Nova Scotia is about to have a new premier, after Iain Rankin won the provincial Liberals' leadership contest on the second ballot.  He will take over for Stephen McNeil at a time of pandemic and where McNeil's government has largely avoided the province's legislative assembly for nearly a year.  All of this is well and good Rankin has a seat already and the province won't have to go through what happened most recently in Newfoundland and Labrador with their new premier but he hasn't even been sworn in yet and already the hosts of the country's main political shows are asking him when he wants to call an election so that he can "run on his own mandate."

No.

We don't have "mandates" in Canada.  They are antithetical to our system of government, and yet, because so many of our political discussions in this country are framed by American concepts, that's the kind of thing that is being discussed.  False equivalencies of their system infect our political discourse, and not enough people are willing to push back against them because they have become pervasive, and it really, really doesn't help when the hosts of political shows play into them as well.

For starters, Rankin has no reason to call an election for almost another year-and-a-half.  Nova Scotia is not bound by a fixed election date (thankfully that's another Americanism that we need desperately to purge from our statute books, preferably with fire), but it is subject to the constitutional limit of five years between legislative assemblies, which would be May 30^th, 2022 at the latest.  While several provinces have had elections during the pandemic, in some cases it was because it was statutory (Saskatchewan), but in others, they were in a hung parliament situation and they wanted a majority legislature, but Rankin wouldn't have that excuse as he is inheriting one.  Granted, Nova Scotia is one of the provinces in the best shape during the pandemic, so they theoretically could have one with less trouble than some other provinces, however just because they could, it does not follow that they should, even with a new premier.

The demand that a new premier (or prime minister) who has assumed leadership of the party between general elections quickly call another one in order to have their own "mandate" goes against some of the fundamentals of Responsible Government in that it presumes that the system is based on the leaders.  It's not supposed to be despite the best efforts of parties and the media to make it appear so.  Remember that we elect individual MPs, not parties, and not the first minister directly.  The fact that the incumbent remains in power after an election until they resign or are dismissed by the appropriate vice-regal is another indication that governments, while drawn from their respective assemblies, remain separate from them.  Governments can stretch across parliaments, or change within a single parliament, depending on the situation of confidence.  They are not tied to particular elections.

The talk of mandates, however, presupposes that governments are elected when they are in fact appointed by the vice-regal based on which party can command the confidence of the legislature.  Confidence is not bound to a "mandate," which is particularly made evident in a hung parliament, where no party hold a majority of the seats.  It's hard to describe a "mandate" if there isn't a majority to tie that mandate to and no, this is not an invitation for electoral reform in order to rig the system to more closely associate the two concepts.  It just means that we need to think about our system as it was designed and not try to wedge American concepts into it.

That, unfortunately, gets harder when we keep trying to import Americanisms, such as the ways in which we now choose party leaders as though they were quasi-presidential primaries.  This has fuelled the narrative of having a "mandate" because it has elevated the leader above how our system was designed to regard them.  Trying to tie a leader to an electoral mandate helps to propel the move that has seen our political parties turn themselves into minor cults of personality around each new leader, and then reform that personality cult when that leader is gone and a new one replaces them.  The system properly evolved in such a way that leaders could be interchangeable within the party that the caucus could decide when one had outlived their usefulness or become a liability, and they would choose a new one from within their own ranks.  But the presidentialization of our party leaders means that these mechanisms and their utility are being forgotten.

Rankin has said in the interviews with said political shows that his first priority is to swear in a new Cabinet and have a new legislative session, which is how it should be.  In fact, it's what needs to happen because the Nova Scotia House of Assembly has not met in nearly a year having adjourned for the pandemic, followed by a prorogation.  Rankin will need to quickly pursue a budget, and hopefully it won't be a thinly veiled exercise in crafting an election platform that he can then call an election on something that would almost be irresponsible at this particular point in time, no matter whether the province has some of the lowest COVID numbers in the country.  Rather, he should take the opportunity to govern and show what kind of a leader he is, so that when he does eventually go to an election, the people have something that they can actually hold him to account for, rather than the sins of his predecessor.

Nevertheless, talk of his own "mandate" will dog him if he does, particularly from the pundit class who will demand that if he wants to do something, he should call an election and run on it first.  Our system doesn't work like that, and it would be great if we could stop pretending that we're Americans and actually use our Westminster parliamentary democracy the way it was intended.

Photo Credit: CBC News