Contagion spreads

The most recent numbers show 11 “probable” and 41 “suspected” cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in southern Ontario. Something like 2,000 people, potentially exposed over the past week, have been requested to quarantine themselves.

Meanwhile about 375 cattle have been slaughtered and 17 farms quarantined in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan in an attempt to trace the source of Canada’s first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow” disease.

Given that background, and the kind of press coverage it has generated, foreigners are excused for thinking Canadians may be up to their knees in disease. The real threat, though, isn’t coronavirus or those weird little prions, but another disease that seems to be running through the political class. It has not been defined, but the chief symptom in its clinical diagnosis is dissolution of the spine, paradoxically accompanied by unusually high levels of gall.

The government of Ontario seems to have fallen ill with this syndrome. Premier Ernie Eves first evaded the legislature when he presented his government’s “budget” at a Magna International training centre in March. We pointed out then that holding the budget speech outside the legislature was not against the law, but that the strict legality of doing so was beside the point: it is the law and custom of the constitution that budgets must be presented to legislatures, and governments that don’t do that are abusing the system by evading the people’s representatives.

Now it has come to light that the government did not merely sidestep the budget process; it presented a warrant to the lieutenant-governor to spend $36 billion, half the provincial budget, without securing supply from the legislature. And it did so the day before its “budget” cable show, with an order for the opening of a new legislative session on April 30 already pending.

In short: the government presented, and the lieutenant-governor signed, an emergency spending warrant, when everyone knew full well that the legislature would be back in another month, in plenty of time to vote a half-year’s supply.

This is within the law — an archaic law, dating back to a time when break-up, freeze-up, or the haying season might physically prevent members from attending a sitting of the legislature. It is not routine: writing in 1953, the constitutional historian Eugene Forsey could count only six times it had been used, the latest (then) in 1945. On the contrary, it is meant for those situations where there is an immediate need for money that cannot be provided by an appropriation vote in the legislature.

Governments know this: to take one significant example, Gilles Loiselle, president of the Treasury Board in the Brian Mulroney government, told the Senate’s standing committee on national finance that warrants were to be used for “carrying on until such time as we can quickly go back to Parliament,” and that the governor-general could refuse to sign one that had been presented for the wrong reasons.

This special warrant was presented for all the wrong reasons: in Ontario we have a government that was too spineless to meet the legislature and seek supply, was too spineless to present its budget in the proper place, and is too spineless still to put its policies to the people in a general election. (Brave little Ernie insisted the election was being delayed to give him a chance to fight the SARS outbreak.)

A six-week break and the need to fund stupid commercials about the province’s education system are not adequate reason for a special warrant, and the government knows it. Moreover, Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman knows it, or ought to, and yet he signed the order-in-council. It is one thing for a lieutenant-governor to act discreetly so as not to affect the workings of the political process; it is an entirely different thing for him to facilitate the government’s cowardice.

The legislature resumed sitting on April 30, and a motion to confirm the practice of first presenting the budget before the legislature was voted down on May 21, the Conservatives (including Mines Minister James Wilson) voting against it.

The Liberals, who may well form the next government, have suddenly discovered the importance of parliamentary government. Should they win the next election, they should put their money where their mouth is, amending the Treasury Board Act to require the government to present the budget in the legislature, and repealing its provisions under which the government can use special warrants.