It's a Matter of Time

The most fundamental difference between the American and Canadian systems of government is not about kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers. It’s not about appointed judges and other figures versus elected ones.

It’s about Time: the understanding of time that determines how the government works.

The United States runs on clock and calendar time. Short of death, incapacitation, impeachment or resignation, there’s no doubt about when a new President takes office or a retiring one steps down. It’s spelled out to the minute in the US Constitution.

Terms for members of Congress and senators are likewise set out. Those of elected judges are too.

The Canadian system, and the British one it follows, run on an organic sense of time. Short of abdication, the Head of State takes office when her predecessor dies and stays in office for her own lifetime.

Members of Parliament (MP’s) hold office for a maximum of five years between elections. But elections can be held as little as a year, or even a few months, apart.

The actual timing of elections depends on a number of factors. If a governing party has a majority in Parliament, the its leader, the Prime Minister, gets to set the date, usually one that favors the re-election of the government.

If a government holds only a minority of seats in Parliament, then the opposition parties can force an election through a vote of non-confidence in the government. Naturally they will do this to favour their own chances.

Underlying both these options is Public Opinion which no party will deliberately defy. A PM with a majority can lose it if the public sees the calling of an election as opportunistic. Opposition parties that force an election the public doesn’t want may also lose seats and see the government returned in a stronger position.

Public opinion is more a tide than a timetable. At some point the people conclude it’s “time for a change” and a government has run its course. In Canada with a minority Parliament, the two can occur in quick succession. Public opinion changes, and the benefiting politicians capitalize on it by bringing about an election.

In a majority Parliament, or in the US system change can take longer. If a scandal breaks out soon after an election, there is usually little the public can do. People must wait until the next fixed date comes around in order to change the government. Meanwhile, the government will use this time to try to turn things around and minimize its losses.

The Greeks had two words for time. Fixed time by clock and calendar was chronos. Organic timing, expressed in the biblical phrase “in the fullness of time,” was kairos.

Although there are elements of both in both countries, the American congressional system is based on chronos while the Canadian is oriented more to kairos.

In adopting the 1887 Constitution, Americans froze the British system in a moment in time with an elected king, parliament and independent judiciary. And in freezing an evolving system in a written document, they became subject to the Tyranny of Time.

Canadians often cast envious glances at American fixed elections, believing this to be fairer than their own system where the politicians decided when to face the voters.

Periodically a government may even introduce a bill in Parliament to set election dates by the calendar. But since Parliament is an organic body based on kairos time, these efforts usually fail.

Americans, languishing under an unpopular government, may envy the Parliamentary system where governments can be thrown out as the need arises. The US Constitution provides for impeachment of individuals for wrongdoing, but not of a whole government.

Americans are fixed-time people. In replacing a hereditary king with an elected one, they needed units to mark the changes that once came about through the organic tides of life, death, youth and maturity. The King is dead: long live the King!