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Confederation and Responsible Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Norman Ward
Norman Ward*
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

Responsible government, as Professor Hodgetts has demonstrated convincingly in his Pioneer Public Service, means more than that the political life of the executive depends on the support of a majority of the members of the elected legislature. Behind the executive, government departments must be so organized that the ministers can exercise a control for which they can be held responsible. The issuance of public money to pay for departmental activities must be under a central authority, and so must a thorough audit of expenditures. The public accounts must be intelligible to the laymen who sit in Parliament, and a system of estimating in advance the needs of government for each ensuing year is indispensable. “Each of these aspects of internal financial control,” in Professor Hodgetts' words, “… had to be satisfactorily developed if Parliament was to become the watchdog of the executive.” They were satisfactorily developed between 1840 and Confederation, some of them as late as the middle sixties.

Partly because several of the political and administrative practices involved were still in their infancy, and partly because Confederation meant the destruction of old lines of authority and the creation of new ones, a severe strain was put on several essential elements in responsible government in 1867. The administrative side of the story, as it concerned governmental financial control, has already been told by Herbert Balls, but the legislative side has hitherto been neglected. The legislative story, not only in its financial aspect but also in the wider context of the whole parliamentary scene, is worth recounting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1958 , pp. 44 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 Hodgetts, J. E., Pioneer Public Service: An Administrative History of the United Canadas, 1841–1867 (Toronto, 1956)Google Scholar, especially chap. VII.

2 Balls, Herbert R., “John Langton and the Canadian Audit Office,” Canadian Historical Review, XXI, no. 2, 06, 1940, 150–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Journals of the House of Commons of Canada, 1867–1868, I, 62.Google Scholar

4 Canada, House of Commons Debates (Scrapbook Hansard), 04 3, 1868.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., April 16, 1868.

6 Public Accounts of the Dominion of Canada for the Fiscal Year Ended 30th June, 1868, iv.

7 The only serious difference between the Public Accounts Committee and Langton arose in 1877 over an extraordinary withdrawal by Sir John A. Macdonald, while Leader of the Opposition, of certain sums from a secret-service fund of whose existence the Government was unaware. Langton had not only sanctioned the expenditure, but also failed to notify the Government of the fund's existence, and was censured by the Public Accounts Committee. See Journals of the House of Commons of Canada, 1877, Appendix no. 2 (Third Report of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts).

8 R. A. Harrison to Macdonald, Feb. 11, 1871 (P.A.C., Macdonald Papers, vol. 343).

9 P.A.C, Macdonald Letterbooks, vol. 15.

10 See Mallory, J. J., “The Financial Administration of the House of Commons,” this Journal, XXIII, no. 1, 02, 1957, 108–13Google Scholar; Ward, Norman, “The Formative Years of the House of Commons, 1867–91,” this Journal, XVIII, no. 4, 11, 1952, 439 ff.Google Scholar

11 Buckingham, W. and Ross, G. W., The Hon. Alexander Mackenzie (5th ed., Toronto, 1892), 221.Google Scholar

12 See Journals of the House of Commons of Canada, 1870, pp. 235, 236, 311.Google Scholar

13 All the committee reports referred to in the next several paragraphs can be found in ibid., and appendices, for the relevant years.

14 See Ward, Norman, “Called to the Bar of the House of Commons,” Canadian Bar Review, 05, 1957, 529–46.Google Scholar

15 Mills to Macdonald, Sept 22, 1871 (Macdonald Papers, vol. 343).

16 Canada, H. of C. Debates (Scrapbook Hansard), 03 18, 1868.Google Scholar

17 Todd to Macdonald, April 20 and May 15, 1869 (Macdonald Papers, vol. 55).

18 Canada, H. of C. Debates, 1886, pp. 1517–32, 1552–68.Google Scholar

19 Journals of the House of Commons of Canada, 1891, Appendix no. 2 (Reports of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts). See also Ward, Norman, “The Life and Times of André Senécal,” Montrealer, 11, 1957, 26–7.Google Scholar