Harper shuffles the deck slowly:
That’s not to say there will not be promotions from the ranks of parliamentary secretaries. But, this being Canada, merit is a tertiary consideration behind gender and geography. Good candidates for promotion like Mike Lake, James Rajotte and Rick Dykstra are likely to find themselves falling short on both counts.
This is always something of a puzzle for foreign observers, those few hardy souls who pay the slightest attention to our politics. Why would the most senior positions of the federal government be made with on the basis of anything but merit? Isn't it horribly unwise to place people in the cabinet simply because an MP fits into a quota scheme? Yes it is. But politics isn't about common sense, logic or reason, it's about manipulating the perceptions of the ignorant, the apathetic and the inattentive.
The quota scheme is not a new thing. The Westminster system has always encouraged First Ministers to promote regional diversity in making their cabinets. This is part of the unwritten code of British parliamentary democracy that could be seen in evidence at least as far back as the 18th century. As times have changed so have the other variables in the parliamentary quota scheme.
Until Mrs Thatcher's time class played an important in determining who got into the British cabinet. You had to have a certain number of toffs, ennobled or not, sitting around the table in order for the government to be seen as credible with the property owning class. As time passed it was considered important that certain sectional interests should be represented. In Tory governments a particular minister, regardless of their actual portfolio, would be seen as close to the City, or to industrial interests in the North. Labour cabinets even today have their quota of unionists, both white and blue collar. Labour even had their own shop steward Prime Minister, James Callaghan.
Class has never played as important a role in Canadian politics. Our bugbears are regional distrust and the French-English divide. For the Liberal Party, which was strong in Quebec from Laurier's time until Trudeau's implosion in the early 1980s, it was usually pretty easy to find strong and capable Francophone ministers to fill the "French quota." For the Tories, conversely, it was always something of a nightmare in find competent Francophones even as backbenchers. Thus some of the clownery among Diefenbaker's Quebec caucus, many of whom had hardly been vetted before being given their nomination papers. Mulroney was a bit luckier in this regard. Stephen Harper has had to resort to putting qualified Quebecois in the Senate, just so he put them in cabinet.
The Americans do not have these problems. Cabinet ministers can be brought from in or outside of politics. In 2001 George W Bush appointed former Alcoa head Paul O'Neill as Treasury Secretary. While the appointment turned out badly for Bush, he had a falling out with O'Neill, it's suggestive of the sort of candidates who can be recruited into the cabinet. The current Obama administration is packed with former Goldman Sachs alumni. American cabinets tend, certainly compared to Canadian cabinets, to seem more meritocratic.
This isn't to say that the American system doesn't have its quota features. The Senate's composition prizes geography above demographics or competence. Congressional districts often reflect their residents with black members coming from predominately black areas and so forth. This is not a bug in the system, it is the system. In the American political system regional and ethnic diversity is represented in Congress. In Canada it is more likely to be represented in cabinet given the irrelevance of our Senate.
We do the same thing in a different way.
The one downside of having the cabinet be chosen, at least in part, by quota is that it gives disproportionate influence to the senior bureaucrats. A weak minister, chosen for ethnic or geographic reasons, is far more likely to be manipulated by their deputy minister, who is likely the cleverest of a clever lot, than a strong minister. This gives the bureaucracy a certain momentum that can be hard to stop. That said, observing the American federal bureaucracy at work, I doubt if there is that much of an difference. In virtually all advanced liberal democracies bureaucracy becomes a fourth branch of government, rivalling and checking judiciary, legislative and executive branches.
It happens, because we allow it to happen.
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