Consensus Government
Aaron Spitzer | CBC Online News | Oct. 29

Consensus Government in Brief >>  

Yellowknife mortgage broker David McPherson is fed up with how the Northwest Territories is run. The N.W.T. legislature - unlike every other assembly in Canada, save for Nunavut's -- operates without political parties. It's called consensus-style government. "But consensus government doesn't work in the N.W.T.," McPherson says, "because there's no consensus."

There's no consensus on that point, either. But back in June, McPherson and a few dozen like-minded Yellowknifers met to voice their concerns with the current system - and to jump-start a bid to reform it. In doing so, they became just the latest in a long line of northerners proposing an overhaul of consensus government.

Here's how consensus government works: Every four years, 19 candidates are elected to the territorial assembly as independents. Once in office, they vote on who among them will be premier, and who will fill the six additional cabinet spots. The remaining 12 members - minus whoever is chosen as speaker -- are termed "regular MLAs." They form the de facto opposition. But because the opposition always outnumbers the cabinet, the premier and ministers must collaborate with the regular MLAs to run the government. In this way, consensus government is said to be in keeping with traditional Aboriginal decision-making, which emphasizes cooperation over conflict.

But detractors like McPherson see two fatal flaws: First, because candidates for MLA aren't attached to political parties, voters have a hard time knowing what they stand for. "It's basically who has the nicest signs," McPherson says. "It's name recognition rather than platforms and issues." And in lieu of those platforms and issues, McPherson adds, after the election it's hard to hold the victors accountable.

The second shortcoming, say reformers, is that, because the premier is chosen by MLAs after the election, voters never know what kind of government they'll end up with. McPherson says that makes voting a crapshoot. "You can't count on it," he says. "You can't plan. In Alberta, at least you know in general what Ralph Klein and the conservatives are going to do. You can plan for that."

McPherson thinks one solution would be to switch to party politics. At their June meeting, he and his fellow reformers announced a plan to found a party and run a slate of candidates in the territorial election. While a lack of time caused the plan to "die a natural death," McPherson says, he still expects a number of independent candidates to make consensus government - and its shortcomings -- a major election issue.

Four years ago, Brendan Bell might have been among those candidates. As a political hopeful in the Yellowknife South riding, Bell harboured doubts about the N.W.T.'s unusual style of governance. "I had some real concerns," he says. "And I felt they were systemic concerns."

But after winning office, Bell spent the past term studying the system from within - and he's convinced it's the right one for the territory. Party politics, he says, don't lead to increased accountability. Instead, they disenfranchise the opposition, rendering them powerless to affect the direction of government. And even within the governing party, Bell notes, backbenchers must toe the party line - leaving them little leeway to cater to their constituents.

But in consensus government, "my sense is that I'm representing my riding. I have more freedom to represent my constituency," he says. And because the territorial cabinet is a perpetual minority, Bell says, it always needs the support of regular MLAs such as himself - giving power to every member of the assembly.

Moreover, according to many defenders of consensus government, small communities aren't a good match for party politics. Issues there seldom break down along traditional party lines. Before the N.W.T. even thinks about switching its governance structure, Bell says, "it has to make sense to everyone in the territory - not to just to people in Yellowknife and Hay River and Inuvik."

Like Bell, Bill Braden, the MLA for Yellowknife's Great Slave riding, disagrees that there's a need for political parties. "We've got enough dividing us in the N.W.T. that we don't need to introduce another one," he says.

But Braden admits citizens should have more say in picking their premier. Currently, he says, "voters don't have any connection with who the leadership of the territory would or should be."

To change that, Braden has issued a challenge to all electoral candidates coveting the territory's top job. In a speech before the legislative assembly last month, he urged them to publicly announce their plans to vie for the premiership, and to lay out their vision for the territory.

While voters still couldn't pick the premier, they could press their own MLAs on how to vote - and thus indirectly affect the selection. "That would get voters talking about leadership options," Braden said. "This kind of leadership dialogue has never happened during a territorial election campaign."

To reformer David McPherson, it sounds like a beginning. "I think that suggestion does have merit. At least we would be able to hold a leader to the promises he made," he says. "At least we've started people talking about this."