by Donald J. Savoie
McGill-Queen’s University Press
2019/$34.95/504 pp.
In Democracy in Canada, the dean of Canadian public administration has set his sights on one of the most pernicious forces eroding our national institutions: regionalism. Donald Savoie’s thesis is straightforward: The main features of Canada’s central government were never designed to incorporate Canada’s geographic diversity, and this is a problem. Instead of creating a federalized system, John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier crafted a Canadian constitution to advantage the interests of Canada’s two largest provinces. From the domination of Parliament by central Canadians, to the rigging of federalism to place final authority in the hands of the federal government, Savoie’s description is well known to Canadians versed in the Laurentian thesis.
Savoie deems this Canada’s “democratic deficit”: the country “lacks a capacity in its national institutions to accommodate regional circumstances and to promote regional equality.” His book supports this argument, but only in part. With considerable academic evidence, he establishes the weak performance of Parliament, cabinet, political parties, media and other institutions when it comes to representing regional interests. In this sense, the system isn’t really broken; it is performing exactly as centralists like Macdonald intended.
Yet, a democratic deficit exists only to the extent that citizens’ expectations of the system are not being met by those institutions. Here, Savoie’s evidence is less convincing. He includes references to public opinion polls suggesting Canadians are disengaged from politics and mistrustful of politicians and institutions in general. The question remains, however: Do most Canadians actually expect their federal institutions to accommodate regionalism, or are they resigned to the fact that this is the way government works in Canada?
John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse offer an alternative theory. In their book, Stealth Democracy, they suggest most Americans have little interest in playing an active role in democracy, little understanding of how the system works and little motivation to upend the system in favour of something new. They simply want their representatives to work together to solve the country’s common challenges. We have similar evidence of “stealth democracy” in Canada as well. Take electoral reform, for example, which is one of Savoie’s recommended solutions (alongside reducing party discipline, eliminating omnibus bills, senate reform, reviving cabinet government, streamlining the public service, and others). Canadians from coast to coast have rejected the abandonment of first-past-the-post and excused a federal party for failing to live up to its pledge to replace it. They seldom reward politicians for abandoning party politics or governments who promise to cull the public service. In short, all of these reforms are attractive in theory, but fail to capture the national imagination or motivate politicians to respond.
Savoie appears to acknowledge this implicitly. Reform, he notes, will require the conviction of a principled prime minister to achieve. Without a groundswell of popular opinion, however, one wonders how to translate a compelling academic argument into a manifesto for change, particularly when—unlike Pierre Trudeau’s centralizing vision—the result would see a prime minister cede power to others in the system. It is difficult to imagine anyone doing so willingly; not even a pair of sovereignty referendums convinced prime ministers to undertake the scale of reforms required to solve the problems Savoie identifies.
In this vein, Savoie’s work reminds us of what we likely should expect from our national institutions, namely full representation, accountability and equality. Given the threats posed by nascent separatist movements in Western Canada, let’s hope Canadians read this book, take its expert opinion seriously and begin pressuring politicians to act.
—Jared Wesley is an associate professor at the University of Alberta.
