Canadian democracy is deteriorating and that’s abundantly clear at the highest level.We witnessed it when yet another “Conservative” MP, Michael Ma, decided to cross the floor on December 11, following in the footsteps of turncoat Chris D’Entremont.But this isn’t the end of the charade.There are in all likelihood more floor-crossers, and it may well be the Liberals, not the Conservatives, determining the drip-rate of when precisely the next defector drops.Carney knows this isn’t going to make people happy. He knows this isn’t democratic. He knows this is going to enrage Westerners in particular.The less democratic Canada becomes, the more the 30% of Canadians living within the 30% of Canada’s landmass in the West respond by demanding independence. So, how does Canada fix the problem?“An essential task for the revitalizing of Canadian democracy is to bolster both transparency and accountability,” wrote author and international affairs commentator Jonathan Manthorpe in his book, On Canadian Democracy. Manthorpe appears to have written this book with an impetus provided by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s dismissive attitude toward these essential components of democracy.Bad news though, Mr. Manthorpe.Technocrats like Carney have historically moved in the exact opposite direction of democracy. They have moved away from transparency and accountability and toward governance by experts which involves increasingly less input from the electorate..Manthorpe argues that (long before Carney’s election) Canada inherently possessed a problem with democracy, stemming significantly from the inordinate power awarded to the prime minister. Imagine being able to appoint or remove the Governor General of Canada, Supreme Court justices, ministers, deputy ministers, and even the heads of 50-odd Crown corporations, including the CBC.Manthorpe furthermore points to less well-known issues affecting democracy such as with the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act, both of which came into effect 1983. At that time, Pierre Trudeau effectively created a system that protected the inner workings of high-ranking public servants from scrutiny. These Acts, working in tandem with the 1982 Charter created a barrier of secrecy, preventing legitimate public oversight of government.So, what does Carney add to the already toxic mix?Besides the floor-crossers we’ve seen, there’s also the technocratic imperative to replace bureaucrats with experts.Carney has done this on a visible level by giving the boot to Bill Blair in May and replacing him with David McGuinty as Minister of National Defense. Although McGuinty is an environmental lawyer, it’s his seven-year expertise as the founding Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians that made Carney choose him over Toronto’s former top cop.Although NSICOP was designed to increase transparency over matters of national security, the way the Trudeau Liberals blatantly ignored its recommendations questions its contribution to Canadian democracy. NSICOP warned Trudeau about “semi-witting or witting” participants in foreign interference, but the inordinate power of the Prime Minister allowed him to simply dismiss their recommendations as a difference in interpretations.That makes NSICOP like spinning your wheels.Then there’s the high-profile replacement of Jonathan Wilkinson in March with Tim Hodgson as Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Hodgson was CEO for Goldman-Sachs and Chair of the Board for Hydro One. He also served as a special advisor to Carney at the Bank of Canada from 2010-2012..Carney wanted the expertise of his former trusted advisor and has already used it to stunning effect. It was Hodgson who wooed Michael Ma over from the Conservatives. Hodgson’s not shy either in admitting he’s getting “lots of inquiries” from other potential floor-crossers. He’s exacerbating the problem with Canadian democracy in this fashion.Besides ministers, the PM can also appoint deputy ministers, and therein we expect to see some changes promoting technocracy.Deputy ministers do a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, which is often protected by legislation and will end up thoroughly if not completely redacted when an AIA request is made, to protect their privacy as Canadian citizens.That would be less of a problem if the previous and longstanding practice, that a minister took some responsibility for the public servants underneath them, was still adhered to. That accountability is increasingly rare these days, however. It was entirely absent during the Justin Trudeau era. Carney announced a shuffle of his deputy ministers on December 19. It is the switches here that need to be examined in the coming days to discover if the government takeover by unaccountable experts, as happened in Europe, is proceeding. It’s not a surprise that eight former deputy ministers are being terminated. Technocracy is on the way in, and everything and everyone deemed inefficient is on the way out.In the meantime, prepare yourself for the next “surprise” floor crossing. It may come fast, as Carney’s poll numbers continue to drop.
