Brandon716
Senior Member
http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2008/may/12/qa_russell/&c=2
Canada has had 'no natural governing party' since 1950s: Russell
With the rise of the Greens, minority governments will be the new normal, says author Peter Russell.
By Simon Doyle
Canada, which no longer has a "natural governing party," has been prone to minority governments since the end of the Second World War, and the rise of the Green Party strengthens a five-party system, reducing the likelihood of future majority governments, says Peter Russell, the author of a new book on minority governments.
"I think we've been in minority government territory pretty solidly since World War II," Prof. Russell told The Hill Times in an interview. He pointed to the two minority governments each won by John Diefenbaker and Lester B. Pearson, as well as the minority governments of Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark.
Prof. Russell, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto and author of the new book, Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, published by Edmond Montgomery Publications, argues that minority governments better serve Canadians than "false majorities," or majority governments elected by less than half the population. He called his book "two cheers" for minority government because he recognizes some of its failings, however.
He argues that MPs and the parties of the House need to come to terms with the reality of minority government, which poses a significant shift for how Parliament works. If minority governments are the new normal, Canada is shifting away from "prime ministerial government" and there is an obligation on MPs and party leaders to make an effort for political compromise.
Canadians, Prof. Russell said, are fed up with federal elections every two years, and MPs need to recognize that no party has enough support for a true majority. They need to respect the wishes of the people and make minority Parliaments work. He said MPs will "do grievous harm to our democracy" if elections are needlessly held every two years. "We will imperil our Parliamentary democracy if the parties can't accept the realities of the divisions in the country," he said.
The rise of the Green Party, which continues to poll above 10 per cent support in recent public opinion surveys, solidifies a five-party system in Canada and makes it less likely that any party will win a majority government, he said.
"The Greens, they're up to 10, 12 per cent [in the polls], and that's just going to accentuate the situation. You're definitely now into a five party division of the electorate, with the Bloc, of course. There's four parties outside of Quebec, and these are serious parties," he said.
Prof. Russell said that during the 1990s, under the leadership of Jean Chrétien, Parliament should have faced more minority governments, but that the breakup of the Progressive Conservatives gave the Liberals a free hand.
"There was a fluke in the '90s with the collapse of the Conservatives. Even then, Chrétien's majorities weren't huge. You know, 41 per cent of the popular vote, and we had an absolute collapse of the Conservatives. They were divided, and you know all that history. They were all over the place, Reform, Alliance. So, when you think of it, the aberration was the '90s, and it was because the Conservatives had fallen apart," Prof. Russell said.
Prof. Russell was on Parliament Hill on May 2 to speak about his book at a Library of Parliament event, and sat down with The Hill Times just before the event. The following interview has been edited for length and style.
Why did you write this book?
"I decided to write it because when the [Paul] Martin minority government came in [in 2004], the general view was that this is dangerous, having a minority government, and that it shouldn't last long. When I began to look at it, it seemed to me that it was reviving Parliament, and that was a darn good thing. Rather than being a scary phenomenon, minority government should be welcomed if we can make it work."
What's your message for Parliamentarians? Is it simply that minority government's not such a bad thing?
"It's a little stronger. It's not a bad thing, and it can be a good thing if they change what I call the discipline of being a Parliamentarian, and that they recognize two facts: One, that no party in this country is supported by much more than a third of the electorate; there isn't a popular party. And two, that people don't want an election every two years.
"Now if you think of those two things and put them together, it means you've got to find ways of making the realities of this country, that produce minority Parliaments, work for the people. That's a whole new way of doing Parliamentary politics."
Part of that seems to require a change in the culture of Parliament, and partisanship, and to come to compromises between parties.
"You have to retain your partisanship, and learn how to—and this is the discipline—control it enough to make policy happen that's more inclusive policy. You'll get a bit [more compromise] if you're a Liberal or NDP [minority government], say than a Conservative minority government. And the Conservatives will get more [in government], and they should. But learn how to settle for your part, not the whole thing. Partisanship, in my view, is basically to be desired. That's the competition. Democracy needs that."
Given all the talk about who is going to get the next majority, is that idealistic or realistic?
"The talk I hear on Parliament Hill, even with Conservatives ... is that majorities aren't expected. Certainly the media don't expect them. They do the polling and they don't see it. You've got to get up into the low 40s, and no one seems to be close to that. It's another reason for the book. In other words, we may have a lot of minority governments....
