Conservatives get failing grade on ‘caretaker convention’
In an election, actions by the PM and his ministers are restricted, Bruce Hicks writes.
One of the unwritten constitutional rules that underpin Canada’s democracy is that a prime minister must abide by the “caretaker convention” once an election is triggered.
With Parliament dissolved, the government is no longer legitimate. The prime minister and his ministers are simply the caretakers of power while the Canadian people pass judgment on who should sit in Parliament and who should form the next government.
This convention requires the government to not do anything that would bind a future government. In an emergency, the caretaker government can consult with the opposition parties to get consensus on how to respond.
Here are some things this gov- ernment has done in violation of the caretaker convention:
In response to the Syrian crisis, International Development Minister Christian Paradis announced the government would match funds that Canadians donated to registered charities, up to $100 million, which will be in place until Dec. 31.
The government then announced it would double the personnel processing sponsorship applications and would cut in half the time it would take to bring the previous commitment of 10,000 Syrian refugees to Canada. (To its credit, it did not implement its campaign commitment to bring an additional 10,000.)
The government appealed and sought a stay of the Federal Court of Appeal decision that said Zunera Ishaq could wear her niqab while taking the oath of citizenship.
A letter was sent to the convicted Toronto 18 terrorists notifying them that their Canadian citizenship would be revoked. These letters were sent on July 3, before the election was called, but Zakaria Amara had his citizenship revoked during the election, in violation of the caretaker convention, and Minister Jason Kenney told the media about it, in apparent violation of the Privacy Act.
And then there is the TransPacific Partnership, negotiated in secret, finalized Monday and unveiled at an international photo-op in Atlanta. As compensation for the TPP, the government has reportedly allocated $4.3 billion of income and quota guarantees, $450 million for processing-plant improvements and $15 million for market devel- opment for the supply-managed agricultural sectors. Conservative grade: F
As for the opposition, while they are not bound by the caretaker convention, they have said things during the campaign to which it applies:
Justin Trudeau said, after the photographs emerged of a drowned Syrian child, that there needed to be immediate action and demanded a meeting of the three party leaders.
The Liberal party had been demanding to be briefed on the TPP negotiations and have a say in Canada’s negotiating position prior to this past week’s marathon final negotiations in Atlanta.
This is what should have happened during the caretaker period. (If Trudeau took these positions as PM he would deserve an A+.) Liberal grade: A
Thomas Mulcair rejected a meeting of the three party lead- ers on the Syrian crisis, suggesting that he only needed to meet one-on-one with the prime minister as he was ahead in the polls.
When Mulcair was asked which position was wrong to take during an election, a government commitment to match funds for Syria donations or James Moore’s promise that if re-elected a Conservative government would match funds for the Terry Fox run, he chose the latter. It was the first of these Sophie’s choices that was unconstitutional. NDP grade: D
I make my public management students study Canada’s constitutional conventions because they want to be public servants. There is no more senior public servant tasked with following the constitution than the prime minister.