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"The King-Byng controversy of 1926 . . . is quite germane to the present constitutional crisis," Gerald Owen argued Friday in his Globe essay Peace, order and good government

"Like Prime Minister Stephen Harper's party today, Arthur Meighen's Conservatives then had more seats in the Commons than any other party.

"Most Canadians now expect the party with the largest number of MPs to form the government, and many think that this is required by democracy . . .

"But more is not necessarily most, or more than half, and a mere plurality can be quite ineffectual, as Mr. Harper may or may not find on Jan. 26, 2009.

"In 1926, Lord Byng, the Governor-General, made a mistaken judgment about the viability of a Meighen government, and W.L. Mackenzie King did very well out of expressing great outrage in the election that followed, winning a working Liberal majority, thanks to some Liberal-Progressives.

"Byng's error seems obvious in hindsight. Nonetheless, it is an advantage of constitutional conventions, as opposed to legal rules, that a governor-general has some leeway and discretion, with powers held in reserve, to assess who will really be able to get things through Parliament."

It's an interesting argument. That's why we at globeandmail.com were pleased that Mr. Owen joined us online to take your questions on his essay and on the political crisis that ended Thursday with Governor-General Michaelle Jean's controversial approval of Mr. Harper's request to prorogue Parliament to allow his Conservative government to avoid defeat in the Commons on a non-confidence motion that could have led to another election or could have brought a Liberal-NDP coalition, with Bloc support, to take power.

Your questions and Mr. Owen's answers appear at the bottom of this page.

Gerald Owen is a member of The Globe's editorial board. He has been the editor of The Idler and Books in Canada magazines, a reporter for The Lawyers Weekly and a columnist for The National Post.

Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Brodie Fenlon, globeandmail.com: Thanks for joining us Mr. Owen.

Ken DeLuca, Arnprior, Ont.: I believe the Governor-General got it right — both in the letter and spirit of the law, as well as in her role in our parliamentary democracy. Technically, Stephen Harper still enjoyed the confidence of the House and was, therefore, her trusted and legitimate adviser for the moment. True, Harper did an end-run around Parliament, but he was just barely within the rules . . . My question: Must the GG always ignore the political impact of her decision and rely only on the question of how to get Parliament functioning democratically? The two issues seem to be intertwined when the PM comes so close to undemocratic actions and acts as if he had over-reaching presidential powers or even royal supremacy. He is the head of government by leave of Parliament only. He is not the head of state. God Save the Queen!

Gerald Owen: Yes, the two issues are intertwined, because the Governor-General has to assess the political impact in the sense of figuring out whether a new government will have any staying power. Of course, she or he has to be non-partisan — which maybe was easier before we had Canadian governors-general.

Garth West: Gerald, I'd be interested to hear your observations about [Sir John A.] Macdonald's use of the royal prerogative to dodge a bullet from the Pacific scandal in 1873. Has it been brought up before? I certainly haven't seen it. And yet, that incident — which allowed the Prime Minister to avoid the wrath of his own party members who had deserted to the opposition for an extended period -- is far more germane as a precedent for what happened last week than King-Byng. He eventually had to face the music and [Liberal Alexander] Mackenzie won the election that fall.

Gerald Owen: The Pacific Scandal precedent is encouraging. Lord Dufferin agonized, for lack of precedents, and felt he was getting no help from Britain. He gave Macdonald the benefit of the doubt, but the delay didn't skew the result. In those days, though, party memberships was much more fluid, and a lot of MPs felt fairly independent, even when it wasn't a question of crossing the floor. But maybe the delay won't skew things unfairly, this time either.

Roger Cooper: Interesting and informative article. Several others in the last week have suggested that the prevailing convention is that Governor-General acts affirmatively on the Prime Minister's request, making her a surrogate of the governing party — a rubber stamp in effect. Given the imperatives of peace, order and good government, ought not the Governor General be a seasoned and impartial arbiter, who is elected rather than appointed?

