REGINA — The Fraser Institute has released a new report in which it suggests term limits could be a way to reform democracy without making constitutional changes.
The essay, titled Term Limits for Parliamentarians, is part of a paper called Five Ways to Fix Canadian Democracy Without Constitutional Reform.
The author of the essay, Lydia Miljan, is a professor of political science at the University of Windsor and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
She said she was approached about looking for ways to improve democracy without “having to go through the extensive process of having a constitutional amendment because we know that those tend to be non-starters.”
She said she started looking at the question of whether or not term limits might be one way to improve democracy and said she was “quite impressed by a lot of the research out there that shows that in fact when you have term limits, you actually have a lot of secondary positive outcomes.”
“You get more people engaged in politics. You're able to attract more people both to vote but also to run for office, and it makes for a more dynamic electorate.”
It also cuts down on career politicians. Miljan’s essay points to the example of Louis Plamondon, who holds the record for longest continuous service as a member of Parliament in Canadian history.
“And so it made me think, wow, somebody's been there for 40 years, has no legislation to his name, and is just basically a permanent feature,” Miljan said.
“It really does, it kind of undermines what we expect parliamentarians to do. And even on the other side, you know, there's a lot of current MPs there that are just, I would suggest, have gone beyond their best by date, and people get tired of seeing the same faces, the same ideas.”
She points to the contrast to agency boards or commissions where there is a fixed period of time for service.
“You know, all governments sort of appoint people to these places, and they have fixed terms for them. So it's kind of interesting that they don't think that the same kind of renewal they shouldn't be subject to.”
Miljan argues for a 12-year term limit, factoring in the potential for minority and majority governments. She believes 12 years is “sufficient.”
“It allows for people who have experience and institutional knowledge to train up the new people. But then equally, it allows for fresh ideas. And it forces parties to think about renewal, to always be recruiting people to the fold and getting new ideas. And so that constant renewal really can help avoid groupthink and just avoid the stagnation of parliament.”
Miljan believes this should be the case not only in federal politics, but also at the provincial and municipal levels.
“In fact, municipal is probably the worst offenders of having people, you know, the incumbency advantage is so great, in part because we have such low turnout and people just feel that, you know, there's no chance of getting in, no chance of challenging it,” Miljan said.
“In fact, they're correct. You know, at the municipal level, incumbents win at an astonishingly 90 per cent rate … so it's really difficult to upset an incumbent at that.”
But even in the House of Commons or provincially, Miljan said they have seen that “if you're an incumbent, you have a huge advantage over people who are trying to challenge you. And so having term limits at all levels of government, I think, would really invigorate our democracy.”
Miljan believes this sort of renewal would “really guard against people who just don't understand that their time is up.” She had one particular recent example in mind.
“I'm sort of thinking about Mr. (Justin) Trudeau, who just didn't get it — that had he left sooner, that whole chaos that we had last year could have easily been avoided because they would have had a much more orderly transition to new leadership. And so sometimes parties have to push out the leader, and those are always ugly situations. And they don't demonstrate that the party is interested in the country — they're more interested in their own institutional survival.”
In addition to writing this essay, Miljan also is editor of the report, which offers several different ideas on how to strengthen democracy without a need to change the constitution.
Included among those is an essay from Nathan Cullen about how to put a stop to floor crossing; an essay from John Robson, who argues for respecting the division of powers in the constitution; Patrice Dutil, who makes a case for introducing proportional representation, not at the House of Commons, but at the Senate level where the Senate would be elected but reflect the proportional representation of the country; and J.W.J. Bowden, who writes on how to strengthen MP Michael Chong’s original Reform Act legislation.
Miljan believes adopting some of these ideas would help spur more voter involvement by the public.
“The idea is we've got a great country, but we do seem to be lacking in civic engagement,” she said. “Voter engagement's going down, voter turnout's going down, and it's just always the same people, the same ideas. And the country is sort of, I think, ripe for and ready for change.”
One argument suggested against term limits is that people should be free to decide for themselves whether or not a politician has stayed too long. But Miljan believes the issues with voter engagement run counter to that argument.
“The issue is if everyone voted, if people were actually engaged and they felt that their vote mattered, I would agree to that,” Miljan said.
“But the fact remains that people aren't voting in large numbers, that we tend to just go with the familiar, and we aren't forcing government, aren't forcing parties to really think about renewal. And so it's not just about being popular. It's not just about being what's perceived to be effective. But if you're really effective in your party, you are going to be thinking about the future. You're going to be wanting to bring in younger people, a more diverse crowd. And by keeping the same MP in place year after year, if you're tried and true, you just never get that sense of true renewal and fresh ideas.”
As for whether we will see any change toward term limits being implemented, Miljan acknowledges that is the “difficulty with anything to do with Parliament itself, is that the people in power got there because of the system that we have, and they're very reluctant to change the system because it doesn't suit them.”
“But I think these are modest changes that actually, if they thought about it, they could see it could help them. Because, you know, most parties do have people who stay on too long, and they probably have been frustrated with leaders who haven't wanted to leave when it was really the writing was on the wall. So if they took it seriously and they really looked inwardly, I think that would benefit. But yeah, I'm not overly optimistic that they will take my advice on this one.”
