Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 3, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba THINK TANK COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A9 SATURDAY MAY 3, 2025 Ideas, Issues, Insights It’s a win for Canadian democracy A MERICA was on the ballot last Monday and Canada won. We beat the United States. Not in hockey (did that already). And not on tariffs (heavy sledding still ahead on that). No, we beat American democracy with Canadian democracy. Right where it counted — through the ballot box. More Canadians turned out to vote in Monday’s election than any time since 1993, over 30 years ago. Our turnout went up in 2025. Theirs went down in last year’s presidential election. Our election was violence-free. America had an assassination attempt, ballot box arson attempts in at least two states and numerous threats against election workers around the country. Our election went smoothly, overseen by one national independent elections authority, not 50 different, politically-appointed election administra- tors. In the U.S., no two states administer the federal election exactly the same way. In Canada, provinc- es have no role in counting votes and every voter can expect the same experience, no matter where they live. Most importantly, all our political leaders public- ly accepted the results on election night. There was no talk of “stealing” or “rigging” a free and fair election. Democracy requires both good winners and good losers if it is to serve the country. We had that on Monday night. None of this is by chance. Canada’s political cul- ture is a manifestation of who we are as a society. It is not a distinction without a difference from the unruly democracy next door. It is a vast chasm of difference that makes Canada different from the United States. It is the best expression yet for our sovereignty in the face of American political aggrandizement. Peace, order and good government (the original “Canada Clause” in our Constitution) remains the signpost for how most Canadians act as citizens and democrats. And we did so with two distinct, competing and argumentative choices for parties, policies and prime minister. Democracy is about choices. Having a robust democratic argument about those choices is always in order. That is not to say voters always opt for a clear choice. As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Canada did. After five weeks of democratic argu- ment, Canadians chose a middling course. Despite the starkness of leadership styles and the nation- alist fervour underpinning the whole campaign, we were unwilling to reward the Liberals with a majority, fourth-term government and unwilling to opt for disruptive change offered by the Conserva- tives. Unconvinced fully of either choice, unsurprising- ly Canadians held back from voting convincingly for either. For everyone except the NDP, whose dismal fate was pre-ordained, this made for a dra- matic night of election counting. By its close, though, this election turned out to be historic in its moment and historical in its results. As Canadians sorted through their democratic preferences for dealing with America, our coun- try took on one distinct aspect of our neighbour’s democracy: a two-party election dynamic. Together, the Conservative and Liberal parties amassed 85 per cent of the popular vote, the first time since 1958 that occurred. This was a regular outcome of Canadian elections until 1935 when Social Credit appeared, and after 1945 with the emergence of the CCF, the forerunner of today’s NDP. Since then, we have lived in a multiparty democ- racy, splintered now and then by regional parties such as Reform, the Canadian Alliance and the persistent Bloc Quebecois. Is American-style political polarization in Cana- da leading to an American-style two-party system in Canada? Parliamentary political systems like ours typically generate multiple party represen- tation of diverse opinions in society. Not this time. The big question ahead is whether this is a one-off bug of unique 2025 circumstances — Trump in, Trudeau out and tariffs coming — or a brand-new feature of Canadian democracy? The question arises from two very different and new voting coalitions the winning and losing parties forged. Boomers and seniors voted Liberal instead of Conservative. Male voters mostly voted Conser- vative unless you were older. Younger Canadians tipped towards the Conservatives, away from progressive parties. Women went Liberal. Work- ing-class voters (“boots not suits”) gave much of their support to the Conservatives. And, of course, the traditional regional divide of much of the West voting blue and the East voting red. Just how durable these two coalitions remain will determine whether Monday’s new two-party system remains. Any way you look at it, Canada’s 45th general election was extraordinary. Extra in outcome, yet ordinary in process. Peace, order and good government, indeed. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government. The importance of a constitutional monarchy ON April 8, I had the honour of speaking at one of the monthly evenings hosted by Lt.-Gov. Anita Nev- ille at Government House. My topic was the role of vice-regal representatives of King Charles — the Governor General and lieutenant-governors — in our national and provincial systems of cabinet-par- liamentary government. Given U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war and his claim that Canada should become the 51st state, I started with the observation that Canada and the U.S. are different in many ways, including the fundamental features of their constitutions. Canada and Manitoba have cabinet-parliamen- tary systems with dual heads of government. The vice-regals are the formal heads of state, while the prime minister and premiers are the political heads of government who are answerable to Par- liament or the legislature and ultimately to voters. Vice-regals are above the political fray and sym- bolize tradition, unity and the constitutional order. In the U.S. presidential-congressional system, the president is both the head of state and the top political leader. People who want to attach loyalty to the country and its constitution often make the president the target of their sentiments. Vice-regals operate at the intersection of law and politics. It is hard to prove conclusively, but a case can be made that their presence in the governing process is one of a number of obstacles preventing an all-powerful political actor from abusing the constitutional rules. To the extent they are aware, most citizens see the vice-regal role as simply ceremonial. Meeting visiting dignitaries, serving as patrons of worthy causes, bestowing honours on outstanding citizens and participating in community events are examples of important vice-regal activities which otherwise would have to be performed by political leaders. Vice-regals are more than figureheads. Consti- tutional documents might suggest they are benign dictators because so many actions in the governing process are done in their name. That is misleading, however. In practice, their role is shaped and lim- ited by unwritten constitutional conventions which means major actions are almost always based on the advice and recommendations of first ministers. In short, there are limits on the vice-regal role, but there are also important opportunities for them to have influence in the governing process. The most general authority of vice-regals was expressed by Walter Bagehot (author of The En- glish Constitution, 1867) who wrote that under our constitution the monarch or