"But we will really do grievous harm to our democracy if we have elections in '04, '06, there was a big fear we'd have one in June '08, and say June '10. Driving people to the polls every couple of years will drive them away from democracy. Some of them will say, 'this is nonsense.' We will imperil our Parliamentary democracy if the parties can't accept the realities of the divisions in the country."
But it doesn't seem like the parties are accepting that, if you look at the way the committees are functioning, and the partisanship and divisions in the House.
"In my book I document pretty closely the first two years. It was pretty productive. This is a government that had an agenda, and got most of it done. They had to make a few changes, because with 36 per cent [support from] the electorate, you ought to make a few changes. You're not the most popular thing going, although you may be more popular than anybody else.
"They got their agenda and they had to change it. They had to adopt climate change policy and carbon emissions as a serious issue. Why? Because most or the rest of Parliament thought it was. They had to have a real Parliamentary discussion of Afghanistan. We did that and we changed the Afghanistan policy, to a policy that was not 100 per cent Tory ... I think if you look at the first two years, it was productive."
If we're in a period of minority governments, why is that? Is it simply because we don't have strong enough leaders to get majorities? Maybe there's other reasons. Maybe the electorate is starting to like minority governments.
"Well, I think we've been in minority government territory pretty solidly since World War II. Diefenbaker had two, Pearson had two, Trudeau had one, Clark had one. [Brian] Mulroney was on a bit of a roll."
Chrétien squeaked by with a majority with 38 per cent.
"Forty, 41 per cent was as high as he ever got, and he said, 'I swept the country.' So if you look at the distribution of votes since the '50s, over this multi-party system, it's usually been four, sometimes five [parties]. The Socreds were there for a while. There is no natural governing party there. That's the way I'd put it.
"There's no party that can say, 'Most of the people in the country, they want a Liberal government. They want a Conservative government, or an NDP government or a Green government.'
"The Greens, they're up to 10, 12 per cent, and that's just going to accentuate the situation. You're definitely now into a five-party division of the electorate, with the Bloc, of course. There's four parties outside of Quebec, and these are serious parties.
"There was a fluke in the '90s with the collapse of the Conservatives. Even then, Chrétien's majorities weren't huge. You know, 41 per cent of the popular vote, and we had an absolute collapse of the Conservatives. They were divided, and you know all that history. They were all over the place, Reform, Alliance. So, when you think of it, the aberration was the '90s, and it was because the Conservatives had fallen apart."
In terms of all the polling during an election campaign, does that make it easier for the electorate to control the outcome of the election? Do we change our votes based on the polling?
"It can scare them. I would put forward this proposition. If we had an election tomorrow, and the polls show [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper's going to get a majority, it would really hurt them. I think a lot of people would say, 'I don't really mind his minority government,' because so many people say, 'Hmm, he's okay, but I don't want to see him with a majority.' I just gave that as one example ...
"If they see the Greens polling well, particularly in your riding, people in the past who switched because they didn't want to waste their vote, could say, 'Holy smokes, we could get a Green Member of Parliament.' ... It can foster hope or fear, and either can make a difference."
It's interesting that you say this Parliament has accomplished a lot, because I wonder if that is getting through to the public. Maybe all they see is the dysfunction in Parliament.
"That's a very important point. The public see the acrimony. The public, I'm afraid, do not appreciate acrimony and debate in Parliament. That's a real danger, but in minority Parliaments you must have that because no party has a majority and they're going to be at each other, and out of that will come some legislation.
"Take the 2006 and 2007 budgets. In 2006 it was the NDP. They got some good stuff. They argued, they fought like hell, and in the end they voted against the very budget that was designed to accommodate them because the Liberals weren't going to defeat them [the Conservatives]. Then the Liberals got a lot in the 2007 budget that they wanted. I remember a newspaper headline that said this was a Liberal budget. So the public see the acrimony and the debate but they don't see the production of compromise.
"A couple of other examples: The debate over the Afghanistan war in the House. Without minority government, there's no debate. So, what the public see is the parties arguing about Afghanistan, and they say, 'Oh gosh this isn't working.' But that's bad because that is Parliament working. If you're at war and you're risking the lives of your men and women, you should have a real debate: What's the purpose of this war? How are we doing it? How long are we going to be at it?
