On unlimited power

I posted a few passages from James Travers' latest yesterday. But let's take another look at part of his column which raises what has to be one of the most serious questions about the Harper regime:

Systematically, and without explanation, the Prime Minister is testing every limit on his power. Along with successfully shuttering Parliament for the second time, he's neutering committees charged with the primary democratic responsibilities of safeguarding the treasury and forcing the government to explain its actions. He's challenging independent rulings against how Conservatives funded their 2006 election and how this government treats Canadians in trouble abroad.

Politics is an uncompromising blood sport played to win within loose rules. By learning Liberal dirty tricks, adapting to changing circumstances and reinterpreting every regulation in his favour, Harper is proving to be a shrewd and accomplished contestant.

Far less clear is what he accepts as legitimate constraint, the line in the democratic sand not to be crossed.

Needless to say, that passage raises important questions about whether there's anything that Harper would accept as a legitimate limitation on his own power. And it's the obvious answer to those issues that justifies the talk of despotism or banana republicanism that's surfaced since Harper first shuttered Parliament over a year ago.

But let's take a step back first and ask why it is that democratic structures tend to work - and what assumptions they tend to rely on.

The first important point is that democratic structures have exactly as much meaning as the actors within them are willing to accept.

In general, a democratic political system serves to stabilize a country by providing for mechanisms by which the populace chooses among competing visions for a particular state. In a state where no effective means exists to challenge the authority of a dictatorial government, it's relatively easy both for a government to believe that it can inflict violence on dissenters without consequences, and for those dissenters to similarly justify violent action in an attempt to bring about change. And the frequent end result is either the superimposition of violent attempts to gain political advantage as an element of the country's political structure - or a degree of violence by one side which is so extreme as to effectively annihilate the other.

But that justification doesn't exist where there's some ability to challenge the government peacefully through two basic means: a legislature in which a government may pass legislation while the opposition may seek to hold the government to account, and an electoral system under which the place of any party in the system may change by the will of the voters.

Once such a system exists, party interests tend to line up with national interests in preserving the democratic structures: while it's better for a country to avoid violent upheaval, it's also best for partisans to be able to present their case peacefully regardless of who's in power. So there usually isn't much problem in getting even the most partisan of politicians to accept that the long-term interests of the system outweight the benefit of pursuing power in the short term.

That cost-benefit analysis is reinforced by the fact that most political ideologies involve at least some reason to want to ensure a stable state. Social democrats may see the government as the primary mechanism for a more just distribution of economic spoils; Red Tories and large-L Liberals may see it as the most efficient way to at least minimize the hardship of groups who are perceived as needing protection; socons may see it as the primary means of setting out moral principles to be fostered through policy; business-oriented groups may recognize a stable governing structure as a necessary part of a solid economic base.

From my standpoint, the realization that everybody is ultimately better off preserving and accepting democratic accountability has been one of the underlying values of most developed-country democracies - to the point where there's hardly been a need to discuss it. While there are individual cases where the actions of Canadian governments can be seen as trampling on principles of democratic accountability in favour of short-term political goals, those have regularly met with proper condemnation. And nobody of any partisan stripe has made a game of the practice because all parties have recognized that there's something about governmental accountability worth protecting.

That is, until Stephen Harper came along. And indeed one can see the current circumstances as creating a perfect storm for someone like Harper to suddenly start operating on a plane where concern for the long-term well-being of the state created by our democratic institutions is removed from any political calculation.

To start with, Harper seems to operate primarily under one of the few ideologies which could well see a dysfunctional federal state as a reasonable outcome (if not an outright positive one). His affinity for "firewalls" to end Ottawa's influence over his home province signals that he'd be perfectly satisfied if the federal government mostly abandons the field of governing; his belief that business can be trusted to regulate itself serves as the basis for a conclusion that any weakness in the government will be compensated for by the market; and most importantly, his belief that courts, the civil service, and anybody else forming part of the federal governing structure must be a partisan enemy gives him some justification in his own mind to think that it might not be such a bad thing if the entire apparatus gets torn down.

Again, any impulses to that effect in a single leader tend to be cancelled out by more responsible voices within one's own party. But thanks to Harper's iron grip on the Cons, there's neither anybody willing to question his present-day actions in his own camp, nor anybody developing enough of a future prospect of leadership to value that possibility over the security in their current position under Harper.

And the current minority government context does serve as a factor as well. That isn't the result of any inherent problem with minorities, and indeed it's possible that Harper would simply take his current pattern to even greater extremes in a majority setting. But the fact that the opposition parties too have had to keep an eye on the prospect of an election call at any moment has kept the focus of Canada's political actors on the day's news cycle rather than the long-term ramifications of Harper's actions.

Now, my suspicion is that there have been opportunities to change direction from the current path. During Harper's first few months in government, he may have found it impossible to resist a strong push toward empowerment of Parliament if all of the opposition parties had been onside - but instead the Libs, with an eye on their presumed return to government, actually argued against it at every turn. And of course the progressive coalition would have served to break Harper's control over party and country while suddenly igniting some newfound Con concern about good governance.

But those opportunities have long since been missed. And the result is that the main means of holding the Cons to account on a day-to-day basis have been rendered toothless - in ways that go far beyond even the examples we've seen to date.

After all, Harper's contempt for Parliament already extends to his cutting off a sitting which would have resulted in a non-confidence vote. So there's absolutely no reason for optimism that even a united opposition front to bring down the Cons will actually result in an election. If Harper wants that election, he'll allow it to happen; if not, he'll simply request prorogation yet again to put off the vote until he sees it as more politically convenient. Which means that we may not be far away from seeing Parliament meet only for the bare minimum amount of time to keep federal operations going, with Harper strong-arming one of the opposition parties into keeping basic funding going (anybody want to bet the Libs won't cave to a "we need this money for the troops" argument?) while shutting down Parliament as long as he can otherwise.

And even if an election happens, that may not be the end of the story either. It's natural that public expectations may be based on what the Cons have professed to believe - i.e. that the largest party in the House of Commons has the right to form government. But to my recollection based on some of the constitutional arguments made surrounding the 2008 confidence showdown, there's actually more precedent for a sitting prime miniater to demand the right to stay in government after an election where another party has more seats in the House than there was for their than there was for Harper to flee the 2008 confidence vote. And that could bring us right back to the scenario of a Parliament in hiding even if voters reject the Cons.

But wait, there's more! Remember that in 2008, one of the Cons' threats to the coalition was that they'd resign their seats in the Commons en masse - necessitating by-elections in every single Con-held seat and presumably fomenting an argument in the Cons' base that anything any branch of government would be able to achieve in the meantime must be illegitimate. Which may signal that the Cons would rather threaten the country with chaos than cede power even in the face of a democratic loss.

One hopes that the Cons wouldn't take that even further by stepping entirely outside the realm of democratic protest. But after four years of Harper government, we have countless examples of his seeking to warp Canada's political system to cement power in his own hands - and exactly zero where he's shown any willingness to acknowledge having gone too far.

In sum, to answer Travers' point: at this point, there's precious little indication that there's any line at all which Harper wouldn't cross to keep power. And that fact - not the day-to-day minutiae which so often get thrown out to distract from the bigger picture - needs to be the central point of discussion if there's going to be any hope of retrenching Harper's abuses.

Edit: fixed wording.