Imagine that you're mid-election, and days into the campaign, you find out that your leader has done something terribly racist in the past like, say, dressed up in Blackface.  Would there be some of way of trying to salvage the situation, to get rid of that leader who will soon be a millstone around your necks, and quickly come up with someone else who can carry the party in the next parliament?  Well, that situation has just happened, and given the current system, there isn't an effective way for the Liberals to switch leaders.  Once upon a time, it might have been different, but thanks to the Liberal Party's poor judgment a century ago, and compound mistakes in the decades since, we have been left with a leadership system that makes dumping a problematic leader a virtual impossibility leaving our democracy all the poorer for it.

Swapping leaders just before an election has become a bit of an Australian trend over the past decade, given that until very recently, their parties retained the original Westminster system's characteristic of having the caucus choose and fire the leader when it suited them.  While it's a bit of an extreme example the instability of constantly changing prime ministers because the party got spooked in advance of an election call (heightened by the fact that they have long been in a situation of narrow majorities or coalitions means the loss of a mere couple of seats could upset the balance of power) has led to certain parties demanding a more Canadian-esque system where party memberships would do more to determine who the leaders would be, it nevertheless proves the point that our shared Westminster traditions are capable of dealing with rapid changes before elections, and that it's not a bad thing given the fact that it keeps the emphasis on the MPs and the party brand rather than the leader him or herself.

Part of the problem with the Canadian-led system of party leadership being determined by votes of the party membership (or worse, "supporters" who merely had to declare that they weren't a member of another party) is that it slowly created a system whereby the parties hollowed themselves out and became personality cults for their leaders a trend that has accelerated in recent years as those parties moved from delegated conventions to one-member-one-vote systems, to the most recent Liberal innovation of "supporters" who didn't need to be a member of the party.  This false democracy and faux-presidential primary gave rise to party leaders believing that they had a "democratic legitimacy" that they would use to lord over their caucus with recall that the first leader chosen by delegated convention, William Lyon Mackenzie King, telling his caucus that they didn't hire him and they couldn't fire him when he became embroiled in scandal.  Nowadays, MPs are no longer masters of their own destiny, but are reduced to drones to do as the leader demands their free votes curtailed, their speeches dictated to them from the leader's office, their rights as MPs in question.

Thanks to the centralization of power that this system has enabled recall that Trudeau and his staff pushed through changes to the party's constitution that eliminated party memberships and wiped out most of the accountability mechanisms within the party structure that could be used to push back against a leader Trudeau has ensured that the only way his leadership can be challenged officially is if he loses an election.  This is a problem when it comes to keeping leaders accountable and on their toes.  It essentially leaves it up to the unofficial pressures of MPs to make any kind of meaningful action with a leader they've lost confidence in speaking out en masse, resignations, and the like.  That's something that has not yet happened (two expulsions, and one resignation later not counting the three other MPs who left caucus for various allegations of misconduct).

So just what might happen mid-election if, by a miraculous chance, that the leader chose to step aside?  The party would have to convene its senior officials (the party's national board of directors) possibly along with the caucus, in order to name an interim leader, almost certainly with the proviso that they would hold a leadership contest post-election.  It pretty much guarantees that they wouldn't form government because our elections have become so leader-centric that the loss of a leader would be devastating to the party brand because that brand is now subservient to the cult of personality of the leader, and without that leader for the media to focus its attention on, the party's chances would be sunk.  Whereas in a system that was built for a potential for a leadership change in short order (rather than the farcical two-year process that some parties have undertaken), we have bastardized it so badly that any of the resilience has gone out of the system.  Not to mention, all of the ads, signs, bus wraps and planes that focus on the leader (such as Team Trudeauâ„¢ branding) over the individual candidates would all need to be scrapped.

If, as would be the current case where the incumbent stepping aside is also the prime minister, things would be doubly complicated they might contrive that he or she would stay on as prime minister in a caretaker capacity (as Theresa May just did in the UK) while the interim leader fights the election, rather than swearing in the interim leader as prime minister for the duration (as there is no such thing as an interim prime minister).  Nevertheless, we are reminded that we have so overcomplicated the question of leadership, so wholly undermined the very system that has evolved over nearly two centuries, in order to create these quasi-presidential contests that detract from what a Westminster parliament is supposed to be about.  We shouldn't be fighting elections based on the leaders we should be fighting them on the basis of who the local MPs are, and the values that the party platforms present as chosen by the grassroots members and not the leader.  This episode with Trudeau has shone a spotlight on this glaring vulnerability in our system that we have created for ourselves, and maybe, if we're lucky, enough people will reflect on it to realize that we need to change the direction we're going if we want our democratic system to survive future shocks.

