The following article on parliamentary reform by Bill Blaikie was published in the National Post on October 21, 2000:

Talk about parliamentary reform is in the air once again, as it has tended to be on a repeating occasional basis ever since I was first elected in 1979. During this time there has been only one truly serious attempt at authentic reform, in the period of 1984-85, when many recommendations of the Special Committee on the Reform of the House of Commons were implemented. The special committee was chaired by James McGrath, then MP for St. John's West.

The purpose of the so-called McGrath reforms was "to restore to private members an effective legislative function, to give them a meaningful role in the formation of public policy and, in so doing, to restore the House of Commons to its rightful place in the Canadian political process." The organizing insight for the McGrath reforms was the need to reduce the role of party discipline in the House, and in committees.

In the House, this meant rethinking the confidence convention, whereby a government is said to be "defeated" if it loses a vote on a bill, or motion, and an election must happen. To this end, all the language of confidence was taken out of the standing orders. But at the end of the day, what was needed, what was essential, as far as the McGrath committee was concerned, was a change of attitude, on the part of governments, of all political parties, and on the part of the media. Difference of opinion, within limits, would need to be seen as healthy and democratic, rather than as fodder for accusations of destructive division or challenges to leadership. The idea was to permit a much wider range of issues on which there would be free votes. This has not happened.

In committees, reducing the role of party discipline was to be accomplished in a number of ways. Parliamentary secretaries were to be removed from committees, the whips were to lose their power to arbitrarily change committee membership, and the chairs of new committees set up to deal only with legislation were to be selected from a panel of chairpersons made up of well-respected MPs from all parties.

Parliamentary secretaries to Cabinet ministers tend to act, pejoratively speaking, as government agents on committees. They monitor and direct the government members, making sure that independent critical views are suppressed. And if they don't succeed, the whip has the power to remove the government member or members who persist in their critical stance. The McGrath reforms went after this dynamic. Get rid of the government agent, and eliminate the power of the whip to replace committee members who were not being the good little boys and girls that they were appointed to be. In 1985, the parliamentary secretaries were removed. But the power of the whips was never reduced, and so if a committee got out of line, what are known as parliamentary goon squads were employed. All the regular government members in a committee are summarily removed, and replaced with voting machines who know nothing about the subject the committee has been concerning itself with. Within a few years, the parliamentary secretaries were put back on the committees. And the idea, indeed the practice, of committees being chaired by more than just government members, died with the breakdown of the system that had legislation being dealt with by special committees. Legislation, the most difficult job of committees, went back to being dealt with by standing committees with partisan chairpersons, domineering parliamentary secretaries, and the ever-watchful whips. This is the system in place today.

What is needed, still, is a system that puts the government members on committees, in the short term, beyond the disciplinary glare of a parliamentary secretary, and beyond the instant punitive reach of the government whip. They should be appointed for the duration of a session, or even of a whole parliament, and be able to organize their own replacements in their unavoidable absence.

In the long term, independently minded government MPs cannot be protected against a vengeful prime minister, unless there is a change in prime ministerial attitude. Or, unless we change our parliamentary system to redistribute much of the appointing power that now resides exclusively with the Prime Minister and his office, with respect not just to parliament but to all the ways that the power of prime ministerial appointment can make ordinary acts of dissent look like possible career-ending events that damage both the present, and probable or desired futures.

Having said this, there is one ingredient that cannot be created by virtue of any combination of parliamentary reforms. I speak here of personal political courage, and the fact that, collectively speaking, government backbenchers have it within their power already to act independently, and to seize the power that is rightfully theirs. All they need to do is exercise it, and stick together. Procedurally, they have already been led to water. But they cannot be made to drink. This is easier said than done of course, as agreeing on what issue to exercise their power would be difficult, even if the will was present. What is more realistic, but still ever so difficult, is creating the conditions that would permit individual MPs to drink from the waters of parliamentary freedom in a way that didn't guarantee it would turn out to be a poisoned chalice.

Returning to some of the insights and the recommendations of the McGrath committee wouldn't be a bad place to begin, again.

Bill Blaikie was Vice-Chairman of the McGrath Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, and he is the only member of that committee still in the House.