REGINA - The latest silliness on social media all has to do with the new Prime Minister Mark Carney and whether someone who doesn’t have a seat in the House of Commons ought to be Prime Minister of Canada.
Yes, apparently Canada’s great educational system hasn’t managed to teach enough people about the way government functions in this parliamentary democracy of ours. So now we have this controversy about whether Mark Carney is able to actually become Prime Minister of Canada, even without a seat in the House of Commons. Even without a general election.
The short answer is yes, of course. Carney can be Prime Minister, even without a general election or even a seat in the House. But the whole thing does raise a few questions about our parliamentary democracy and whether it is, in fact, acting in a manner that is democratic.
You know the story. Carney was just sworn in as Canada’s 24th prime minister after winning the Liberal leadership contest with almost 86 per cent of the vote. Carney is a former Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Governor of the Bank of England. But he has never been elected to office in his life. He hasn’t previously held a seat in the federal Parliament or in a legislature anywhere, and he currently does not have a seat.
That is what has raised hackles on social media. Carney is taking over as prime minister and he’s taking the position without a general election, without ever being elected as an MP or MLA or even local city councillor. Instead, he’s installed in the job by members of his own party. People look at this and think this is like the Politburo.
Then you have the pushback from people who say “but this is how the Parliamentary system works.” We are not a republic like the United States of America where the President, Senators, House representatives, Governors and other officials are elected.
Instead, we are a “constitutional monarchy” with a Parliament. Our head of state is the King of England. (For now.)
It is the Governor-General who calls on someone to be Prime Minister who can command the confidence of the majority of MPs in the House. That’s how it works, it’s not a direct election to the office. At least, not by the entire populace of Canada.
For some reason, many Canadians have gotten the idea that the way it works is for an election to be held, and for the leader of the winning party to be “elected” Prime Minister. So when we have a prime minister leaving in mid-term and replaced by a new prime minister, things get complicated.
For instance, look at 1984 and John Turner. The former finance minister won the Liberal leadership race to replace Pierre Trudeau during the summer, and became prime minister without a seat in the House of Commons and without a mandate from Canadian voters to be the prime minister.
To his credit, Turner recognized he needed a mandate from voters and moved quickly to call an election, even having to go to the UK to personally ask Queen Elizabeth II to cancel her Royal tour to allow the election to happen.
Did the voters reward him? No. Turner lost the biggest landslide in Canadian history to the PCs under Brian Mulroney.
Then you have the case of Kim Campbell, who won the PC leadership convention to replace Mulroney in 1993. Again, here was another situation of someone becoming prime minister thanks to voters in their own party, as opposed to voters across Canada. So soon after, Campbell sought a mandate and called a federal election. And once again, the voters rewarded her by not only throwing her out of power, but throwing her out of her own seat of Vancouver Centre.
There are also people who remember Brian Mulroney himself taking over the PC leadership in 1983 while being unelected, but Mulroney quickly sought and won a seat in a by-election, and that was a year before he became Prime Minister.
I also notice a lot of people pointing to Danielle Smith becoming Premier of Alberta without holding a seat, but she did quickly end up winning a by-election to get into the Legislature and a few months later won the general election.
You know, it is just one of those quirks of the Canadian system where when a former prime minister leaves of their own volition, you get a new prime minister without a general election being called. It’s different from the USA where the president can finish out their full term before handing it off to the winner of the election.
But this Carney installation rankles a lot of people for all kinds of reasons.
For one thing, the sitting of Parliament was completely shut down due to prorogation during the whole time of the leadership contest. What’s more, this happens to be a minority government in a minority Parliament. You have all the opposition parties vowing to topple the government at the first opportunity. (Whether you actually believe that would happen is a different question, given Jagmeet Singh’s propensity for propping up the Liberals.)
Then, during the leadership contest you had Liberal leadership candidates Chandra Arya and Ruby Dhalla both disqualified from the race for various reasons. Somehow I don’t think they would have won anyway, but it just led to more accusations online about the “fix being in.”
Then, finally, the Liberals choose Carney who not only holds no seat in the House of Commons but also has never held elected office, and he is sworn in as prime minister. And then he immediately junks the consumer carbon tax that he and his party had previously brought in, and then immediately jets off to Europe.
The folks at home across Canada are surely looking at this spectacle and going, “Wait a minute! Where do I get a say in this?”
And that is precisely the point. You can say all you want that Carney’s installation is perfectly legal and perfectly constitutional, according to all the constitutional conventions that apply, but at the end of the day the overriding question is: does he have a mandate?
Here's the reality: he doesn’t. He may have a mandate from the Liberal Party, but the people of Canada have not had their say on who the new Prime Minister should be.
You could say the public got their say about getting rid of the previous one. Justin Trudeau had gotten so unpopular that his own party was begging him to walk the plank.
But with all the major problems facing the country, what with President Trump threatening multiple tariffs on Canada and other places on a seemingly hourly basis, you kind of think that the public ought to be consulted on who ought to be next to deal with all the current problems.
There are lots of Canadians out there who think the new prime minister ought to be Pierre Poilievre, not Carney. A few folks might say "none of the above." In any event, no one has a mandate right now. The only way for someone to get a mandate is for Carney to visit the Governor General at Rideau Hall, and call a federal election, right away.
Then, and only then, will we have the air cleared once and for all about who the prime minister ought to be and who the government of Canada ought to be.
And yeah, there is the risk you could call the election and end up losing. So be it. The people need to have their say. That is the only democratic way.
By the way, a word now about the United States. The folks on social media who keep on complaining about Canada's "unelected" Prime Ministers and Premiers tend to gloss over the fact that in the USA they don't hold "by-elections" to fill their high offices when someone dies or resigns. Instead, it's the "next in line", such as the vice-president or at the state level, the lieutenant governor. Normally, the lieutenant governor is elected to that particular office while the vice president is part of a "ticket" that won the election.
But that didn't happen with Gerald Ford, the former House minority leader who was tapped to be vice-president after President Richard Nixon's previous VP sidekick, Spiro Agnew, resigned in disgrace. And then not long after, Ford himself was elevated to president when Nixon resigned in disgrace.
Ford became the USA's "unelected" president, the only one never to be elected either president or vice-president. And he stayed unelected, because when he did finally get on the presidential ballot in 1976, he lost to Jimmy Carter.
It sure seems like we are very far way from the days of Gerald Ford, doesn't it?
