"Democratizing the Constitution" and "Lowering Higher Education"

Can Canada’s political life and intellectual life (or lack thereof) be considered together?  Can the decline or Parliament and the decline of 'the idea of the university' be linked?  In order to make the case this review considers, in sequence, two recent, multi-authored Canadian books: Democratizing the Constitution and Lowering Higher Education, both published (not surprisingly) in 2011, the same year that Harper led his Conservatives to his first majority in the House of Commons.

In Democratizing the Constitution co-authors Peter Aucoin, Mark Jarvis and Lori Turnbull point out that democracy has been thwarted by any number of Canadian Prime Ministers:  Joe Clark waited 142 days before summoning parliament in 1979; Jean Chretien prorogued parliament in 2003 (as did Sir John A. Macdonald, deep in the Pacific Railway Scandal, in 1873); and Paul Martin failed to recognize losing the confidence of the House in May 2005.  However, these three political scientists agree that Stephen Harper has taken the prime ministerial abuse of power to even greater heights.  Prorogation in 2008 was a blatant partisan activity that undermined “the spirit of responsible government”.[1]   Our prime minister was clearly acting in “bad faith”.

There is no better evidence of Harper’s bad faith than his own, earlier attempt (while acting as Leader of the Loyal Opposition) at forming a coalition government with Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Québécois and Jack Layton of the NDP. Here is Harper’s joint letter to Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in 2004, and it deserves to be reproduced:

As leaders of the opposition parties, we are well aware that, given the Liberal minority government, you could be asked by the Prime Minister to dissolve the 38^th Parliament at any time should the House of Commons fail to support some part of the government’s program.

    We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation.  We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise this should give your options before exercising your constitutional authority. (Harper, Duceppe, and Layton, 2004).[2]

Democratizing the Constitution argues that British Prime Ministers do not share Harper’s flip-flop trademark of acting in complete bad faith on substantial constitutional matters because they tend to appreciate the unwritten limits of their parliamentary conventions.[3]  After all, the impulses behind the Magna Carta (1215) are primarily English (rooted in the Anglo-Saxon period before the Norman Conquest of 1066), and therefore not Canadian, distinct (dare I say) from our delayed second-generation colonial descent.  And it is doubtful that Harper is going to celebrate the 800^th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta in 2015 with as much doctrinaire devotion as it did with the War of 1812, which was a year-long display.  The book argues that Canadian prime ministers have more executive powers over parliament than do their British, Australian and New Zealand counterparts, all adherents to the Westminster model.[4]  Consider, as well, that no British Prime Minister can anticipate a majority in the House of Lords, because 25% of its appointees are non-partisan (outside of any party affiliation), and these peerages are considered life-long honours.[5] 

Contrast this with Stephen Harper’s numerous appointments to the Canadian Senate, where “merit” and “capacity” play decidedly little or no role among potential candidates and where “disabilities” such as illiteracy are nationally recognized – and then endowed. [6] Again, failure at electoral politics is another sure way to get the official nod from the Prime Minister (who in these cases of “choice” is aided by the non-elected PMO, which now numbers some 100 officials).[7]  Harper also continues to stack the government (and fund loyalists) with the second-largest Cabinet in Canadian history, shorter by 1 member after Mulroney’s record. [8] The sheer bulk of numbers among Cabinet and Parliamentary Secretaries in Canada again diffuses the sense of individual responsibility - and contrasts starkly with the pared-down numbers of the Cabinet in Britain.  This also begs the question: since Harper makes all the decisions in his over-controlled government, why does he not even make an attempt at gender equity in Cabinet?  It might make for good public relations.

The reason why the British are relatively more successful in keeping to parliamentary democracy is that they retain the virtue (as Montesquieu might put it) appropriate to a monarchy: in other words they respect the “spirit” of the laws.[9]  Despite Harper’s alleged pro-monarchist bent, the way in which he reinvents parliamentary tradition for his own purposes suggests that he has replaced any notion of constitutional “spirit” with the much more Darwinian system of competitive “game theory” which in fact ignores political tradition.  Failure to abide by our unwritten rules means that we need to supplement our constitution with written laws, which is what Australia and New Zealand have done – and this is what Democratizing the Constitution advocates for Canadians.

It is ironic that the government under Harper has hugely expanded the Criminal Code along with mandatory prison sentences (courting populism) but fails to see any written needs with respect to our own constitution.  This lacunae demonstrates the hidden presumption, typical of Harper Conservatives, that our political life is best regulated by the hidden hand of election – and not by parliament itself.  Montesquieu explains that the more a society articulates its laws (and moves away from precedent), the more it veers toward republican tendencies.  Presently Canada’s constitution is in a veritable no-man’s land – devoid both of “spirit” and written laws.  It is neither very monarchical by virtue nor republican in predisposition:  it is supposed to be a constitutional monarchy yet needs some basic scripting, certainly.  And in this current void grows the potential for despotism, because (now) anything goes.[10]

 

From the Conservative perspective, federal politics is but a game in Canada.  Politics is about “winning” or “losing” (following the American model) – not about “responsible” parliament or about which party has the “confidence” of the House and, thus, the right to form a government.[11]  Under the current regime the distinction between “parliament” and “government” is also completely lost, aided by a media unable to find a less potent term for the all-too-frequent usage known as “the Harper government”.[12]  Allow me to suggest as an alternative (as I have indicated before): “the Government of Harper”.

