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Parliament: Every Reform Creates a New Problem J.R. MALLORY The House of Commons as an institution would be more effective if there were some general agreement about what its function is~ It is, after all, an institution which has been around for a long time, and in that time it has played a variety of roles - some of which are largely obsolete and has been forced to assume new roles however unsuited it is as an institution to perform them. In the beginning it was simply a mechanism for the ventilation of grievances and a means of legitimating the extraction of the crown's revenues from the people. Hence one of its most ancient maxims, "grievance before supply." It was not much more than a century ago that John Stuart Mill could still describe it as essentially a committee of grievances and a congress of opinions. The outcome of the long struggle between the Crown and Parliament in the seventeenth century was the emergence of the House of Commons as the body which created governments and destroyed them. This, in a sense, is where British North America came into the act. We had had representative institutions in British North America for nearly a century before we achieved the most important mechanism of selfgovernment - what the reformers of the day . called responsible government. But what has now become of the role of the House as Bagehot's "electoral college"? The development of party discipline made possible the emergence of cabinet government, but the change from cadre parties of notables to mass parties in effect meant that choosing or dismissing a government was moved backwards to the electorate. The House was no longer the playing field in which the game was played but merely the scoreboard which recorded the results. In the nineteenth century one can discern the 26 emergence of three other roles: what Bagehot called the educative role as the focus and centre of debate on the great issues of public policy; the legislative role which is intermingled with it; and what Bernard Crick has called the "control" function of acting as a check on governments which, supported by disciplined parties, are able to have almost dictatorial powers between elections .I How far has the Canadian House of Commons , or for that matter, any provincial legislature in Canada managed to perform these various roles? Changes in the way business is done in response to changing demands has profoundly affected the capacity of legislatures to carry out their functions effectively. Probably the most important change in the long run has been the growing role of the House as a legislative sausagemachine . As the responsibilities of the state have grown, the insatiable requirements of governments to assuage the rising demands of the public for new legislation has meant a gradual increase in the amount of parliamentary time which governments require to get their business through. A hundred years ago much parliamentary time was taken up either by private members' business or by the granting of various franchises by the state in the form of private bill legislation to incorporate banks, railways, and a variety of other enterprises . Today private members' time is reduced to an hour a day, which everyone knows will seldom lead to any conclusive result and which is consequently largely ignored, while the incorporation of companies is governed by omnibus corporation laws which transfer this responsibility from parliament to the executive. At the same time the power of members, individually or collectively, to debate, to delay, or even to force an election by refusing supply has been slowly attenuated or abolished altogether . Speeches are limited in time, there are closure rules which can limit debate, and since the 1968 change in standing orders the possibility of forcing a government to go to the people by holding up supply has been taken away altogether. Much of this change has been at the instance of governments, presumably with popular approval, as if Parliament were merely an awkward device Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 14, No. 2(Ete1979 Summer) necessary to bring about changes in the law. The efficacy of Parliament is too often judged by the amount of legislation it...

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