Jim Mason: Federal Institutions that Work for Our Times

It won’t come as news to say that Canada’s federal institutions aren’t working very well. But what to do about it? Jim Mason steps outside the box and thinks big to propose a federal government that works for Canadians once again. In this sweeping contribution to C2C’s Restoring Canada series, Mason goes back to the source – the British North America Act of 1867 – for a rock-bottom analysis of how it all began and what worked at the time. He then examines today’s situation in Ottawa and applies a systems analyst’s rigour to restore the things that originally worked while discarding 158 years of accumulated dysfunction to fashion a redesign focused on the key objectives for a modern-day constitutional state. Mason’s result is a refurbished Confederation with clearly demarcated legislative, executive and judicial branches offset by effective checks and balances, a strengthened Parliament, a new way of electing MPs, term limits for key officials, a Supreme Court justice from every province, and a notably constrained Prime Minister and Prime Minister’s Office.