Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent move to create permanent caucus advisory committees for each of his 26 Cabinet ministers will not only help the government avoid making missteps, like its decision to scrap the mandatory long form census, but it will also make it harder for backbench MPs to complain about the government's decisions, says a former Conservative minister.

Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) called for the creation of the committees at the last Conservative caucus meeting in Ottawa. Each committee will be chaired by the respective minister's Parliamentary secretary, and will consist of six MPs and three Senators. The idea is that the minister will consult the committee regularly when preparing a bill to submit to Parliament, and the minister's submission to Cabinet must include a page with the committee's advice.

"It is very easy for ministers to get offside with their caucus sometimes on issues. Obviously, having a group like this to be a bit of a focus group for different ideas is going to help remedy that," said Monte Solberg, who served as immigration and human resources minister until his retirement from politics in 2008. "The caucus itself will be held accountable to some degree for some of these decisions. I think there's merit in that as well, because it's easy for caucus members to shoot from the sidelines sometimes, and if they're involved in the decision making it's not going to be quite so easy to do that anymore."

Aside for a few exceptional examples, such as the media reports of a caucus feud over the Prime Minister's treatment of embattled former PM Brian Mulroney, in 2009, signs of internal discord in Tory ranks have been virtually nonexistent under Mr. Harper. Even the outcry over the government's decision to make the mandatory long form census voluntary hasn't produced any cracks, aside for a leaked letter from Tory MP James Rajotte (Edmonton-Leduc, Alta.) to Industry Minister Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) relaying his constituents' concerns over the census, and asking for an explanation as to how it wouldn't compromise the collected data.

Mr. Harper has been criticized for centralizing power in the PMO, and thereby further reducing the influence of individual MPs, but Mr. Solberg said the advisory committees are very "Reformish" in that they increase direct democracy in the government.

"As time goes by and it becomes less and less obvious that there's going to be majority government tomorrow, you need to find ways to keep people engaged and make sure that they feel like they are going to continue to have influence," he said. "I think this would probably lead to making better and more palatable decisions."

Donald Savoie, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton, said he applauds the creation of the caucus committees, but the test will be whether Mr. Harper and his ministers decide to listen to them.

"The proof is in the pudding and it's how it's going to work and what kind of real empowerment that we will see, and if they'll be listened to. ... Let's hope that it has some impact because the role of Member of Parliament the past 25 years or so is becoming increasingly difficult to figure it out," said Prof. Savoie, whose recent book, Power: Where is it?, laments the increasing centralization of power in Canada.

He said past prime ministers have created similar entities on an ad hoc basis, but Mr. Harper's approach is a more formal one. While some have pointed a finger at the Prime Minister for being worse than his predecessors in centralizing control in his office, Prof. Savoie said Mr. Harper has just continued along a continuum that's been in progress for 40 years.

He said the creation of the committees could also be a sign of a restless caucus, which is usually more difficult to manage than Cabinet because backbenchers have less to lose by opposing the Prime Minister.

"Caucus, if you don't keep an eye on it, can go native fairly quickly," he said. "Cabinet ministers owe what they do to the Prime Minister. It gives clearly the upper hand to prime ministers. Ministers don't seem to have the independent standing, the regional clout they had 40 years ago, so they're much more vulnerable."

Liberal democratic reform critic Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Lachine, Que.) said, however, that the Prime Minister has a bad track record on taking advice, noting that the government recently ignored the advice of the National Statistics Council, which it appointed, on the long form census issue.

"He is the one who decides how much control he exerts or doesn't within his caucus. To be more interested in the views and actually having his members of caucus participate in consultation, that's great, the question will then be what is he going to do to be more open with Canadians," she said.

hmacleod@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times