(Note: This had been submitted as an op-ed that wasn’t picked up. I’m posting it here instead).

In Monday’s National Post, a section of Elizabeth May’s chapter in Turning Democracy Inside Out: Practical Ideas for Reforming Democracy was republished, in which May called for parties to essentially be abolished, and for the prime minister to be elected from the Commons as a whole at the beginning of each parliament. The problem? That May was wrong in both her history and her understanding of what Responsible Government means, which undermines her argument and spreads dangerous misinformation about how our democratic system is supposed to work.

Right from the start, May repeats her usual canard that political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, ignoring the fact that while they may not be part of the written constitution, they are intrinsic to the unwritten portions of our constitution that form the basis of our system of Responsible Government (the definition for which May also got entirely wrong). As an avowed parliamentarian, May should know that the unwritten portions of our constitution are just as valid and binding as the written portions, and for her to ignore them for the sake of putting forward an argument is entirely disingenuous on her part.

As to the definition of Responsible Government, May asserts that it means that “individual MPs are elected to be responsible to their constituents.” She is completely and utterly wrong. The definition of Responsible Government is that the government – meaning cabinet – is responsible to the elected legislature, meaning that it must have the confidence of that legislature in order to function and govern. May is also wrong when she claims that parties are not an essential ingredient to a Westminster parliamentary democracy, and that they are not necessary or a desirable part of Responsible Government. She’s wrong – they are actually an essential part.

Political parties are essential because they are the vehicles by which a government gains and maintaining the confidence of the legislature. In order for a government to achieve confidence, they need to be certain that they have the votes to support it, and the best and easiest way to do that is with a party to support them. If we didn’t have parties, a government would need to resort to other means to getting enough MPs to support them on a confidence vote, which would certainly mean bribery in one form or another, whether it’s promises for spending in their ridings, patronage appointments, or trading in other favours. Parties can ameliorate some of this with the internal horse-trading that balances different regional and sectoral interests within their ranks, but the fact that we don’t see line items dedicated to paving roads in certain constituencies or a lot of bridges to nowhere shows that the party system is working.

To that extent, May is also wrong when she says that Sir John A. Macdonald had no control over MPs in his own caucus when he referred to them as “loose fish.” What May seems blind to is that the mechanisms of control are different today than they were in 1867, and at that time, those mechanisms had more to do with patronage, given that we had a civil service that relied entirely on partisan appointments and an understanding between parties that they would each get their turn to fill its ranks when each other formed government. That the whip was not as evident then as it is today doesn’t mean that it wasn’t employed – it was simply done by different means.

May is also wrong of her characterization of the changes made in the 1970 to the Elections Act, when political parties first appeared on the ballot, because she ignores that there were problems with the former way that ballots worked when they would list the candidates’ names, addresses and occupations rather than party affiliations. Yes, the problem that arose from these changes involved the party leader needing to sign off on nomination forms, but that was seen as the compromise to keep the Chief Electoral Officer from being dragged into nomination fights.

Lastly, May is also wrong in when the changes to party leadership selection happened that broke the means by which a caucus could hold their leaders to account. Those changes date back to the Liberal Party leadership in 1919, not the latter part of the 20^th century, and party leaders have been slowly centralizing power ever since. The abolition of parties will not solve this problem – restoring the selection of leaders to the caucus will.

While May certainly has the respect of parliamentarians for her knowledge of our democratic system, the litany of egregious errors in this piece should be cautionary as to how much faith one should put in her assertions. That she gets the very basics wrong is a troubling sign.