In the days since the suspension of parliament out of an abundance of caution, we have been inundated with a number of "helpful" ideas about how the government should reorganize itself in order to accommodate the new state of affairs. But many of those solutions aren't actually helpful at all, and are in fact detrimental to parliamentary democracy in this country.
"During this time of suspension [of parliament], the cabinet committee of COVID-19 should be expanded to include representatives of all parties who meet daily," Conservative MP Cathy McLeod tweeted over the weekend, to many plaudits from the pundit crowd.
"When I was Leader of the Opposition, former PM Jean Chrétien included me on matters of national import," tweeted Stockwell Day in response to McLeod. "And when I was critic to Hon. Bill Graham and to Hon. Pierre Pettigrew I was also included on key files. PM Trudeau should be inviting shadow ministers' input at this crucial time."
Not to be outdone, leadership candidate Erin O'Toole stated that the federal government should invoke the Emergencies Act (which replaced the Wartime Measures Act) in order for the federal government to prohibit travel, enforce self-isolation, and control assemblies of people while also mobilizing the military.
"Now is the time to put our government and our economy on a war footing, with leadership from the top," O'Toole said in an email to his supporters.
All of these measures are not only overkill, but they risk confusing the roles that the opposition plays within our system. Remember that the Cabinet committee on COVID-19 is about making decisions on a daily basis as the situation evolves. It's not just about daily briefings, like Stockwell Day got, which is an important distinction. By bringing in opposition members to that committee, not only would they need to be sworn into the Privy Council (which some members of the Conservative ranks are, as they may have been ministers in the previous government), but it would mean that they are taking part in the decisions, which is a big deal that would ultimately be bad for parliament.
Why? Because if they take part in the decisions, they implicate themselves in the process, and can no longer play an effective opposition role, which is about holding the government to account for the actions that they have taken. We've already seen instances where this happened in the previous government by insisting on a free vote on the Afghan mission, when it went sideways, Stephen Harper shrugged and said "You guys voted for it." When then-Public Sector Integrity Christiane Ouimet turned out to be a hot flaming train wreck, Harper shrugged and said "You guys signed off on her." Now imagine if you had opposition members in a Cabinet committee making the decision. If this government manages to screw things up in a spectacular way, Justin Trudeau can simply shrug and say "You guys were on the Cabinet committee that made these decisions." This matters. Accountability matters.
Many of the defenders of McLeod's tweet tried to equate it to wartime governments, where there were cross-party governments, but that again is a different circumstance. In the First World War, the Unionist Government with MPs from both major parties actually ran during the election on a Unionist slate, and dissolved into the constituent Conservative and Liberal parties afterward. The Second World War was fought mostly under a majority government from William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal party, without any kind of party merger (and in fact King's biggest political crisis was that within his own ranks over the issue of conscription). We are not in a situation where we would need to form any kind of coalition government, particularly as the current global pandemic situation is likely to be taking extreme measures over the course of weeks, where the goal of "flattening the curve" of infections is to ensure that it slows the rate of infection to the point where we don't strain healthcare resources, which are still dealing with the end of flu season. If the rise of new infections starts beyond that point, then the mission is accomplished our system will have the resources to deal with those infections.
This is also why O'Toole's demands for emergency powers are reactionary at best. There has been no demand to retool the country's factories or to start rationing food staples for a wartime effort it's about delaying the onset of infections in the general population until our system has the capacity to deal with it. Closing the borders is a largely ineffective tool, especially as there are already cases in the country, and I'm not sure how he plans to enforce self-isolation unless we put the country into complete lockdown. As for the military, they are already taking measures to ensure that they have capability in the event that things go pear-shaped over the next few weeks and that their forces aren't sidelined by infections, and I'm not sure how he thinks that forcing them to mobilize at this point is helpful to anyone, particularly as it's not exactly conducive to social distancing and could turn into a contagion into their ranks.
I get why people think that trying to have quasi-coalition governments at a time like this is important, particularly given that it sends a message of unity in a time of crisis. But they can do that by ensuring to echo the messages of public health officials and amplifying the necessary measures that need to be taken, as opposed to going on social media and shitposting complaints that the government isn't being "decisive" enough, as though a crisis is right time to hose the room with testosterone. Have there been problems rolling out some of the measures? Sure and that should be expected because all governments have capacity issues, and this one is no exception. Could this government be communicating its messages better? You mean the government that can't communicate their way out of a wet paper bag? You bet. And hey, these are things that the opposition can put markers on and hold the government to account for when parliament returns, which is their job. Hopefully everyone can be grown-ups about it during this critical time.
Photo Credit: Toronto Star
