Why Canadian PMs are the closest thing the democratic world has to a dictator

An NDPer is launching a Quixotic bid to rein in prime ministerial power, but he certainly has a point

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NDP MP Daniel Blaikie is right now leading a personal charge to limit what he calls the “unfettered power” of the Canadian prime minister. He put forward a motion to change the House of Commons standing orders around confidence votes. Blaikie’s package of “meaningful democratic controls” would, among other things, restrict the ability of any future prime minister to prorogue and dissolve Parliament at will.

The efforts have been laughed off by the two parties who historically get to occupy the prime minister’s office, but Blaikie is correct in that the office of Canadian prime minister has long been famous for its absurdly sweeping powers. In a 2021 interview, former prime minister Stephen Harper said that even as the head of a minority, he still had more ability to “get things done” than a U.S. president whose party controls both chambers of Congress. In the 1990s, political journalist Jeffrey Simpson wrote an entire book, The Friendly Dictatorship, about how Canada under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was effectively a “de facto one-party state.”

Below, a quick guide to why Canadian prime ministers are one of the closest things the democratic world has to a dictator.

Complete, unchecked power over judicial, senatorial and even vice-regal appointments.

The only real check in place on the power of a majority prime minister is the ability of the caucus of MPs to vote him or her out of office, at any point in time in theory a caucus could vote out their party leader which would produce a new prime minister (with the same powers and the same check on power). Also said majority prime minister has a fixed term under our constitution, of no more than five years, and in recent decades more like four years between general elections.

Otherwise it is true that the PM has considerable power if he (or she) has a majority. The current PM has a minority and depends on the NDP and sometimes other opposition MPs to support their agenda. If the NDP at any point decided they did not want to go along with Trudeau any longer, it would likely force a “vote of non-confidence” which would lead to an election, unless the prime minister tried to prorogue parliament and another theoretical check failed to kick in.

That other check under our constitution is that the Governor General, appointed to stand in for the British monarch, has the power to dismiss the PM for cause and call the election that the PM refuses to call. This only happened once in Canadian history, in 1926, and it caused a big political crisis at the time.

For people to call this situation a “dictatorship” is a bit of a stretch, a Canadian (or UK or Australian) PM is only in this position between elections and in theory is legislating an agenda that was approved by enough voters to create a majority government. That certainly happened a few times over the past century and the parliament created by the majority government usually did enact a lot of legislation.

This is how the system is supposed to work. Do I always agree with the agenda of a majority government? No. Too bad for me, I voted for a party that failed to get a majority.

Is our system vastly different from yours? Not really, but your president needs to inspire voters to elect a like-minded congress who form a separate legislative branch. (I am of course aware of election fraud issues and this is a more theoretical discussion, also I have not addressed any potential for Canadian electoral fraud which is probably less of a factor as we don’t use voting machines for our federal elections and the votes are counted in the presence of all party ‘scrutineers” — nobody has alleged significant electoral fraud here, the sad fact is that Canadian voters really do want the Liberal governments we have had much of the time.)

Some might say that a difference is the power of Congress to impeach a president, but in reality that is essentially the same power as the potential for a Canadian political party to replace their leader. I cannot think of a time where that happened to a prime minister but it has happened to unpopular leaders in opposition party situations. It also happened in the UK with several recent leaders, forced out of office by a party rebellion.

What is a perfect system? There is no perfect system, it would rely on the goodwill of all politicians in any given system to do the right thing and to observe all standards of ethics and morality. Obviously we are a long way from that in both of our countries and in all other countries other than maybe Iceland or some other small unitary states and no doubt they have political scandals we don’t hear much about.

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