Smaller cabinet, better democracy
On Wednesday, I tabled a Private Member’s Bill: An act to amend the Ministries and Ministers of State Act and the Salaries Act. Its purpose is to limit the number of ministers and ministers of state to 26.
Limiting the size of the federal cabinet is a complicated process. Canada’s Constitution makes no mention of the prime minister or cabinet and vests all executive power in the Queen. The Queen’s representative, the Governor General, deploys these powers on the advice and consent of the Queen’s Privy Council, whose members are determined by Section 11 of the Constitution Act.
There are currently over 350 members of the Queen’s Privy Council of Canada, including all current and former ministers, chief justices, speakers of the House and distinguished Canadians. Undoubtedly, formally capping the number of Privy Councillors would require a constitutional amendment.
My Bill C-672 is a more modest proposal. It simply amends the Ministries and Ministers of State Act to only permit the appointment of ministers of state when the total number of ministers does not exceed 26.
Constitutionally, it is difficult to hamstring the prerogative of the prime minister to appoint ministers to head departments. Without amending the constitution, I see no easy or foolproof way of legislating a hard cap on the size of the ministry.
But Parliament’s time-honoured prerogative is to control the public purse strings. So the real genius of C-672 lies in its amendment of the Salaries Act, to provide that regardless of how many ministers a prime minister tries to appoint, only 26 will draw a stipend. Admittedly, I borrowed this good idea from comparable British legislation that caps the size of its ministry.
The number 26 was chosen because statutorily there are 20 federal government departments plus six federal agencies whose statutory heads are ministers.
Also, when Prime Minis- ter Harper assumed office in 2006 he had a lean cabinet of 26 members, in his own words: “designed for work not for show; more focus and purpose, less process and cost.”
Things have certainly changed. The prime minister’s desire to consolidate his control over his caucus has caused his cabinet to swell to 40 members; it has since been reduced to 39 due to the departure of the Honourable John Baird. Such a body is too large to be a deliberative body; cabinets that large invariably serve little function beyond that of another focus group for the PMO to consult with. I agree with the PM: more focus and purpose; less process and cost!
The United States, a country with a population nine times that of Canada, seems to function with 16 cabinet secretaries; David Cameron’s ministry in Great Britain is comprised of 21 ministers in a House comprised of 650 parliamentarians.
The simple math changes the equation. With cabinet prospects diminished there is less need to play the partisan game. Conservative backbenchers in Cameron’s caucus routinely vote against government motions without consequence. I appeared on a CBC panel on the topic with British Conservative backbencher, Andrew Percy, who votes against his party 7.8 per cent of the time, and by British standards he is not even considered to be a maverick.
In 2012, the Globe and Mail determined that no Canadian MP exceeded a 1.42 per cent voting disparity with their party, with the majority voting en masse with their caucus 100 per cent of the time.
Besides saving taxpayers an estimated $10-$15 million annually, reducing the size of cabinet will address the much larger problem of imbalance between the executive and the legislative branches of government.
Making cabinets smaller reduces the mathematical probability that any member will ever be asked to serve. It frees up another 13 backbenchers to take being a parliamentarian seriously. Moreover, reducing the size of cabinet automatically reduces the number of parliamentary secretaries to a similar cap. As a result, there will be more talent scrutinizing government rather than cheerleading for it.
With the prospects of a cabinet position reduced, MPs’ priorities will change. Party discipline will lessen, only slightly at first, as MPs disavow themselves of their dream of sitting on the front bench.
Members of Parliament must become something other, something more, than aspiring members of the executive cabinet. Being a legislator should be an important end in itself, not merely the means to a perceived higher end — being asked to join the executive cabinet. Legislators will never take the critical role of holding government to account seriously so long as they consider themselves to be cabinet ministers in training.
Fewer rewards to be distributed means less control over the backbenches and ultimately a more functional democracy. Prime ministers should be prohibited from appointing grossly oversized cabinets as a means to manipulate whipped support in the House.
Decreasing the odds of promotion will force Parliamentarians to take their responsibilities as legislators seriously, placing the interests of their constituents above their own career advancement. In short, MPs will start acting like MPs.
Rathgeber: ‘The United States, a country with a population nine times that of Canada, seems to function with a cabinet of 16. Canada has a cabinet of 39.’ Members of Parliament must become something other, something more, than aspiring members of cabinet