival Maxime Bernier from the Conservative Party's shadow cabinet this week has caused no end of consternation and plaintive wails about free speech and the independence of MPs.  There also seems to be a great deal of concern and indeed confusion as to whether a shadow cabinet should have the same expectation of solidarity as the actual Cabinet.

To recap for those of you who missed the drama, Maxime Bernier was ousted from his role as the Conservative critic for science, innovation and economic development ostensibly because he "broke his word" to caucus that he wouldn't publish his book on his political vision after he uploaded the chapter on Supply Management and his supposition that "fake conservatives" won the leadership for Scheer to his website, after said chapter had already been floated to news outlets and was printed in the Globe and Mail.  The actual reasons are likely more political in that the Conservatives are facing a lot of heat to support the Supply Management system in the face of threats from the Trumpocalypse, and the fact that every time they would demand the government support the system in Question Period, the retort would always be that the Liberals support it more than the Conservatives do because noted opponent Bernier was on their front bench.  With a byelection in Quebec coming up this Monday, Scheer apparently felt that this was becoming too much of a distraction, so out went Bernier.

It's also about Bernier's political judgment, which people need to start seeing as far poorer than they keep giving him credit for.  Bernier has become the repository for the hopes and dreams of the libertarian set but hasn't really demonstrated the talent to pull off what he espouses, and his continued floating of his own vision in contrast to Scheer's was very much seen as undermining Scheer in public, something his other leadership rivals have not yet done.  Witness Michael Chong's stoic silence about carbon taxes which he supports, as any reasonable free-market conservative would in the face of Scheer and company performatively melting down about them every single day in Question Period.  Chong has more or less stated that he knows he'll be right in the long term, but while he waits for his opportunity to say that he told them so, he's toeing the line (as moronic as that line might be).

But should opposition MPs be able to publicly espouse separate views from their leader?  That's always an open question, where we lack some fairly clear lines in the Canadian parliament.  In an ideal parliament, we would expect MPs to be elected as individuals, and to each bring some ideas to the table.  Yes, they support party platforms, which has the two-fold exercise of both establishing the coalition of MPs who can ensure that a government that their party forms can maintain confidence, but it also has the ability to pool talents and policy strengths better than any one candidate could on their own.  Of course, we've seen this ethos being worn away as the focus increasingly turns to party leaders, to the point where it's the leader and not the party that decides on the platform and the policies, and the leader whose will must be obeyed.  The more focus we put on the leader, to the point where every political party is hollowing itself out to become the cult of personality for that leader and where complete devotion and supplication is required, the more we realize just how far we have strayed from how a Westminster system should operate.

Of course, if we well and truly wanted independent MPs, that would require us to have a lot more of them probably doubling the size of the House of Commons and make us more akin to the size of the UK's parliament while returning to the system where caucus selects and removes leaders, and a leader has no ability to sign off on an MP's nomination papers.  This means removing the "democratic legitimacy" that we've imparted on the leaders, that they use to push their MPs around, but also amass power away from the grassroots.  And having a strong grassroots is part of having strong MPs, because that's who should be both selecting the MPs through nominations, and putting forward the party's policies that the platform is built around.  And with more MPs in the chamber, who have the backing of their constituencies, that creates the insulation for them to be more independent from the party line when need be, because they know that even if they run afoul of the leader that their constituents will return them.  We don't have that right now.

As for the expectation of shadow cabinet solidarity, we need an actual shadow cabinet system in practice rather than in name.  When he was made leader, Scheer started using the nomenclature of "shadow ministers" rather than critics but didn't change the substance of what it meant.  If we were more akin to the UK system, shadow ministers would be the backbone of a government in waiting something that is harder to do in Canada because our Cabinets are constructed with regional, gender, and ethnic representation considerations.  It's far harder to put that into a shadow cabinet from the opposition benches.  As well, the UK shadow cabinet is institutionally stronger its MPs get regular department briefings, have scheduled department visits, and don't sit on committees to keep the committees independent.  None of those apply in Canada.  And because they act as a government-in-waiting in ways that Canadian MPs simply have not (and probably can't, given their smaller numbers), it creates a sense where they have a system that creates the expectation of Cabinet solidarity between them.  But in Canada, where we have opposition parties doling out critic portfolios and deputy critic portfolios for every micro-interest under the sun in order to make everyone feel included, it makes it hard to have a cohesive shadow cabinet group.  That makes it hard to demand solidarity akin to a Cabinet, and instead reinforces the appearance of the cult of the party leader.  We have a lot of work to do to restore our parliament to functioning the way it should be, and this Bernier incident reinforces that.