Gerald Owen: Seasoned is good, and maybe it would have been better if Michaelle Jean had had more experience of politics and government. But I don't see how the Governor-General could be both impartial and elected. To be elected, especially by the whole country, you need an organization, and that would mean a party and a platform, and all that -- perhaps debates. It is hard to see to see how one could exclude people with some party affiliation, or who would not be shadowy surrogates for parties, or at least for ideologies.

The G-G is not always a rubber stamp. The "advice" of a prime minister who has clearly lost adequate support in the Commons is not binding on the governor-general.

Rick Heuft, Vancouver: Gerald, this is a very informative and interesting article. One question: What, if anything, could the Senate have done to help the Governor-General make her decision? The Senate is supposed to provide sober second thought for government activities and this week's activities really needed a sober second thought. I am very disappointed that the Senate seemed to totally ignore the situation. Would the British House of Lords have had a say in the proroguing of their Parliament?

Gerald Owen: That's an interesting idea about the Senate. But, no, the House of Lords couldn't contribute, because the conversations between the monarch and the prime minister are strictly confidential, so the Queen could not really pose questions to the Lords. And most of the lords have party affiliation, though more of them are independent than in our Senate. We should try to encourage our government, as long as senators are still appointed, to appoint some genuine independents.

Peter King, Beijing: An excellent article, which pinpoints the rather interesting dilemma the government faces. While prorogued, no new supply can be voted. So how does the government propose to deal with the economic crisis? Other governments have moved to provide economic packages, but Mr. Harper has basically hamstrung Canada's ability to provide support until the end of January. Interesting. Christmas will be enjoyed by Mr. Harper and his colleagues but others will have to wait for a month...and I wonder whether that will be soon enough?

Gerald Owen: There's some leeway to spend money within amounts already authorized by the Commons. But yes, the government is hamstrung as far as doing anything big. The prorogation may not make a difference, because before things blew up, Harper and Flaherty had explicitly decided not to do anything major about the economy until a new budget in late January.

Michael: Gerald, you wrote: "Byng's error seems obvious in hindsight." Was it his job to determine whether Meighen actually would command the confidence of the House? Or rather, was his job to determine and respect Meighen's reasonable potential for being able to command the confidence of the House?

Gerald Owen: : "Reasonable potential" is itself quite a reasonable formulation of what Byng should have assessed. He could have invited the Progressives to give some indication of whether they would give Meighen a real chance, after they'd voted down Mackenzie King, but on the ideological spectrum the Progressives were closer to the Liberals, who did indeed proceed to "swallow" most of them, except for a "ginger group" which became the CCF, later the NDP.

JMFT S: Why would it take almost three hours for Mr. Harper to get his answer from the Governor-General? Did she take too much time or not enough to consider his request to prorogue Parliament? What could they have been talking about?

Gerald Owen: It seems like about the right amount of time. She needed to talk to Harper, ask him why he needed the delay, how it would affect the country to interrupt the session (especially in a time of economic crisis), whether he thought he could really manage to continue governing in January, and so on. Being not hugely experienced in politics, she needed to consult her staff, some of whom are experts in these matters, about what he had said, and then get back to him. She could fairly have slept on it, and got back to him the next day.

R.R.: Has there been a coalition before? Are they good or bad for Canada?

Gerald Owen: We haven't had a formal coalition -- in federal politics -- since the First World War, though in times of looser party structure sometimes MPs had odd labels of their own even when they were really Liberals or Conservatives. As recently as Pearson, I think there was one cabinet minister who classified himself as "Liberal-Labour."

The First World War coalition was an expression of national unity in that unusual circumstance.

Coalitions, when they grow into a habit, tend to breed a lot of internal bickering, games of musical chairs, in which cabinet shuffles are brought about when one coalition partner threatens to leave. If we had proportional representation, coalitions would be almost inevitable.

