The final version of Michael Chong’s bill provides that after each election the members of each party caucus have an opportunity to vote on whether they will activate the powers available to them under the new Act. These powers, the assumption of which must be approved individually and which remain in force only until the next election unless renewed, are as follows:
Ø Member of caucus, not the party leader, will choose the chair of the caucus meetings.
Ø Members of caucus, not the party leader, will decide whether any member gets expelled from caucus.
Ø Members of caucus can initiate a leadership review and with the support of 50% plus one can oust a current leader.
Is that it, I hear you cry! Is this the great democratic revolution that so concerned the Conservative Party and many Senators? After all the watering down needed to gain passage in the Commons, the resulting legislation is pretty thin gruel indeed. It is a sad commentary of how much the position of MP has been eroded that the Chong bill was needed at all, and that its passage caused such protracted discussion and concern.
Limited as the provisions are, this bill – if party members vote to activate it – provides some small steps toward restoring the balance in our extraordinarily over-centralized regime of executive domination. By choosing the chair of the caucus, members can give themselves someone who will allow thoughtful debate and varied opinions and not a chair picked by the leader to enforce unswerving allegiance to the party line. If members decide, rather than the party leader, whether someone is to be expelled from caucus, that should make those with varying points of view feel more comfortable expressing them without fear of reprisal from the leader. Most of all, the possibility that the caucus can trigger a leadership review and even oust a leader – even if it is unlikely to arise except in very extreme circumstances – should remind leaders that they run roughshod over their members at their ultimate peril.
Many more reforms are needed
There are, of course, many more reforms that are needed if we are to restore democracy in Canada – as I have outlined elsewhere. Quite a number of these have recently been put forward by the Liberal Party of Canada and they will be examined in a subsequent posting.