Canada Responsible Government

Responsible government is to Canada what apple pie and exceptionalism must be to the United States: the identity of the nation is built into its ideal, but probe deeper than the crust and the whole façade crumbles. Convoluted metaphors aside, this section will substantively address how responsible government and Parliamentary democracy – as Canadian tenets, of course, but ones borne from the UK – are unable to provide a singular objective definition of modern committees. Contrary to public mythologies, empowered committees are neither constitutionally, theoretically, or historically based in Canada – and, worse still in terms of analysis, the committee structure is unique, and largely both an ambiguous and modern transmutation. Since Canadianized
Contrary to calls by retired MPs for a return to the “traditional” role for committees, the relevance of a singular role for MPs as legislative decision makers is weak. In the beginning, it is important to trace the committee system back to its constitutional origin, and to examine the unwritten conventions underlying responsible government in Canada. Followingly, the convention for MPs to govern through negative unwritten control is introduced – and the avenues available for MPs to specialize, contrary to Walter Bagehot’s theories, are delineated. Faulty assumptions remain largely unchecked, until
The notion for a domestic “Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom” is straightforward, but underlying it are these general norms. By convention, the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s executive power is self-sanctioned through responsible government – the need for the executive as simultaneously members of the legislature to be responsible to the voice of the people through a majority in the House of Commons. Subsequently, without exception, positivist decision-making and accountability ultimately lies in Cabinet in lieu of the MPs clamoring out of the ministerial spotlight. Cabinet oversees and administers the bureaucracy’s expertise; MPs, without this nonpartisan pool of expertise, are logically precluded from introducing any money bills. Little surprise that the number of Cabinet Ministers resigning due to maladministration, since Confederation, is at most two – having given away most of their unilateral executive powers, MPs can rarely pull back Cabinet without calling a new election. Responsible government vis-à-vis the system of ministerial responsibility ensures that there is always the duly-elected and doubly-selected Minister that remains responsible and answerable for all polices in the department and all executive actions, even by other