The biggest problem with Harper’s constitutional abuses is that Canadian public opinion lets him get away with it, and the excellent book Lowering Higher Education, jointly written by sociologists James Côté and Anton Allahar is the only publication (to my knowledge) that makes any link between the decline of parliament in Canada and the decline in ‘the idea of the university’ (both, originally, founded as gothic, medieval institutions).  As critical thinking skills diminish among university students, so too do we as a people put up with a dumber education (because it is popular) all the while our own politics changes dramatically.[13] The link is inescapable.

Lowering Higher Education explains that the typical liberal arts and science universities across Canada, and the USA, (as well as Britain) are now coping with massification, vocationalism, and corporatization.  Access to education is a good idea, but not everyone is ideally suited to the academic life, something North American universities have yet to discover.   Universities have also become more associated with “social justice” but for disadvantaged students (and maybe some aspiring academics) the system is itself replete with impermeable barriers and “false promises”.[14]  From another point of view there is also a high level of disengagement where high grades are granted for mediocre work.[15]  Curriculum is watered down in high school (and most certainly earlier) and grade inflation in endemic to all systems, the end result being that first-year university students are poorly prepared in terms of skill and personal direction: students have high expectations for top grades but lack the requisite effort.[16]  According to the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) conducted by the Centre for Postsecondary Research 84% of grades assigned in Canadian Universities are apparently either an A or B.  In the United States the proportion is even higher – resting at a keen 90%.[17]  One should question the accuracy of these reported statistics, but the trend seems clear.

The end result is not mass education but “mass certification” – and a diminished culture of learning, distracted by cell phones, iPods, texting, twitter, email, employment needs, and (of course) the ever-present extracurricular.[18]  Instead of being educated in critical skills, students are trained - in university – by means of memorization, and “consumers” can be fond of it because it is easier than thinking.[19]  Perhaps my only regret is not taking that BSc. (Hons) degree in “Surf Science” - or the degree in “Property Management”![20]  As well, the popularity of free university on-line courses (directed, unfortunately, for the benefit of privileged social segments – and driven by university competition for prestige) turns some professors from scholars into stars; lost is the modest class tutor of ten individuals.  And the phenomenon of distance education (say, at the University of Phoenix in Vancouver), aided by Wikipedia, encourages the belief that there are better online substitutes for the classroom environment, now preferably media “interactive” but possibly missing out on intellectual esprit.  Today’s students are occupied with “clickers” (so I am told) but my own experience has been that young students are less argumentative; they pose fewer significant questions; and they are often weak at thinking through issues – all the while, it appears, in some academic disciplines multiple choice prevails. Students also tend to regard themselves as “consumers” of education: in paying tuition they, in effect, think of themselves as purchasing credentials from this or that university brand; implicitly the tail tries wagging the dog here, often regardless of institution.

As today’s students “consume” their education, numbing themselves in the process, so Canadians “consume” their politics, veering towards rigid ideological conformity to seek clarity and avoid troubling ambiguity. Since Harper’s ascendance the predilection for “populism” on the Right and Left feeds into an “anti-intellectualism” that undermines the liberal arts and sciences with its once-firm commitment to civic action through transformative, critical education.  Moreover, Harper’s “bad faith” of Prorogation in 2008, so much a topic in Democratizing the Constitution, feeds on the intellectual dishonesty characteristic of closed political systems.[21]  Ideologies self-justify power, and there is nothing less honest (and less intellectual and less critical) in politics. Harper got away with twisting unwritten truths in our constitution requiring his “responsibility” to the House partly because education in Canada tends to lack moral dynamism, which may or may not have something to do with its (mass) public, secular and hyper-specialized features.  Or it may have something to do with the fact that faculty have mortgages too, leaving less opportunity for the type of honour originating in Homer. [22] Furthermore, the relative absence of mentorship, allowing students a free hand in taking a smorgasbord of courses, tidbit after tidbit, weakens the moral imagination.  In other words, a university education in Canada does not necessarily build or test “character”; rather, it induces apathy, conformism and the obeisant.

 

Harper is not some “brilliant” steward (as the Canadian media – and many pundits are so prone to suggest) – he is simply better at turning Conservative followers (and his Cabinet) into disciplined objects (or a machine), just as student “consumers” are treated as empty vessels before the corporate university’s industrial process.   Conservative nationalism begs a form of determinism which inhibits individual freedom, hence Harper’s emphasis on the military and on Canada’s regarded emergence as a nation at Vimy in 1917, where there really was no middle ground following years of trench warfare (as the binary monument suggests).  Put another way: our new $20 bills (which feature the Vimy memorial) stand in testimony to Harper’s aim - the ideal of an excluded middle.  Defined by their limits, “consumers” (be they students or be they Canada’s current crop of ideologues) are an ironic enemy of “the open society” that they allegedly espouse, confusing liberalism with liberal economic theory, and freedom with capitalism (hence the proselytizing argument for trade with China, and everywhere else).[23] Instead students turn individuality into meaningless corporate icon-bearing badges; yes, we can all be customers at McDonalds when we are not exercising “choice” at Starbucks (found on almost any campus).

