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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
“Your business is not to govern the country; it is, if you think fit, to call to account those who do govern it.” This remark of Gladstone to the House of Commons during the Crimean War applies with equal validity to the Canadian House today. If Parliament is to call the Government to account, given party discipline as we know it, it must do so through the Opposition or it will not do so at all. Jennings comments: “The Opposition demands that policies be formulated openly, and the consequences of policies revealed. Parliament compels the Government to defend itself by open and rational argument; but it also compels the Opposition to state what is the alternative.”
This process of government by discussion involves more than the trading of facts and argument at arm's length between Government and Opposition. It enlists more than the intellects of the members; it involves their emotions as well. Members are conscious that they are the representatives of the people of the country, to whose desires and interests they must give voice. They are led in the course of debate to refer, usually in general terms, to the desirability of action along a certain line, or to express disapproval of another possible course. The Government, if it is wise, pays close attention to such remarks since the members' opinions are the most sensitive indicator of feelings in the constituencies. A rather vague agreement, usually transcending party, emerges on proposed lines of policy. It does not suggest a definite course of action at a given time; rather it indicates the trend and intensity of opinion in the country. In this vague and general sense, Parliament assists in the formulation of policy. As Lord Balfour said, “our whole political machinery presupposes a people so fundamentally at one, that they can afford safely to bicker.” It is up to Parliament to make clear on exactly what the nation is at one, as well as to take the lead in the bickering.
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Ottawa, June 13, 1957.
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4 Standing Committee on Railways, Canals, and Telegraph Lines, April 28, 1950, 147, 203.
5 Ibid., March 8, 1951, 71–8.
6 In considering the bill to incorporate the Trans Mountain Oil Pipe Line Company the committee required that the main line be constructed entirely within Canada (ibid., March 19, 1951, 101–4). A similar requirement was included in the bill to incorporate the Canadian Montana Pipe Line Company (ibid., April 4, 1951, 118–20).
7 This requirement was included in the bills to incorporate the Independent Pipe Line Company and the Champion Pipe Line Corporation Limited (ibid., June 11, 1951, 221–57).
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19 The Naval Aid Bill, 1913; the Canadian Northern Railway Acquisition Bill, 1917; the Wartime Elections Bill, 1917; the Canadian National Railways Bill, 1919; interim supply and one item of the estimates, 1921; the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, 1926; and the Unemployment and Farm Relief Continuance Bill, 1932.
20 Prior to 1940 only four Speakers out of eighteen went to the cabinet. For details see Forsey, Eugene, Correspondence, “Parliament and Pipeline,” Canadian Bar Review, XXXIV, no. 7, 882.Google Scholar
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29 Mr. Harris: “… there is no possibility whatever of this bill going to a standing committee and having the examination he [Mr. Drew] has in mind, and coming out in time to have this job done by Christmas in western Canada” (ibid., May 21, 1956, p. 4142).
30 Mr. Howe had faced a series of rebuffs in the months prior to the pipeline debate: by the cabinet on the issue of guaranteeing Trans-Canada's bonds; by the leaders of one of the large U.S.—controlled oil and gas companies on the issue of Government participation through the Industrial Development Bank in Trans-Canada's finances; and by Parliament, and in the end by his colleagues, on the issue of the Defence Production Act. It became clear that he could not be expected to accept another.
31 When majorities are extremely small, or bills exceptionally contentious, obstruction is still employed as a legitimate parliamentary weapon, for example, in the 1950–1 Parliament when the Labour majority was only six.
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