Self-control in politics is a boring virtue — and an absolutely necessary one

Ian Shugart, a former clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet, was appointed to the Senate last fall after a career of nearly 40 years in government, including 30 years in the public service.

On Tuesday afternoon, having battled health challenges over the past several months, he belatedly rose in the upper chamber to deliver his maiden speech as a senator.

As his topic, he chose restraint.

“Last week in this place, many honourable senators spoke about the risks to democracy in our country. Today, I would like to add what I hope might be a useful contribution to those observations,” Shugart said. “I am going to speak about the idea of restraint — an idea, a discipline, that has proven essential in our constitutional and institutional development.”

Restraint isn’t very exciting. That’s sort of the point. And on any given day in Parliament, it might not seem to be much in evidence.

But it is also, quietly, one of the forces that holds a democracy and a country together. Restraint — self-imposed or forced on politicians by voters — is often what allows political systems to continue functioning.

Although Shugart said he hasn’t read it, his appeal to restraint will be familiar to readers of How Democracies Die, a brilliant and worrisome book released in 2018. Authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt celebrate the virtue of “forbearance … the idea that politicians should exercise restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives.”

“Without forbearance, checks and balances give way to deadlock and dysfunction,” say Levitsky and Ziblatt, both professors of political science at Harvard.

Speaking to his fellow senators, Shugart cited three examples of restraint.

Profiles in forbearance

He noted how then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau chose to negotiate constitutional reforms with the provinces and compromise to complete a deal — despite the fact that he had the legal power to proceed unilaterally.

“Colleagues, I have to ask if either of the main party leaders today would practise that restraint,” Shugart said.

Second, Shugart pointed to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s decision to repeal his government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to pass back-to-work legislation — a reversal motivated by a ferocious public and political outcry.

Lastly, Shugart encouraged his colleagues in the upper chamber to resist (or continue resisting) any urge they might have to block legislation sent to them by the House of Commons.

The newly independent Senate has mostly disciplined itself to date. While it is now amending legislation more often than it used to, it has not yet refused to pass legislation or insisted that the House bow to its demands for changes.

How it might interact with a different government remains an open question. But Sen. Peter Harder made a similar argument in 2018 when he suggested the Senate should be very reluctant to stand in the way of legislation passed by the House — in part because someday, in the face of truly egregious and anti-democratic legislation, an independent and respected Senate might be a valuable safeguard.

Shugart’s comments about the Senate attracted the most attention this week, but the value of restraint extends far beyond the upper chamber.

Levitsky and Ziblatt were focused on the American political system — a system that is, by its design, much more susceptible to deadlock and dysfunction. But no system is impervious to institutional excess.

A government — especially one with a majority in the House — could go to extreme lengths without actually breaking any laws. It could use closure to ram legislation through the House with a modicum of debate, or prorogue Parliament for long periods of time. It could pass unconstitutional laws and then use the notwithstanding clause to override the courts.

A determined opposition — particularly when the governing party doesn’t have a majority — can also do a lot to slow down or block a government’s agenda. And one party or government’s drastic measures can ultimately lead another one to follow suit, or even up the ante.

But Shugart also has in mind questions of public policy and the agendas that governments implement.

“I’m not saying that governments should just be pablum and that they should not act on principle. Far, far from it,” Shugart said in an interview this week after his speech.

He suggested that governments might ask themselves a question before acting: “Will this be consensus-building in this country or is it going to deepen division?” 

Restraint goes hand in hand with tolerance

In theory, public opinion should limit what politicians are willing to do (or able to get away with). Ford’s retreat on the notwithstanding clause is a good example of that — especially if the backlash causes Ford, or other premiers, to hesitate before going so far in the future.

But the American experience suggests that partisanship and polarization can make a sufficient number of voters willing to accept almost anything.

Levitsky and Ziblatt link forbearance with “mutual toleration … the understanding that competing parties accept one another as legitimate rivals.” After surveying the partisan rhetoric that preceded and then dominated Barack Obama’s time as president, they concluded that “rising partisan intolerance thus led to an erosion of institutional forbearance.”

Shugart’s concerns also extend beyond institutional and policy matters and into the national discourse — and the risk that more and more voters will retreat into partisan echo chambers.

“We’ve got to find, again, how it is that we dialogue with each other,” he said.

In this way, restraint in word might be just as important as restraint in deed.

While the problems in Canadian politics may seem minor compared to what How Democracies Die describes, Canada is hardly immune to extreme rhetoric or to politicians (encouraged by the destructive incentives of social media) who seem to feel relatively unrestrained in what they can say about their opponents.

Shugart said he worries that a lack of real dialogue will diminish trust in governments and make it increasingly hard to act on the problems that confront the country. But if parties and their supporters begin to view their counterparts as enemies, it also becomes much harder to hold a democracy together — and much easier to justify anti-democratic or destructive behaviour.

“Honourable senators, whether it is what we say to or about each other, or how we learn again to listen and dialogue with others who don’t share our outlook, or how we guard the health of our institutions — we need to re-learn the virtue of restraint,” Shugart said Tuesday, wrapping up a speech that clocked in at a relatively restrained 10 minutes.

“Canada is a big, diverse country — geographically, socially, culturally, economically and philosophically. For each of us, for parties and for institutions, restraint may begin with acknowledging that our point of view — legitimate as it is — is not the only point of view.

“We have benefited from restraint in this country and, in these times, we need it again. May we all find it within ourselves to practise restraint.”

Politics in a democracy is often full of passionate intensity — and for very good reasons. But Shugart’s message is a vital one. In the midst of so much intensity, we need forbearance to hold things together.