With increasing frequency in the past very few years, matters and issues of governance have arisen in Canada that boil down to the question of whether Parliament is supreme.

We've had examples of prime ministers and other ministers of the Crown refusing to comply with explicit orders of the House of Commons, and failing to enact, bring into force or otherwise give effect to legislation passed by Parliament.

This is a story as old as the mother of all Parliaments: the power struggle that has evolved over centuries between elected legislators and ministers of the Crown. The long-term trend has been the ascendancy of the representatives of the people, sitting in Parliament, and the decline of absolute monarchical or ministerial authority. Today, according to the text and convention of our Constitution, Parliament's authority over the Crown -read "the government" -is effectively supreme. But in practice this supremacy is functus officio with MPs cowering in the face of brazen governments that dismiss parliamentarians, threaten elections and otherwise browbeat MPs, including members of their own parties, into swallowing their legislative agenda whole.

By the mid-19th century, responsible government came to the British colonies in our part of the world. When Canada was formed, responsible government was part of the bargain. That concept is the lifeblood of our democracy. Once established, it meant that the Crown's ministers could no longer rule by fiat as they once did. They are subordinate to the elected representatives of the people, and they hold office only with the Commons' consent. In fact, in Canada it is a fallacy to say that a government is elected. Canadian governments are appointed by Governors General, who make an evaluation of which party leader can be expected to secure the most votes in the Commons.

Ultimately, the Commons has the undoubted power to remove a government at will. That is the essence of responsible government, and without it we would revert to virtual absolute monarchy, with a prime minister, instead of a monarch, wielding unchecked power. We're getting there.

In a democracy based on responsible government, it is astonishing to hear a government claim, as some governments have, "executive privilege" (a U.S. concept with no place in our Parliament) and immunity from the authority of the House of Commons. It is incredible to hear them say that parliamentarians should not be trusted with "sensitive" documents. It is as though the prime minister has forgotten that Parliament is a higher authority than the ministers of the Crown.

As one microcosmic example, Canada is the only member of the NATO community in which there is no form of parliamentary oversight of security intelligence operations.

Regrettably, it is not only governments that have forgotten the correct order of things. Successive prime ministers have been able to get away with this kind of behaviour largely because the individuals who sit in the House of Commons have collectively forgotten the fundamentals of the Constitution and the proper role of the House of Commons in the grand scheme of things.

The Senate has missed that mark too, at times, but the Senate can't (so long as it is unelected) bring down a government. That ultimate weapon rests in the hands of the elected members of the House of Commons.

This collective lack of gumption in the Commons is not new. For decades in Canada it has eroded the hard-won supremacy of Parliament over the Crown and its ministers. And the breakdown of the functioning of Parliament is not found only in the deteriorating relationship between the government and opposition benches; the problem is within the party caucuses, and particularly the government caucus, no matter which party is in power.

British prime ministers still wake up every morning with a healthy fear of their own MPs, and U.S. presidents pay careful attention to their party's Congress members. But Canadian prime ministers have come to treat their caucus members with disdain, or even worse, indifference. Prime ministers are able to ignore the fact that they derive their power from the Commons rather than the other way around; and the members of the Commons have either forgotten how to use their collective authority or have lost the will to wield it.

But we should not make the mistake of believing that what has come to pass has been the result only of the subtle Machiavellian machinations of successive prime ministers.

Blame accrues in equal measure to parliamentarians in both Houses who lack the motivation, the will, and ultimately the determination to assert their authority; to resist the creeping concentration of power in the hands of prime ministers; and to restore balance to the system. The whole thrust of Magna Carta was, in essence, "You, Crown, and your ministers, have to ask us permission to levy taxes, and you have to persuade us to support your budgetary plan before you are allowed to spend them." If they could witness modern Canadian parliamentarians in action, the guys at Runnymede would be turning in their armour. Charles I would be clapping his hands.

So long as parliamentarians remain inert, so long as they allow prime ministers and other ministers of the Crown to treat them like doormats, the trend will continue toward an ever more-powerful inner circle, immune to parliamentary authority.

Whatever tensions there are between the Crown's ministers and Parliament are usually characterized as legal questions. Admittedly, they can have legal dimensions, but more importantly, these are political questions. When governments refuse, as they sometimes have, to comply with the will of the majority of the House of Commons, there is a question about what kind of democracy we have.

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