He won. Now Justin Trudeau has to do better GlobeDebate
This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Richard French is a senior fellow at the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. He spent nine years as an MNA in Quebec.
The first requirement for a prime minister in a Westminster system is to keep his cabinet and his caucus together, all more or less united and pulling in more or less the same direction. But our Prime Minister apparently does not talk to his colleagues; they have to deal with his staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, who apparently protect him from being unduly involved in his own government, even while they engage in the detailed policing of ministers and MPs’ speech and behaviour.
We’ve heard of ministerial responsibility. Mr. Trudeau is writing a new chapter in the unwritten Westminster constitution: prime ministerial non-responsibility. Advisers can palliate lack of substantive knowledge. High political office involves such a diversity of issues that no one can master any significant proportion of them. We pay our politicians to take expert advice and decide how to reconcile it with a myriad of other factors they must legitimately consider, certainly including public opinion, the global environment, the legislature, the caucus and so on.
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