Photo Credit: CBC News

One of the new features of this election is the fact that the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be providing costings of certain promises by political parties, with an eye to ensuring that there is a neutral evaluation of what is being proposed.  The problem, however, is that we are already seeing a creeping politicization of the PBO and his work based on what has been presented to date, and it makes me wonder if some of the concerns I had about the decision to extend this mandate to the office are not coming true.  Making him an Officer of Parliament was a bitter enough pill to swallow, but getting him to weigh in on promises made during the campaign starts to implicate him in the political narrative of parties, more so than they already do in the course of a regular Parliament, where his word becomes the sword and shield of parties looking to score political points.  Entrenching him in the campaign narratives of parties only serves to sharpen that sword.

The whole reason we have a PBO in the first place is part of the creeping Americanism that Stephen Harper so enjoyed to inflict upon our Westminster parliament.  Part of the genesis was when Harper and company would complain that the forecasts from the Department of Finance often wound up with surpluses that were far and above what was forecast, and they wanted a more neutral body to provide a better budget forecast.  Mind you, this was a period of strong economic growth, which is in large part why the deficit was slain and debt paid down faster than anticipated, and that it's generally good practice to lowball forecasts rather than wind up short every year.

Part of their inspiration was the American Congressional Budget Office, which provides costing for legislative proposals from members of Congress and senators, but it ignores one of the biggest differences in our two legislative bodies American legislators initiate all legislation in the US, whereas in Canada, where the executive is fused with the House of Commons, it's Cabinet that initiates most legislation.  As well, private members' bills are forbidden from being money bills (even though we have developed a too-cute by half system where MPs will use those bills to propose non-refundable tax credits, which count as not taking in revenue as opposed to spending measures even though it's actually a tax expenditure).  But because our MPs aren't initiating spending bills, the need for something like the CBO isn't immediately obvious after all, MPs are supposed to have the watchdog role over government spending rather than being the ones proposing it.

Of course, when the PBO was established, first under the umbrella of the Library of Parliament, it quickly turned into a thorn in the side of Harper's government, disagreeing with their cost estimates, and they started costing some of their programs such as the F-35s (while defence procurement experts cringed at his methodology).  In retaliation, the government cut their budget and steadfastly refused to provide certain information, even to the point of battles at the Federal Court, and because his work became so popular among MPs as it was often used to bash the government, it became one of the Liberals' promises to elevate the PBO to full Officer of Parliament status a promise they fulfilled in 2017, along with this mandate of costing party platform promises.

The PBO as an Officer of Parliament is already a role that I am dubious about because of the explosion in the number of Officers of Parliament, who are unaccountable and to whom the media are far too deferential to, even when they make gross mistakes (see the Auditor General's report on the Senate as a prime example).  Worse, MPs have abdicated their responsibilities for being the watchdogs of the public purse to Officers like the Auditor General and the PBO, and rather than fighting the governments of the day to ensure that government financial documents are clear and readable, they simply fobbed off their homework.  Adding the costing of platform promises to this office, which is already used for political purposes by MPs, adds fuel to that fire.

In just over a week of the writ period, we've already seen where this system starts to break down.  In TV interviews, the PBO himself has stated that sometimes he and his staff need to be creative to come up with costing models for proposals that have been brought to them, which fills me with a certain amount of dread as to their trustworthiness, particularly after the early example of the F-35 costing methodology.  As well, one of the Conservatives' "costed" promises around cutting $1.5 billion in corporate subsidies was essentially just the PBO taking their word for it and putting it on their letterhead  giving undue legitimacy to a fantasy projection that has zero ability of being held to account.  Promises to cut these subsidies are harder to fulfil than parties like to make it seem because they have constituencies to serve, and if they want their votes, sometimes the subsidies need to continue particularly ones like the implicit subsidies of the Supply Management system, or the small business tax rates, which inhibit companies from growing.  But the PBO gave them a document that had zero analysis of what they planned to cut especially because those are political decisions and implicated themselves in saying that it checked out.

Add to that, because the PBO won't actually cost full platforms (which a number of journalists seemed to be confused about this week when they groused that the Liberals only stated that the PBO would cost part of their promises something that actually applies across the board), we have little way of ensuring that what they cost will actually make sense in a broader context.  It means their work can be spun by the parties in the final picture, and the PBO won't be able to say anything about it.  In the quest for something "neutral" that they could point to for political reasons, MPs turned a politically neutral office into a political tool, which is bad for the office itself, and bad for parliamentary democracy.  And yet, I predict that nobody will have learned their lesson, and this will continue in future elections, further making this office a problem for Parliament as a whole.

