Memo To The Liberals: Substance Over Form

On Reform Act And Other Nuisances

There have been two minor bits of news the last couple of days that have caused parts of my Twitter bubble to go aflutter - the Liberal Caucus’ decision not to vote for the Reform Act powers at their Sunday caucus meeting, and the Governor General’s Twitter account tweeting about her meeting with King Charles like it was a bilateral with the King of the UK and not a meeting of the King of Canada and the King’s representative in Canada. In both cases those annoyed are probably right, but in both cases it’s truly the triumph of Form Over Substance.

On the Reform Act, the idea that Liberal MPs “haven’t learned” from the near-death experience is ludicrous. With all respect to Fred DeLorey, the Liberal caucus has learned the truth from their near-death experience - if there’s a majority to get rid of a leader they’ll go. The prioritization of some formal mechanism is nice, but there’s nothing in the decision not to take it that will actually stop the Liberals if they have the votes to depose Carney.

That is the actual takeaway from Trudeau - with or without the Reform Act, you need politicians to act with courage. If Chrystia Freeland doesn’t write that resignation letter, Trudeau wouldn’t have been knifed, and if a similar situation presents itself with Carney what will matter is not this vote, but whether caucus and cabinet have the courage. The fetish for Chong’s Reform Act is quaint, almost - a denial that political reality has mechanisms for achieving outcomes even if they aren’t formally spelled out. The argument that the NDP aren’t getting Party Status because, well, they don’t meet the threshold from Steve MacKinnon today was hilarious - if we wanted them to meet the threshold we’d just move the threshold. We don’t want to do it so we didn’t, but acting like the law is the law and there’s nothing we can do is hilarious. (I am not stupid enough to believe that MacKinnon actually views the law as a constraint, and it’s a better political argument for him to make than “we could but fuck you”, which is the actual answer.)

The uproar over the Governor General’s tweet is similar - is it constitutionally illiterate? Yes. A meeting between the GG and the British Monarch is not a meeting with the British Monarch in their capacity as King of the United Kingdom. There is a question of hats here, and it’s theoretically important that we care about these things. Charles is the King of Canada and he’s here to act as the King of Canada. But the idea that Mary Simon is running the Twitter account is just fucking dumb, and the commentators (and even one MP) acting like Simon is too stupid to get her job title because of said tweet need to get help.

What both cases have in common is it’s actually directly unhelpful to be the side that cares about Form over Substance. One of the problems progressives routinely face is that they are the party of norms, and refuse to engage in the political realities. They talk too often in abstractions, and divorce themselves from the people they’re trying to talk to through levels of obtuseness that is almost designed to make people feel alienated.

The funny thing is, conservatives usually get this. They get that the rise of liberal and progressive language policing - things like “unhoused” instead of homeless, the never ending additions to the LGBT acronym, minorities being rebranded to “equity seeking groups”, etc - are detrimental to the cause of those doing it. How much of Doug Ford’s appeal is that he speaks the way people talk? And yet, on the monarchy, we must embrace legal fictions and technicalities instead of reality.

I’m not saying the left should embrace a Canadian Republic, or that the vagaries of the Reform Act should be national news - they and it shouldn’t. But I am saying these are two situations where focusing on the realities as they are makes far more sense than pearl clutching about technicalities. And once you realize that for what it is, you see it as the correct approach in a lot of situations.

We have a national unity crisis right now, or at least a national crisis whereby unity is important, and one of the best ways to solve those issues is going to be federal money. Are we going to have a chorus of people on the liberal side of politics complaining about the fact that the Feds are taking responsibilities they don’t have or are we going to correctly take credit for solving problems?

The problem for the left is that not every institution or every rule is actually worth defending as a great thing worthy of respect. We can and must be more comfortable living with the de facto rules and not the de jure ones, because that’s how Canadians live. Mark Carney has an implicit mandate to solve this country’s problems, and we have to acknowledge that fact instead of pretending that Canadians were deeply invested in separation of jurisdiction and niceties.

We have an opportunity to reframe Canadian progressivism as a project that understands the practical realities of this country and not merely something that dotes on rules and norms of a bygone era. That doesn’t mean tossing traditionalism out the window, but it does mean we shouldn’t feel bound by traditionalism where it gets in the way of making things better. Pretending to be constrained when we aren’t will stop us from doing what we need to do to make the lives of Canadians better. The Reform Act furor is a symbol of the kind of constraints we must fight against, because it only limits us if we let it.

We can’t let it.

• (As we ramp up coverage of the Carney era, national unity threats in Alberta and Quebec, and attempt to use whatever influence I have to influence this new government, consider a paid subscription. All work will remain free but a paid subscription is a way to support my work and enable me to continue to do what I love. Also, I’m live-blogging the Throne Speech Tuesday, so swing by for that.)