"I argue at the end of the book that the public are a bigger problem than the politicians because they don't seem to have a stomach for acrimony and debate."
When that's part of our system.
"The very guts of it. If they don't want that, I say go to Moscow or Beijing. You don't get much of it there. But that is Parliamentary democracy."
So does this acrimony do a disservice to minority governments? Because it feeds into the perception that minority governments don't work and we need majorities to get things done.
"People are told that strength is important, and if you give anything you're weak, you're a bad leader: 'My goodness, you varied from your party [position]. You're not in charge. You're not the boss. He caved. Harper caved! Oh my goodness, the man's built of clay.'
"There's what I call the CEO phenomenon: 'Hey, he's the guy in charge, he's running the place.' Well, we're a democracy. We don't want one person to run the place. Maybe in a corporation, but I don't know, I'm not in the corporate world, and maybe they don't like that either. But we sure as hell don't want that in a democracy.
"The public are led to believe that compromise is a sign of weakness.... But when only a third or so of the people have voted for you, you better well be compromising. Look at what Mr. Harper did. He said, 'Climate change, that's just junk science.' Well, it turned out most of the people didn't buy that, so it turns out to be serious science. And Afghanistan, 'That's not Parliament's business.' Well it turned out to be Parliament's business. He changed his position and I admire him for that, but I don't think the public will say that was good.
"[William Lyon] Mackenzie King, who had three minority governments, was a master of the art of compromise and he was not admired as a political leader. People said, 'Oh Mackenzie King,' and they held their nose. 'The little guy, the little squirt, always on this side, that side,' and it's a real problem in mass democracies, this desire for strong, firm, unyielding leadership. I think it can lead us down a very dangerous road."
I guess you are in favour of electoral reform, or some form of proportional representation?
"One of the arguments against electoral reform is, 'Oh my God, we'll have minority government all the time, and we don't want electoral reform.' Well, that would be one of the big benefits.... If that's your problem, I hope I can convince you that's not a problem. That would be a benefit."
With regard to the Conservatives' fixed election dates law, do you think it prevents Stephen Harper from going to the governor general to request a dissolution of Parliament, or is the law just more of a political impediment to doing that?
"It's been one of the productive things that has happened in the Harper government minority era, introducing that legislation, which had all-party support, and which reduces the prime minister's power. I support it very much.
"What I don't support is making every issue a confidence issue, because if you do that, and say, 'With everything we're doing, we're not going to bend at all, we're going to give you our straight government policy, and one [wrong] vote on anything, and we have an election.'
"Then you are really playing games and you're forcing the opposition to call the election. That puts the opposition in a difficult position, because the smaller opposition parties get free kicks. They can say, 'Oh, we'll vote against you,' knowing that there's no consequence to that at all. It's a free kick, and the poor leader of the opposition is the one calling the election.
"That's a very responsible position to be in, and you don't get any credit for it, because if you call it, people say, '[Liberal Leader Stéphane] Dion forced an election two years after the last one.' If you don't, people say, 'He's a coward, no guts, no balls. What does he stand for?' They're all over him.
"I know it's clever. It's very, very clever to have put him in that position, but it's incompatible with making minority Parliaments work."
Strategically do you think it's a bad move for Dion to keep abstaining and holding up this Parliament?
"I think it's very responsible for him to wait until he has something he and his party view as an alternative to put to the voters that's a very serious alternative. It could be a set of policies, and given his profile and what brought him to the leadership of the party, one would expect it would be in the environmental, climate change, carbon emissions area."
Do you think it's okay for the opposition in minority governments to introduce 'money bills' or so-called 'mischief bills' like Liberal MP Dan McTeague's bill? [The bill, which has passed the House of Commons and is now before the Senate, includes a tax deduction measure for RESPs and is estimated to cost the treasury $900 million.]
"I thought not, and with great respect to [House Speaker] Peter Milliken, and I've said this on other occasions, I did not agree with his ruling. I thought that was spending. It was nearly another $1-billion, and that changes the entire fiscal plan. It goes against the whole principle that only the Crown should introduce money bills ...
"I didn't see that the precedents supported [Mr. Milliken's decision] at all. They came from an era when there weren't these sort of budget expenditures on social policy. That's exactly what McTeague's bill was. It was a budget expenditure on social policy."
sdoyle@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
Canada has had 'no natural governing party' since 1950s: Russell
With the rise of the Greens, minority governments will be the new normal, says author Peter Russell.
