IV.

Responsible Government

One of the main tenets of the Canadian constitution is responsible government, or holding the government accountable to the people of Canada. Specifically, the prime minister and cabinet ministers are accountable to the House of Commons and must maintain the support of a majority of its members. Central to the concept of responsible government are the principles of ministerial responsibility. These principles were derived from the parliamentary experience of Britain and were adopted in Canada when the country was founded. There are two parts to the doctrine of ministerial responsibility: collective and individual.

A.

Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Collective ministerial responsibility, based almost entirely on constitutional convention, involves three principles—the confidence rule, cabinet solidarity, and cabinet confidentiality. These principles help ensure that the prime minister and all cabinet ministers pursue a policy consistent with the priorities of their party, which won the support of the majority of the voters.

The prime minister forms the Cabinet by appointing members of Parliament as ministers to direct federal government departments. As the government, the prime minister and cabinet ministers propose laws and budgets that become the basis for public policy. The prime minister and Cabinet have both the power to make laws and to implement them. Since authority and power are concentrated in the government, the Canadian system seeks to hold it continuously accountable through the confidence rule.

The confidence rule requires the prime minister and the Cabinet to maintain the confidence, or support, of the House of Commons. It gives Parliament a tool to keep the prime minister and the Cabinet accountable to all voters. The House of Commons can withdraw its support by voting down a significant government proposal or by approving a specific motion of “no confidence” in the government.

There are occasions during each parliamentary session when each opposition party is allowed to introduce motions of “no confidence” in the government. MPs (the abbreviation for member of Parliament that identifies members of Commons) can present such a motion in response to the Speech from the Throne, which outlines the government’s legislative program. Members of Commons can also present a motion in response to the Budget Speech, which reviews the government’s economic record, taxation, and expenditure plans, and to Supply Motions, which concern budgets for individual departments. If a majority of MPs support a no-confidence motion, the government must resign.

Also, if Parliament rejects a significant government proposal, the government is expected to resign and request the governor-general to call an election. Such a situation occurred in 1979: Prime Minister Joe Clark resigned when Parliament voted down a gasoline tax increase proposed by his government. However, there is uncertainty and controversy about which defeats on proposed laws and items of spending oblige governments to resign. The consensus among political authorities appears to be that governments are free to decide whether a defeat is serious enough to compel the government to resign. Most often governments have not resigned. When the government party holds a majority of seats in Commons and party discipline prevails, government proposals are rarely defeated.

The second convention regarding collective ministerial responsibility is cabinet solidarity, which ensures that the government presents a unified stance when facing the opposition in Parliament. Cabinet ministers can disagree in the privacy of the Cabinet, but once a decision is made, they must loyally support and defend the government’s position or resign. Individual cabinet ministers must not announce new policy or changes in policy without the Cabinet’s approval. They must carry out cabinet-approved policies with respect to their own departments, whether or not they agree with such policies. Finally, they are expected to vote with the government always. The prime minister enforces cabinet solidarity. He or she can ask ministers to resign or can ask the governor-general remove them if they refuse.

The third convention relating to collective ministerial responsibility is cabinet confidentiality. Ministers swear an oath to protect cabinet secrecy. Documents used to support cabinet decision-making are highly confidential, and any public servant who discloses cabinet secrets can be imprisoned. Canadian law protects Parliament’s and the public’s right to know about the processes that lead to many decisions by the federal and provincial governments, but it does not apply to materials submitted to the Cabinet. Cabinet secrecy is defended as necessary to promote the frank exchange of opinions among ministers and to preserve the confidentiality of advice.

B.

Individual Ministerial Responsibility

Each cabinet minister has individual ministerial responsibility, or is obliged to answer for the performance of the department he or she leads. Important departments include Human Resources Development, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Justice, and Health. The doctrine of individual ministerial responsibility has legal, administrative, and political components.

Legally, each minister is responsible for all official actions by his or her department. Cabinet ministers also assume the administrative responsibility to direct and guide their departments. The cabinet minister is the official spokesperson for his or her department and must explain and defend departmental actions. Each minister has the political responsibility to answer to Commons for the performance of his or her department. Cabinet ministers must introduce all government bills (proposed laws) that relate to their departments, and the ministers must appear in Parliament to defend them. The House of Commons holds daily question periods, during which the ministers must be prepared to answer the opposition parties’ attacks on government policies and actions, as well as explain and defend their department’s actions.

In theory, if a minister fails to explain adequately significant mistakes made by his or her department, Commons can force the minister to resign from the Cabinet. In practice, however, Commons no longer forces ministers to resign when unwanted developments take place in their departments. Instead, the prime minister decides the fate of such ministers and only demands that a minister resign if he or she is a liability to the government. The real penalty for poor ministerial performance has become a lasting vulnerability to attacks from opposition parties. Such attacks can cost not only the minister his or her seat in Parliament at election time, but can also reflect badly on the minister’s entire party and result in it losing additional seats.

C.

Debates About Ministerial Responsibility

Some critics charge that ministerial responsibility has become a myth. They point to the fact that governments are seldom defeated on votes of no confidence and that cabinet ministers rarely resign for mistakes made in their departments. Critics insist that Parliament is no longer able to hold ministers accountable because power is concentrated in the hands of the prime minister. With a majority of MPs in the prime minister’s party, which insists on strict discipline, Parliament rarely challenges government initiatives. However, it is probably an overstatement to say Parliament does not hold ministers accountable. Punishment for erring ministers and governments may not be as swift or as severe as the conventions of ministerial responsibility seem to require, but the conventions have never been strictly followed. More importantly, erring ministers face potential punishment at election time.

Ministers have historically refused to resign for administrative errors made by public servants acting in their name. This was true even when government was a simpler operation and when it might have been realistic to expect ministers to know everything happening in their departments. Given the scope and complexity of today’s government departments, it remains true today. Instead of resigning, cabinet ministers are expected to work to correct problems brought to their attention and prevent their recurrence.

MPs maintain ministerial responsibility and remain accountable to the voters through public processes, such as the daily question period in Commons. If cabinet ministers want to keep their seats in Parliament, they must account for their mistakes and boast of their successes before a usually critical audience of MPs. Voters, who watch question periods on television or read about them in newspapers, decide whether ministers deserve to be reelected partly on the basis of how they perform in this adversarial process.