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One of the paradoxes of Canada’s pantomime democracy — the meaninglessness of Parliament, the impotence of its members, the wildly unrepresentative process that puts them there — is the impossibility of fixing it.

The changes that are most needed, after all, require the consent of the people who stand to lose most from them. No parliamentary reform is possible without the consent of the prime minister. No party reform is possible without the consent of the party leaders. The same stifling control from the top that makes reform necessary also makes it unlikely.

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And yet in theory MPs could take back the power they have lost at any time. They just choose not to. This is the other paradox of reform: the people who stand to benefit most from it show the least interest in it. This came up repeatedly during debate on Michael Chong’s ill-fated Reform Act, which aimed (before it was watered down) to redress the imbalance of power between leaders and caucus members by legislative means. What is the point, critics scoffed, of asking MPs to do by Act of Parliament what they are plainly unwilling to do within their own caucuses: defy their leaders?