By Simon Doyle
Canada, which no longer has a "natural governing party," has been prone to minority governments since the end of the Second World War, and the rise of the Green Party strengthens a five-party system, reducing the likelihood of future majority governments, says Peter Russell, the author of a new book on minority governments.
"I think we've been in minority government territory pretty solidly since World War II," Prof. Russell told The Hill Times in an interview. He pointed to the two minority governments each won by John Diefenbaker and Lester B. Pearson, as well as the minority governments of Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark.
Prof. Russell, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto and author of the new book, Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, published by Edmond Montgomery Publications, argues that minority governments better serve Canadians than "false majorities," or majority governments elected by less than half the population. He called his book "two cheers" for minority government because he recognizes some of its failings, however.
He argues that MPs and the parties of the House need to come to terms with the reality of minority government, which poses a significant shift for how Parliament works. If minority governments are the new normal, Canada is shifting away from "prime ministerial government" and there is an obligation on MPs and party leaders to make an effort for political compromise.
Canadians, Prof. Russell said, are fed up with federal elections every two years, and MPs need to recognize that no party has enough support for a true majority. They need to respect the wishes of the people and make minority Parliaments work. He said MPs will "do grievous harm to our democracy" if elections are needlessly held every two years. "We will imperil our Parliamentary democracy if the parties can't accept the realities of the divisions in the country," he said.
The rise of the Green Party, which continues to poll above 10 per cent support in recent public opinion surveys, solidifies a five-party system in Canada and makes it less likely that any party will win a majority government, he said.
"The Greens, they're up to 10, 12 per cent [in the polls], and that's just going to accentuate the situation. You're definitely now into a five party division of the electorate, with the Bloc, of course. There's four parties outside of Quebec, and these are serious parties," he said.
Prof. Russell said that during the 1990s, under the leadership of Jean Chrétien, Parliament should have faced more minority governments, but that the breakup of the Progressive Conservatives gave the Liberals a free hand.
"There was a fluke in the '90s with the collapse of the Conservatives. Even then, Chrétien's majorities weren't huge. You know, 41 per cent of the popular vote, and we had an absolute collapse of the Conservatives. They were divided, and you know all that history. They were all over the place, Reform, Alliance. So, when you think of it, the aberration was the '90s, and it was because the Conservatives had fallen apart," Prof. Russell said.
Prof. Russell was on Parliament Hill on May 2 to speak about his book at a Library of Parliament event, and sat down with The Hill Times just before the event. The following interview has been edited for length and style.
Why did you write this book?
"I decided to write it because when the [Paul] Martin minority government came in [in 2004], the general view was that this is dangerous, having a minority government, and that it shouldn't last long. When I began to look at it, it seemed to me that it was reviving Parliament, and that was a darn good thing. Rather than being a scary phenomenon, minority government should be welcomed if we can make it work."
What's your message for Parliamentarians? Is it simply that minority government's not such a bad thing?
"It's a little stronger. It's not a bad thing, and it can be a good thing if they change what I call the discipline of being a Parliamentarian, and that they recognize two facts: One, that no party in this country is supported by much more than a third of the electorate; there isn't a popular party. And two, that people don't want an election every two years.
"Now if you think of those two things and put them together, it means you've got to find ways of making the realities of this country, that produce minority Parliaments, work for the people. That's a whole new way of doing Parliamentary politics."
Part of that seems to require a change in the culture of Parliament, and partisanship, and to come to compromises between parties.
"You have to retain your partisanship, and learn how to—and this is the discipline—control it enough to make policy happen that's more inclusive policy. You'll get a bit [more compromise] if you're a Liberal or NDP [minority government], say than a Conservative minority government. And the Conservatives will get more [in government], and they should. But learn how to settle for your part, not the whole thing. Partisanship, in my view, is basically to be desired. That's the competition. Democracy needs that."
Given all the talk about who is going to get the next majority, is that idealistic or realistic?
"The talk I hear on Parliament Hill, even with Conservatives ... is that majorities aren't expected. Certainly the media don't expect them. They do the polling and they don't see it. You've got to get up into the low 40s, and no one seems to be close to that. It's another reason for the book. In other words, we may have a lot of minority governments....
