1867 by Christopher Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

from irascibility and impulse, he got into a struggle with a dismissed employee who came into his
Globe
office to complain. The employee had a gun, and it went off. Shot in the leg, Brown minimized the extent of the wound, but it became infected and he died. He was sixty-two.
    It remains striking that a man so stiff-necked about his own principles and so ready to denounce those of others, above all so uneasy about co-operation and compromise, was also a parliamentary man. George Brown’s career suggests the strengths of nineteenth-century parliamentary politics. Even Brown – in the mainstream view a dangerous fanatic who preferred his principles to power and didn’t much care whom he offended – hewed to the conventions of parliamentary process and parliamentary authority.
    In the deal-making of the late twentieth century, by contrast, Canadian politicians acted as if they felt trapped in parliamentary forms, which they tried as much as possible to circumvent. By general consent, and certainly without a murmur of protest from parliamentarians, the legislatures played no significant part in the patriation of 1982, the Meech Lake accord of 1987, or the Charlottetown accord of 1992. (Rarely, they could play a negative role, as in 1990, when procedural rules enabled a single Manitoba legislator to disrupt the careful ratification schedule that the triumphant first ministers had decreed.) In the late twentieth century, only leaders of parties in power had any place in constitutional deal-making. There was no place for the ideas of a party that could not hold power. In the 1990s, a sectional party could not represent its region in constitution-makingunless it achieved power, and it could only achieve power in Ottawa by ceasing to speak for one section.
    Had the rules of the 1990s applied in the 1860s, George Brown’s persistent inability to form a government would have precluded him (and his party) from any role in settling the constitutional crisis of the Province of Canada. In the 1860s, however, when parliaments were powerful, a seat in Parliament promised influence at the constitutional table. Even a governmental impossibility like George Brown preserved his faith in parliamentary government out of a belief that the people were represented by legislatures, not by first ministers alone. And that belief was ultimately rewarded. Brown was able, as a fiercely sectional partisan, to be a vital participant in brokering a deal acceptable to many rival sections.
    To see how a sectionalized political society sincerely dedicated to parliamentary process handled constitutional challenges in the midst of deadlock, we have only the 1860s to observe. We can follow George Brown and his rivals-turned-partners to Charlottetown, where another parliamentary accommodation had brought a diverse collection of politicians from the Atlantic provinces together to meet them.
    * The electoral franchise and its exclusions are considered in more detail in Chapter Six .
    * Maybe not. The “provincial equality” proposed by advocates of the Triple-E Senate has been criticized on rep-by-pop grounds. And when the Charlottetown accord proposed to guarantee Quebec one-quarter of the seats in Parliament, rep-by-pop did indeed become controversial again.
    * There was an ancient logic to this odd requirement. When kings actually ruled, parliaments existed not to govern but as a check upon the government of the Crown. Hence a parliamentarian who agreed to become an adviser to the Crown – a cabinet minister, in other words – was about to serve two masters: the king and the people. It was thought proper that he should secure the consent of his electors before doing so. As the parliament took control of government, and the king ceased to rule, the two-masters problem became moot. But constitutional usages die hard. The obligation on a new cabinet minister to seek re-election survived past confederation.

CHAPTER TWO
Charles Tupper Goes to Charlottetown

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