The trouble with “responsibility” in Canada is that it is considered an old-fashioned notion.  It has its roots in the middle ages where the oath of fealty protected lord and vassal (hence the idea behind the Senate), where the monarchy was not above the law (hence the supposed supremacy of House of Commons), and where the philosopher carefully instructed his students in the trivium and quadrivium (so numbered after Augustine’s trinity and the four basic elements) hence the idea of the university.  With colonialism these core traditions were transplanted onto a different continent; but “responsibility” in the history of Canadian political thought is not an organic notion.  It was weakened upon grafting (implicitly as Europeans and other later immigrants flooded the continent), but we were blessed with the fact that the country was considered unfinished, indicated by the neo-gothic architecture in Ottawa (as opposed to the neo-classical in Washington DC).  Yet in the face of modernity, or post modernity, and as many of Canada’s universities have populations numbering in the tens of thousands, it is difficult to inculcate “responsibility” in a sense personified by the idealism of the middle ages, which was less than egalitarian (and prone to crusades).  Today numbers of Canadians short-change themselves by clinging to ideologies, veritable ‘crib sheets’ to life, in the face of globalization, economic crises and scarcity, and as we search – unquestioningly – for a medieval magician nonetheless to take dreaded responsibility.  Thinking critically is still too difficult as we now cede ancient liberties, responsibilities and political institutions to our anti-statist statists.

In reviewing these two books in combination the conclusion seems inescapable: the decline of parliament is connected to the decline of ‘the idea of the university’, and Harper ultimately benefits from an uninformed, rather populist public. But which particular reading do I recommend?  Prize-winning Democratizing the Constitution can be a painful read because it is so repetitive owing to poor editing, or perhaps because it underestimates its audience, which may be a hard thing to do in Canadian politics.  As an artful substitute may I recommend instead Goethe’s Faust (where Faust sells his soul to the devil) or the following excerpt from Thomas Aquinas’s De regimine principum [‘On the Government of Princes’, circa 1267] which sums up Canada’s problems with the Chrétien era and Harper’s regime nicely:

Again, it sometimes happens that a community expels a tyrant with the help of some other ruler who, having achieved power, snatches at tyranny himself and, fearing to suffer at the hands of another what he has himself done to another, forces his subjects into a slavery even more grievous than before.  It is often true in cases of tyranny that a subsequent tyrant proves to be worse than his predecessor; for, while not undoing any of the troubles inflicted by his predecessor, he devises new ones of his own, out of the malice of his heart.[24]

While Lowering Higher Education is a valuable book (perhaps a bit too schematic in its beginning), Canadians should read first Democratizing the Constitution, because it examines the terrible problem of political tyranny and abuse, but alas one has to put up with its annoying premise that the reader is an ill-equipped (or at least forgetful) first-year university student.

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[1] Peter Aucoin, Mark D. Jarvis, Lori Turnbull, Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government (Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2011), p. 65.

[2] Ibid., pp. 61,62.

[3] Ibid., p. 143.

[4] Ibid. p. 150.

[5] Ibid., p. 145.

[6] This was written before Harper’s problem with Senator Brazeau, who is facing criminal charges.

[7] Ibid., p. 121.

[8] Ibid., p. 119.

[9] The more the government approaches a republic, the more the manner of judging becomes fixed; and it was the vice of the Lacedaemonian republic that the ephors judged arbitrarily without laws to guide them.  In Rome, the first consuls judged like the ephors; the drawbacks of this were felt, and precise laws were made.

     In despotic states there is no law; the judge himself is the rule.  In monarchical states there is a law; and, when it is precise, the judge follows it; when it is not, he seeks its spirit. In republican government, it is the nature of the constitution for judges to follow the letter of the law.  No law can be interpreted to the detriment of a citizen when it is a question of his goods, his honor, or his life.

 

See Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, tr. and ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 76  (Part I, Book 6, chapter 3: “In which governments and in which cases one should judge according to a precise text of the law.”)

[10] Ibid., pp. 247,248.

[11] Ibid., p. 42.

[12] Ibid., p. 180.

[13] Ibid., p. 97.

[14] Ibid., p. 65.

[15] Ibid., p. 33.

[16] Ibid., p. 40.

[17] Ibid., pp. 142,143.

[18] James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar, Lowering Higher Education.  The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1911), p. 181.

[19] Ibid., p. 75.

[20] Ibid., p. 185.

[21] See R.W. Dyson, “Introduction” in Aquinas: Political Writings. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. ed. and tr. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. xxxv.

[22] See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3^rd ed (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

[23] Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, tr. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), p. 270. 

[24] Aquinas, “De regimine principum” in Aquinas: Political Writings. Cambridge Texts, ed. and tr. R.W. Dyson, p. 18.