Canadian Public Policy

Power Shift: From Party Elites to Informed Citizens by Vaughan LyonReview by: Peter H. RussellCanadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 38, No. 4 (December/décembre 2012), pp.608-609Published by: University of Toronto Press on behalf of Canadian Public PolicyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41756773 .

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608 Reviews/Critiques d ' ouvrages

of violence besides that perpetrated by individuals or small groups, ignoring institutional or structural violence and the harm it inflicts through damaging workloads, policies, and processes. In the editors' call to "recognize the subtle, multiple (and often ignored) forms of violence that pervade institutions that are meant to protect and care for vulnerable populations and the workers who provide their care" (p. 14), we find the seeds of an approach that addresses multiple forms of workplace violence and empowers those most affected to create the solution.

Jeremy Milloy, Simon Fraser University

Power Shift: From Party Elites to Informed Citizens by Vaughan Lyon. Bloomington: ¡Universe, 2011. 344 pp. Paper $23.95. Cloth $33.95.

In Power Shift , Vaughan Lyon provides a searing indictment of the extent to which political party leaders have come to dominate parliamentary democracy in Canada. So far has this gone that the word that best describes our political system today, he contends, is "partyocracy."

Lyon insists that this illness in the Canadian system of government can be cured only by some very strong medicine. That medicine is the election of citizens' parliaments in every federal constitu- ency. Through deliberation these local parliaments will form positions on policy issues and identify the person best able to represent them in Parliament.

The strength of Lyon's book lies mostly in its diagnosis of what ails Canadian democracy today rather than in the reform he prescribes. His reform proposal is set out in the book's opening chapter. The ten chapters that follow are devoted to critiquing the existing system and the inadequacy of incremental approaches to democratic reform. Like the author, let me start with his panacea - constituency parliaments.

These mini local parliaments are to be elected in each of Canada's 338 federal constituencies. Members of these constituency parliaments (CPs) are to be elected by 1,000-person wards - so that a constituency of 100,000 will support a local parlia- ment of 100. Members of these local assemblies would meet full time for one month a year and be paid one-twelfth of a federal MP's remuneration. The CPs would select a few significant policy issues to discuss - free of partisan considerations. The majority position they reach on these issue would be conveyed to the person they select to be their MP. Their MP would not be bound by the CP but would be expected to keep in close touch with the CP and explain any departures from positions favoured by the CP.

At the beginning, the existing political parties would carry on and compete in elections. Lyon real- izes that abolishing them would be unconstitutional. But he is convinced the Conservatives, New Demo- crats, Liberals, Bloc Québécois, and Greens would simply "fade away," so popular would the CPs and their candidates quickly become. But before they fade away they would somehow be persuaded to use the parliamentary power they now have to establish the CP machinery that - according to Lyon - will soon wipe them out.

I hesitate to state the obvious - but still I must say it - this is not going to happen. It is not just that the "party elites" will not be persuaded to pass the legislation needed to establish constituency parlia- ments, but that this solution will not have the support of many others - political scientists, journalists, and citizens - who are dissatisfied with the way Canada's parliamentary system is operating today.

For me, Lyon's model has two fatal weaknesses. The first is that most citizens are too busy with the problems and pleasures of everyday life to support or serve in local parliaments. This is the fundamental truth on which a century ago Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels based their explanation of how in

Canadian Public Policy - Analyse de politiques, vol. xxxviii, no. 4 2012

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Reviews/Critiques d'ouvrages 609

mass democracies an iron law of oligarchy pushes power to the top of even the most egalitarian pol- itical parties.

My second reason for questioning Lyon's model is the inescapable differences of opinion and outlook that crop up in even a very small group of citizens. The small wards of Lyon's constituency parliaments will harbour strong believers in unbridled capitalism as well as strong social democrats - not to mention neighbours with conflicting views on everything from global warming to Canada's relations with the United States. No amount of deliberation in the local assemblies will eliminate these competing views of the public good and the urge to advance them through party-like organizations.

Lyon believes that a national parliament made up of MPs who represent grassroots opinion in every constituency would be much more able to deal with national unity issues than a parliament dominated by national political parties. This belief flies in the face of what we experienced during the mega constitutional crises of Meech Lake and the Char- lottetown Accord. In the many meetings I attended in school auditoriums, church basements, and town halls in various parts of the country during those crises, the speeches I heard time after time expressed strong local pride and vehement opposition to the constitutional aspirations of citizens in other parts of Canada. Among those who attended these gath- erings, there was no reaching out to accommodate Canadians whose vision of constitutional justice differed from their own. Contrary to Lyon's view, the national political parties - Progressive Conserva- tives, Liberals, NDP, and Greens - were the main vehicles for reconciling constitutional differences.

Comparative political science research on parlia- mentary democracies has shown that Canada, at the federal level, has the highest concentration of power in the office of the prime minister. Vaughan Lyon's critical examination of the current state of Canadian parliamentary democracy does an excellent job in

illuminating its leader-centric quality. But I believe he goes too far in trying to overcome its party- centric quality and in giving up on incremental steps to check the power of party leaders.

While Lyon appears to favour electoral reform in principle, he argues that it will give even more power to party leaders in constructing party lists. Here he fails to consider the collégial practices and representational principles that parties use in de- veloping party lists for mixed member proportional systems, or proposals to reduce party leader powers with respect to the choice of constituency candidates and control of the caucus that are being developed by Conservative back-bencher Michael Chong.

As Canadians experience the most authoritarian period of government since the chateau clique and Family Compact regimes of the 1830s, they would be better advised to pursue electoral reform and the parliamentary reform it might facilitate than wait for the coming of Vaughan Lyon's brave new age of party-less "citizenocracy." But let us hope that his clear and passionate indictment of the current state of Canadian democracy adds to the momentum for democratic reform in this miserable season of one-party rule.

Peter H. Russell, University of Toronto

Canadian Immigration: Economic Evidence for a Dynamic Policy Environment edited by Ted McDonald, Elizabeth Ruddick, Arthur Sweetman, and Christopher Worswick. Montreal and Kingston: Queen's Policy Studies Series, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010. 344 pp. Paper $39.95.

Since the 1970s, Canadian immigration policy has experienced dramatic reforms in the dynamic context of deteriorating labour market outcomes of recent im- migrants and a rapidly changing social and economic

Canadian Public Policy - Analyse de politiques, vol. xxxviii, no. 4 2012

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