his representatives has three rights — “the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn.” It is difficult to know how often this preroga- tive is used by Canadian vice-regals, because any advice offered to first ministers takes place in confidential conversations, which may or may not happen on a regular basis. There are a number of other sources of potential vice-regal influence which can only be highlighted briefly. First, it is the duty of the vice-regal to ensure there is a functioning government in place at all times. After an election or a leadership contest for the governing party, the vice-regal invites the lead- er of the party with the greatest number of seats in the House of Commons or the legislature to form a government. Normally this is a straightforward decision, but in a minority government situation an astute judgment call about which party can obtain majority support in Parliament/ legislature may be involved. Second, there is also a constitutional provision which grants vice-regals the authority to dismiss a prime minister or premier. This power might be used if a prime minister refused to resign after losing an election. Another situation might be when a prime minister/premier loses majority support in the House of Commons or the legislature but refus- es to resign or to seek a dissolution and an elec- tion. There has never been a dismissal of a prime minister and the last time a premier was dismissed goes back to 1905. Third, vice-regals have the authority to grant a request that the Commons or a legislature be dissolved to allow for an election to occur. The passage during the 2000s of fixed date election laws nationally and provincially was meant to remove an unfair advantage for first ministers in terms of controlling the timing of elections. How- ever, a loophole was created by the constitutional requirement to respect the discretionary powers of vice-regals to grant a dissolution. Controversy has surrounded several decisions by vice-regals to grant dissolutions when a govern- ing party faced political trouble in the form of a pending confidence vote in the House of Commons/ legislature or when a first minister simply wanted to take an opportunistic advantage of favourable political circumstances to call an early election. It appears there is an emerging binding constitution- al convention that vice-regals must always grant a dissolution when a government retains majority support in the House of Commons or the legisla- ture. Fourth, approval of the vice-regal is needed to prorogue the Commons or the legislature. Proro- gation is different from dissolution. It involves the end of a session but not the end of a parliament/ legislature. All business before the legislature is lost and a new session begins with a speech from the throne outlining the legislative agenda of the government. Granting prorogation can be contro- versial when a request is seen as a way to avoid a parliamentary showdown. The vice-regal may choose to limit the duration of a prorogation. Canada’s constitutional monarchy is part of our national identity and it provides protection for our democratic traditions. Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba. The above views are his own. Hubris and presidents EVEN for U.S. President Donald Trump, the trade war is an act of astonishing hubris. When nearly all economists, the markets and the public are register- ing their belief that a course of action will harm the country, it takes a lot of confidence in one’s own ideas to persist anyway. Yet viewed from a certain angle, the tariffs are exactly the kind of thing Americans always say we want from government officials. Trump campaigned on raising tar- iffs to revive manufacturing and force other countries to treat the United States better, and he is following through on his promise without much worry about the short-term consequences — including for his own poll numbers. If we dislike the results, perhaps we should reconsider this popular conception of how presidents should govern. That conception traces back to Trump’s predecessor Woodrow Wilson, who explic- itly rejected the Founders’ version of the separation of powers because it stifled government action. “No living thing can have its organs offset against each other as checks,” he wrote as an academic. “There can be no successful government without leadership.” That leadership had to be supplied by the president, because alone in the government, “the nation as a whole has chosen him” and “his is the only national voice in affairs.” We have gotten so used to these Wil- sonian notions that we do not appreciate how novel they once were. When the Federalist Papers refer to “leaders,” it is almost always negatively, as a synonym for “demagogues.” In these writings, the president’s job consists in large part of executing the will of Congress, which is to say the consensus of a large group of people who represent Americans in their great variety. Now, hardly any eyebrows raise as Trump aide Stephen Miller explains that because “a president is elected by the whole American people,” he embodies “the whole will of democracy” and it is up to him to impose that will on the govern- ment. Modern presidents have increasingly reached for utopian rhetoric to match this exalted self-image. Barack Obama promised “a complete transformation of our economy” and urged American citi- zens to work together with the same unity of purpose as the SEALs who brought Osama bin Laden to justice. (And who operated under the direction of guess who). Trump’s boastfulness — during the 2016 campaign, he said he would “make every dream you ever dreamed for your country come true” — adds a note of parody to the style. The more obsessively U.S. politics focuses on presidential activism, though, the worse it seems to work for the coun- try. Recent decades have given us many more examples of ambitious initiatives that backfired on the presidents who launched them than ones that worked well. The Iraq War sank the George W. Bush presidency. A grand overhaul of the health-care system under Obama cost his party’s candidates in several elections. That streak ended only when Republicans damaged themselves by trying their own bold counter-reform. The great accom- plishment of Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office was an “American Rescue Plan”— marvel at the self-importance — that arguably contributed to the inflation that undid his administration. The glorification of a president’s first 100 days originates with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who saw himself as Wilson’s heir. It was unjustified then, too. The most ambitious policy of those days, the National Industrial Recovery Act, tried to end the Great Depression by cartelizing the economy. It failed and was eventually struck down as unconstitutional. But at least in the 1930s, the president felt compelled to work his will through the legislature. We are now at the end of the first 100 days of Wilson’s latest heir, who recently told The Atlantic, “I run the country and the world.” If the country were ever again to see a steady, prudent executive in action, it might find it a pleasant change. But it is unlikely to have that chance if every president looks in the mirror, gilded or not, and sees greatness. Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. DAVID MCLAUGHLIN PAUL G. THOMAS JUSTIN TANG / THE CANADIAN PRESS Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives on stage at his campaign headquarters in Ottawa Tuesday after the Liberals won this week’s federal election. RAMESH PONNURU ;