On April 5, 1982, Peter Carrington, Foreign Secretary in the U.K. government, tendered his resignation. His offense? Not predicting the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina a few days earlier. Lord Carrington had not committed any malfeasance. He simply decided that he and his ministry had not done the job up to the standards that the people had a right to expect.
Carrington’s resignation is a classic example of Ministerial Responsibility, a key feature of our Westminster system of government. “… ministers are constitutionally responsible for the provision and conduct of the government.” If this sounds quaint, that’s because it’s essentially no longer a feature of government in Canada.
In 1984 Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister vowing to revitalize democratic norms he felt that atrophied under his predecessor, Pierre Trudeau. In the first two years of his first term, Mulroney accepted the resignations of five cabinet ministers. For example, the Minister of Defense resigned after visiting a strip club in Germany on a tour to inspect troops there. The Minister of Fisheries accepted responsibility for the sale of sub-standard tuna fish.
"In 1985 I believed that ministers should be held to the highest standards of professional and personal behaviour ... Practically, however, I realize now that I handed the opposition and media yet another weapon to use against us later," the former prime minister wrote in his memoirs published in 2007. "I failed to understand that I was going to be pilloried for accepting ministerial resignations and not respected for demanding them."
Of course ministers no longer resign because they now are all paragons of probity. I’ll pause while you laugh.
Just one example from the current cabinet that wouldn’t pass the 80s smell test: Marco Mendicino. As Public Safety Minister Mendicino said that he was unaware of the Bernardo transfer. It later turned out that his office had received at least two emails well in advance. Mendicino also testified that police had asked him to envoke the Emergencies Act. No police agency said they had made such a request. There are countless examples of this sort of mendacity from the current cabinet.
Many Canadians mourn the demise of the practice of holding ministers to account. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see it come back.
https://www.canada.ca/en/privy-council/services/publications/responsibility-constitution.html#ch1
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-cabinet-problems-analysis-wherry-1.4435240
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I was asked a question:
"I thought you'd mention the issue of CSIS and China... any thoughts there?"
My reply:
There are so many examples, you just have to selective lest you wind up with carpal tunnel. ;)
The issue with foreign interference goes back for a lot of years. Keep in mind that the Cold War really started when Igor Guzenko defected to Canada in the late 40s and outlined the extent of Soviet spying here and elsewhere. There are a couple of big differences between then and now:
- Guzenko caught naive backwater Ottawa off guard, but they took it seriously, just as they took national defence seriously in those days, and
- they started from scratch in the 40s, which in some ways was an advantage. Today we’ve got the accumulation of 80 years of bureaucracy. I believe them when they report that some ministers weren’t shown warnings because they didn’t have the security clearance even though they were responsible. And I believe it when they say that files didn’t highlight priorities, just were sorted in alphabetical order.
Taking on bureaucracy is an horrific task. As the old saying goes, when you’re up to your ass in alligators it’s hard to remember that your job was to drain the swamp. Yes, it’s the minister’s responsibility. But there are no C.D. Howes anymore. Now you get clueless people dropped into a portfolio and who might only be there for a few months. They show up knowing nothing about the department and directed by their mandate letter. It’s no wonder they do so poorly