Photo Credit: CBC News

It is not unexpected to have a certain amount of bending the truth at election time, and that there would be a certain amount of spin and torque when it comes to framing one's opponents.  I can't recall, however, a time when complete and blatant fictions were being trotted out as serious fodder during a campaign, and yet here we are.  Day six of the election campaign, and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was pressed by journalists with the fact that he and his candidates have been holding up a Liberal document they claim as "proof" that there is a secret plan to levy massive capital gains taxes on housing sales if they win the election, and that said document has been disavowed.  Scheer's response that Justin Trudeau lied, so he was going to keep bringing up the document, no matter that it was misleading.

This shouldn't a surprise.  Scheer has spent the past two years building up a narrative about the Liberals and their record that would be charitable to call fiction.  For months and daily on the campaign trail he spouts patent mistruths about the federal carbon price backstop, calling it a tax grab on the part of Trudeau (reminder: none of the money goes into federal coffers, and because those affected provinces have not committed to recycling revenues through things like income tax cuts, individual households will instead be receiving rebates that are worth more than they would have paid on average for the carbon price), as well as completely distorting the output-based pricing system for large emitters, claiming it gives a 90 percent discount to major emitters (again, misleading as the discounts can apply to sectors which are trade-exposed but are not widespread across all major industrial emitters).  He has put out videos of him convincing voters in Quebec that the federal carbon price applies to them in order to turn them against Trudeau (it doesn't Quebec has a cap-and-trade system which meets the federal carbon price criteria), and since his "real plan" for the environment has come out, has tried to convince people that he can achieve reductions and spur technological development without a price, when anyone with any sense knows that it would simply remove the transparency of the carbon price and producers would simply pass along the costs of increased regulation to consumers, who no longer get the rebates.

Add to that, Scheer makes constant misleading statements about the size of the deficit and the apparent necessity to raise taxes or to cut social programs to pay for it (with a declining debt-to-GDP ratio and consistent GDP growth, neither will happen, particularly given that we remain in a period of low interest rates that are unlikely to rise even into the neutral range for the foreseeable future).  He repeats the debunked Fraser Institute figure that claims middle-class taxes were raised (it refers to cancelled non-refundable tax credits, CPP increases, and ignores the effect of the Canada Child Benefit on disposable income).  He has and continues to say that there is an RCMP investigation into the Double-Hyphen Affair, which there is not.  He spread disinformation that a UK child killer was being sent to Canada when it was both untrue and debunked by major media organizations months before made the accusation.  He once spent a Question Period pretending that Trudeau was simply refusing to answer his questions when Trudeau was absent, then sent out the clips over social media falsely making the claim that Trudeau refused to answer.  He makes false statements about irregular border crossers and asylum seekers "jumping the queue" when no queue exists merely a process.  He asserts that Trudeau capitulated to Donald Trump on the new NAFTA negotiations when the concessions that Trudeau agreed to were the very same ones that the Conservatives negotiated with the TPP when the Americans were still part of those discussions and presumes that Donald Trump is a rational actor, which we all know he is not.

Which brings us to the document in question that Scheer and his candidates most especially Lisa Raitt and Candice Bergen have been circulating.  The claim is that it's a secret plan to impose a 50 percent capital gains tax on housing sales because the narrative they keep promulgating is that Trudeau needs to raise taxes to pay for his deficits (which is, again, untrue).  The problem is that the document says nothing of the sort.  It was a report from a consultation process and meant as an internal discussion piece.  It was not adopted the National Housing Plan is on the record and the proposal therein was that such a tax could be applied to a house sold within the first year of purchase, and would decline over five years, as a means of discouraging "flipping" houses amidst soaring prices in hot housing markets.  And yet, this false version is circulating, knowing full well that it's completely misleading, and it's doing so with Scheer's blessing.  When called out by reporters, Scheer stood by the tactic because he says that Justin Trudeau lied, that he was lying about the Conservatives' plans (Trudeau says that the Conservatives will only offer cuts when Scheer insists that he pledged otherwise), so it was fair for him to raise the document.

The problem in all of this is that Scheer is trying to make this an election about "who do you trust?"  He says that Trudeau has "lost the moral authority to govern" based on the Double-Hyphen Affair, and yet he admits on camera that he's disseminating false information and justifying it by saying that his opponent lies.  But if he's spreading the very same lies, does that not put his own ethical conduct and character into question, and invite the Liberals to further claim that while Scheer says he won't cut social programs, he's lying about other things (lots and lots of other things, verifiably), so why could you trust that he's telling the truth about not making cuts?  This seems like the most bone-headed, short-sighted tactics imaginable, like he is deliberately shooting himself in the foot possibly in the hopes of blaming it on someone else.  If he openly admits to spreading falsehoods, he undermines his own question about a leader whom you can trust and that is just going to drive the cynicism of the voting public.

Photo Credit: CBC News