Checks and Balances
Christopher Matthews
Calgary Herald
February 27, 2004

James Madison, fourth President of the United States and arguably the father of the US Constitution, wrote in the Federalist Papers, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Madison understood that “the essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the old adage goes.

If power corrupts, how can it be checked? Madison’s answer was to divide and separate power. Power was divided between federal and state levels of government and then separated among the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. The institutions of government were designed to check and balance one another to prevent one branch of government from dominating the others.

For example, the President has the power to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court but the US Senate must ratify these appointments. Only Congress can pass legislation but the President has a legislative veto. The President can be impeached by Congress, and so on.

By separating power and giving each branch of government a share in the other’s, power is checked and balanced.

In Canada we went halfway.

Our Fathers of Confederation divided power between the federal and provincial levels of government but stopped short of separating power within government.

Today we have a government that is far too centralized.

The prime minister makes all the most senior judicial appointments. The prime minister appoints all the Senators. The prime minister appoints all the Cabinet Ministers and all the deputy ministers. The prime minister appoints the governor general and the heads of Crown corporations.

Do you get the picture?

The three heads of Crown corporations that Paul Martin suspended (some with pay), Michel Vennat, Andre Oullet and Jean Pelletier, were all appointed by the prime minister.

And there is another story that the ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, refused to investigate allegations about the sponsorship program in 2001.

Who do you suppose appoints the ethics counsellor?

The sponsorship scandal surrounding the Martin government is the latest testament to the truth power corrupts. And to make matters worse, people have known about this scandal for years but it is only recently that it has become front-page news. Why? Because of the auditor general’s report.

Since the auditor general is independent, non-partisan and has the power to audit the government’s books, she can expose government wrongdoing more effectively and more credibly than the opposition in Parliament.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Remember the gun registry? This issue had almost completely fallen off the radar screen when an auditor general’s report highlighting its waste made it front page news.

If we think back a little farther, the HRDC “billion-dollar boondoggle” only really became big news because of the work of the auditor general, too.

Stop and think about it. It’s pretty scary that a lone auditor general has become our best defence against arrogant and corrupt government.

How much more is going on that we don’t even know about?

The auditor general herself has complained that billions of dollars of government spending are beyond her reach and cannot be audited.

This all points to the need for a more effective checks and balances in our political system.

The best place to start is by reforming the existing Senate. The obvious model to follow is Australia, which has deftly blended a British-style House of Commons with an American-style Senate.

In the land down under, a Triple “E” Senate (equal, elected and effective) wields considerable power to balance the House of Commons and to hold the prime minister and his government to account. The Senate can summon ministers and senior bureaucrats to testify, under oath, about their deeds and misdeeds. Because the government party almost never has a majority in the Senate or its committees, the coalition of opposition parties that do, have the motives to drill to the bottom to find the truth.

Two hundred years ago, James Madison eloquently described this arrangement thus: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition; the interest of the man must be connected to the powers of the office.”

The Aussies state the purpose of their Senate a bit more bluntly: “Keep the bastards honest.”

With proper checks and balances, like a Triple “E” Senate, we could keep our bastards honest.