"But we will really do grievous harm to our democracy if we have elections in '04, '06, there was a big fear we'd have one in June '08, and say June '10. Driving people to the polls every couple of years will drive them away from democracy. Some of them will say, 'this is nonsense.' We will imperil our Parliamentary democracy if the parties can't accept the realities of the divisions in the country."
But it doesn't seem like the parties are accepting that, if you look at the way the committees are functioning, and the partisanship and divisions in the House.
"In my book I document pretty closely the first two years. It was pretty productive. This is a government that had an agenda, and got most of it done. They had to make a few changes, because with 36 per cent [support from] the electorate, you ought to make a few changes. You're not the most popular thing going, although you may be more popular than anybody else.
"They got their agenda and they had to change it. They had to adopt climate change policy and carbon emissions as a serious issue. Why? Because most or the rest of Parliament thought it was. They had to have a real Parliamentary discussion of Afghanistan. We did that and we changed the Afghanistan policy, to a policy that was not 100 per cent Tory ... I think if you look at the first two years, it was productive."
If we're in a period of minority governments, why is that? Is it simply because we don't have strong enough leaders to get majorities? Maybe there's other reasons. Maybe the electorate is starting to like minority governments.
"Well, I think we've been in minority government territory pretty solidly since World War II. Diefenbaker had two, Pearson had two, Trudeau had one, Clark had one. [Brian] Mulroney was on a bit of a roll."
Chrétien squeaked by with a majority with 38 per cent.
"Forty, 41 per cent was as high as he ever got, and he said, 'I swept the country.' So if you look at the distribution of votes since the '50s, over this multi-party system, it's usually been four, sometimes five [parties]. The Socreds were there for a while. There is no natural governing party there. That's the way I'd put it.
"There's no party that can say, 'Most of the people in the country, they want a Liberal government. They want a Conservative government, or an NDP government or a Green government.'
"The Greens, they're up to 10, 12 per cent, and that's just going to accentuate the situation. You're definitely now into a five-party division of the electorate, with the Bloc, of course. There's four parties outside of Quebec, and these are serious parties.
"There was a fluke in the '90s with the collapse of the Conservatives. Even then, Chrétien's majorities weren't huge. You know, 41 per cent of the popular vote, and we had an absolute collapse of the Conservatives. They were divided, and you know all that history. They were all over the place, Reform, Alliance. So, when you think of it, the aberration was the '90s, and it was because the Conservatives had fallen apart."
In terms of all the polling during an election campaign, does that make it easier for the electorate to control the outcome of the election? Do we change our votes based on the polling?
"It can scare them. I would put forward this proposition. If we had an election tomorrow, and the polls show [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper's going to get a majority, it would really hurt them. I think a lot of people would say, 'I don't really mind his minority government,' because so many people say, 'Hmm, he's okay, but I don't want to see him with a majority.' I just gave that as one example ...
"If they see the Greens polling well, particularly in your riding, people in the past who switched because they didn't want to waste their vote, could say, 'Holy smokes, we could get a Green Member of Parliament.' ... It can foster hope or fear, and either can make a difference."
It's interesting that you say this Parliament has accomplished a lot, because I wonder if that is getting through to the public. Maybe all they see is the dysfunction in Parliament.
"That's a very important point. The public see the acrimony. The public, I'm afraid, do not appreciate acrimony and debate in Parliament. That's a real danger, but in minority Parliaments you must have that because no party has a majority and they're going to be at each other, and out of that will come some legislation.
"Take the 2006 and 2007 budgets. In 2006 it was the NDP. They got some good stuff. They argued, they fought like hell, and in the end they voted against the very budget that was designed to accommodate them because the Liberals weren't going to defeat them [the Conservatives]. Then the Liberals got a lot in the 2007 budget that they wanted. I remember a newspaper headline that said this was a Liberal budget. So the public see the acrimony and the debate but they don't see the production of compromise.
"A couple of other examples: The debate over the Afghanistan war in the House. Without minority government, there's no debate. So, what the public see is the parties arguing about Afghanistan, and they say, 'Oh gosh this isn't working.' But that's bad because that is Parliament working. If you're at war and you're risking the lives of your men and women, you should have a real debate: What's the purpose of this war? How are we doing it? How long are we going to be at it?