Marc Harris, U.S.A.: Very nice article. But if prorogation is the real issue -- and I think there's a strong case for that -- I'd suggest that the real parallel is with the royal governors of 1768-75 in the American colonies. Under instructions from the Secretaries of State, I believe Hillsborough at first, they refused to allow provincial legislatures to talk about imperial issues, and the tool they used was prorogation. Legislatures were sent home as soon as they took up forbidden issues. Thus, there is precedent in the empire and commonwealth of pre-emptive prorogation of legislative bodies for political purposes. The differences here appear to be two-fold. First, that this one happened at the behest of the body's leader, rather than in the teeth of the leadership's actions and intentions. Second is that the GG in this case, most analogous to those Secretaries of State, shows little concern for any of the issues you discuss. It's also true that those precedents date from long before the era of responsible government, and their ultimate lack of success may have discredited the idea of pre-emptive proroguing even in colonies. It's true too that the prorogations were considered shameful and provocative by provincial public opinion. It will be interesting to see where Canadian opinion stands on such blatantly and obviously partisan manipulation of a parliament.

Gerald Owen: Thank you, I didn't know about those proto-American prorogations. I think we had one such case in Lower Canada (now Quebec, roughly) in the 1830s, in comparable circumstances; that didn't end well either.

I don't think it's quite fair to the Governor-General to say she showed little concern for the issues I discussed. She must have drawn on advice from staff that is a distillation of long practice and precedent, whether or not she had a strong grasp of the history or not. She evidently made Mr. Harper sweat a little, not just saying yes and offering him a cup of coffee.

So far, Canadian opinion seems relieved not to be having vote all over again.

Alex Kosyak: So, does it seem that this way of thinking, "I owe an account of my actions to none but God alone," is a kind of leftover from the era of a real monarchy -- a stale leftover that is going to haunt us for years to come, personalized by our Governor-General? Fortunately, they (Governors-General) do not have much influence in politics these days. Unfortunately, they still seem to have enough of it to shift the balance of power at some specific moments in history, one of which we were witnessing last week . . . She might be right, or she might be wrong in her decision. The future will tell. But what worries me is the Governor General's accountability. A politician without one seems an odd artefact of the time long gone. And we should remember that real democracy is not only about how we elect our leaders. It also (and maybe more importantly) is about how we can dismiss them. [Care to respond?]

Gerald Owen: I don't think anyone in all this is saying he or she is accountable to God alone. It's true that a rogue Governor-General would provoke a revolution -- but then the Queen could revoke the G-G's authority in that circumstance. If the Queen and the G-G conspired together, then we'd need a revolution -- but maybe we could conveniently declare, as the British did in 1688, that they had implicitly abdicated because they had abandoned their responsibilities!

Christopher Byrne from Antigonish, NS writes: Gerald, An intriguing essay, as always. I was struck by your comment that some conflicts are too important to be regulated by the courts, and that there is a circular quality to constitutional conventions: they are followed now because they have been followed in the past. Apart from their utility in keeping the peace and preventing anarchy, though, aren't such conventions also based on certain intuitive beliefs about fairness? People seem to be prepared to accept the existing balance of power only if there is a certain justice to it. In all of the historical precedents you cited, the crisis seems to have come when existing conventions were seen to be fundamentally unfair. Aren't debates about constitutional conventions, then, really debates about what would be just under the present circumstances, and not so much about what was done in the past? This seems to me, at any rate, to be the case with our current debate.

Gerald Owen: That's a very good point about fairness, and the sense of fairness. In fact, I meant to make it, and had it in my rough drafts, but somehow it got lost in the (non-cabinet) shuffle.

Well, not quite the same point, because I don't think "under the present circumstances" is enough, since consensus about fairness can't be formed on the spot, without development, and trial and error, and give and take.

If I had had more space, I would have dissented in part from A.V. Dicey, who denied the analogy between constitutional conventions and international law, which I accept; Dicey said that the idea that the sense of fairness, or moral power, is a factor is an idea held only by dreamers. But the agreed-upon sense of fairness is a good practical basis, much of the time.

Brodie Fenlon, globeandmail.com: We've run out of time. Thank you again Mr. Owen, and thanks to Globe readers for your contributions. You can continue the discussion here through out comment function.