MuchBudget: a vote or a video?

“By Levying Money for and to the Use of the Crowne by pretence of Prerogative for other time and in other manner than the same was granted by Parlyament . . . utterly and directly contrary to the known Lawes and Statutes and Freedome of this Realme.”

— From the declaration of the counts against James II in The Bill of Rights, 1688.

Ontario Premier Ernie Eves and three lawyers, two of whom Eves (and nobody else) describes as “renowned constitutional experts,” point out that it wasn’t truly illegal to present the provincial budget in front of the cameras rather than in front of the legislature. “Everything will be exactly the same as it’s always been, except for one thing — the location of the budget speech itself.”

Well, yes: there’s no law against giving budget speeches wherever you like. But then nobody who is protesting against the government’s unorthodox launch of the budget is proposing to throw Eves or Finance Minister Janet Ecker in jail over their cable-television show, or write them a ticket for budgeting without due care and attention. We just wish a government would act like a government and present budgets in the legislature, the way real governments do.

Let’s review a few of the rules, the very basic ones some corporate lawyers and renowned constitutional experts are not fully conversant with. There are three events that define a session of parliament: the speech from the throne, the budget, and the appropriation of supply. In the first, the government sets out its legislative program for the year. In the second, it tells parliament how it will raise the money to run the government. In the third, it seeks parliament’s consent to spend the money it has raised.

All three of those events are inescapably questions of confidence. It has always been the duty of the Opposition to move a vote of want of confidence in the government after the throne speech, and any government that was defeated on either the general budget motion or the final supply vote would have no alternative but to resign.

But what is more, the Speech, the budget, and supply are the only government motions that must always be considered confidence issues. A government defeated on other questions, including the details of money measures, has always been entitled to accept the defeat and not proceed with that part of its program. But a government defeated on the budget must have lost the confidence of the house.

So budgets are, and have always been, presented to the people’s elected representatives. They are the ones entitled to vote on the budget, and they are the ones entitled to hear it and debate it as soon as it is made public. It is dishonest to pretend, as the government has, that putting a budget speech on cable television puts it directly before the people. The people, until election day, cannot knock a budget back; only their parliament can.

It has been said in defence (in defence!) of Ecker and Eves’ video production that a budget is not a budget until it is presented to, and passed by, the legislature. Eves doesn’t apparently think so, saying, “it is a real budget, . . . a more real budget than any I introduced or that have been introduced in the history of the province.” Fine, then: bring it forward before people who have the power to vote it down, rather than before a selected studio audience. (Let’s leave aside the less-real qualities of previous budgets; we note that the money those budgets raised was real enough.)

The government has tried to paint this as an abstruse distinction, of interest only to academics, historians, and the occasional misguided speaker of the house. We had all better hope it’s not; rules hedge around governments so that their power is regulated by the people’s representatives. That goes for all the rules, not just the ones Eves finds useful. Holding the legislature in contempt is the privilege of the voter, not the premier.

And perhaps the premier, and Ontario voters, ought to keep in mind the Bill of Rights (which is the statute law of Canada):

“That levying Money for or to the Use of the Crowne by pretence of Prerogative without Grant of Parlyament for longer time or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted is Illegall.”