"I argue at the end of the book that the public are a bigger problem than the politicians because they don't seem to have a stomach for acrimony and debate."
When that's part of our system.
"The very guts of it. If they don't want that, I say go to Moscow or Beijing. You don't get much of it there. But that is Parliamentary democracy."
So does this acrimony do a disservice to minority governments? Because it feeds into the perception that minority governments don't work and we need majorities to get things done.
"People are told that strength is important, and if you give anything you're weak, you're a bad leader: 'My goodness, you varied from your party [position]. You're not in charge. You're not the boss. He caved. Harper caved! Oh my goodness, the man's built of clay.'
"There's what I call the CEO phenomenon: 'Hey, he's the guy in charge, he's running the place.' Well, we're a democracy. We don't want one person to run the place. Maybe in a corporation, but I don't know, I'm not in the corporate world, and maybe they don't like that either. But we sure as hell don't want that in a democracy.
"The public are led to believe that compromise is a sign of weakness.... But when only a third or so of the people have voted for you, you better well be compromising. Look at what Mr. Harper did. He said, 'Climate change, that's just junk science.' Well, it turned out most of the people didn't buy that, so it turns out to be serious science. And Afghanistan, 'That's not Parliament's business.' Well it turned out to be Parliament's business. He changed his position and I admire him for that, but I don't think the public will say that was good.
"[William Lyon] Mackenzie King, who had three minority governments, was a master of the art of compromise and he was not admired as a political leader. People said, 'Oh Mackenzie King,' and they held their nose. 'The little guy, the little squirt, always on this side, that side,' and it's a real problem in mass democracies, this desire for strong, firm, unyielding leadership. I think it can lead us down a very dangerous road."
I guess you are in favour of electoral reform, or some form of proportional representation?
"One of the arguments against electoral reform is, 'Oh my God, we'll have minority government all the time, and we don't want electoral reform.' Well, that would be one of the big benefits.... If that's your problem, I hope I can convince you that's not a problem. That would be a benefit."
With regard to the Conservatives' fixed election dates law, do you think it prevents Stephen Harper from going to the governor general to request a dissolution of Parliament, or is the law just more of a political impediment to doing that?
"It's been one of the productive things that has happened in the Harper government minority era, introducing that legislation, which had all-party support, and which reduces the prime minister's power. I support it very much.
"What I don't support is making every issue a confidence issue, because if you do that, and say, 'With everything we're doing, we're not going to bend at all, we're going to give you our straight government policy, and one [wrong] vote on anything, and we have an election.'
"Then you are really playing games and you're forcing the opposition to call the election. That puts the opposition in a difficult position, because the smaller opposition parties get free kicks. They can say, 'Oh, we'll vote against you,' knowing that there's no consequence to that at all. It's a free kick, and the poor leader of the opposition is the one calling the election.
"That's a very responsible position to be in, and you don't get any credit for it, because if you call it, people say, '[Liberal Leader Stéphane] Dion forced an election two years after the last one.' If you don't, people say, 'He's a coward, no guts, no balls. What does he stand for?' They're all over him.
"I know it's clever. It's very, very clever to have put him in that position, but it's incompatible with making minority Parliaments work."
Strategically do you think it's a bad move for Dion to keep abstaining and holding up this Parliament?
"I think it's very responsible for him to wait until he has something he and his party view as an alternative to put to the voters that's a very serious alternative. It could be a set of policies, and given his profile and what brought him to the leadership of the party, one would expect it would be in the environmental, climate change, carbon emissions area."
Do you think it's okay for the opposition in minority governments to introduce 'money bills' or so-called 'mischief bills' like Liberal MP Dan McTeague's bill? [The bill, which has passed the House of Commons and is now before the Senate, includes a tax deduction measure for RESPs and is estimated to cost the treasury $900 million.]
"I thought not, and with great respect to [House Speaker] Peter Milliken, and I've said this on other occasions, I did not agree with his ruling. I thought that was spending. It was nearly another $1-billion, and that changes the entire fiscal plan. It goes against the whole principle that only the Crown should introduce money bills ...
"I didn't see that the precedents supported [Mr. Milliken's decision] at all. They came from an era when there weren't these sort of budget expenditures on social policy. That's exactly what McTeague's bill was. It was a budget expenditure on social policy."
sdoyle@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
