The tragedy of the (House of) Commons

This column is an opinion by Michael A. Johnston, a lawyer based in Ottawa. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

The Canadian flag on Parliament Hill was flown at half-mast for the longest period in our history last year, to symbolically honour the Indigenous children who suffered and died at residential schools. But the flag is up again, and it looks like business as usual. 

We can do more than just lower one symbol – we can change another symbol to better reflect our nation's political and cultural ancestry. 

In 1957, during the Suez crisis, the HMCS Magnificent arrived in the Port of Said, flying the same White Ensign as a ship of Britain's Royal Navy. The Egyptians, who reasonably mistook it for the British Navy, threatened to sink it. The ship hauled down its colours, and disaster was averted.

In 1965, Canada lowered the Red Ensign/Red Duster, and raised its then-new Maple Leaf flag. Veterans who had fought, and had friends die under the Red Ensign at Vimy Ridge, at Normandy, and elsewhere, were unhappy with the new symbol. It was a break from tradition – and from Great Britain. But those objections were overruled by the important need to visibly distinguish ourselves as a nation and an autonomous voice in the world, separate from England. 

Canada is yet again reckoning with our past, as it informs our current national identity, and brings some of our symbols, institutions, and historical figures into question. 

Canada's "House of Commons" can be one such point of political and cultural reckoning. 

A symbolic change

As an institution, it has a rare name. Canada is the only former British colony that still employs the term the "House of Commons" to describe its lower house. It is time for a symbolic change, one which reflects the country's three founding cultures: Indigenous Nations, the French, and the English. 

In England, the lower "House of Commons" juxtaposes with the upper "House of Lords." At its inception, "commons" connoted the chamber where representatives of the people were gathered, but that lower house was then subservient to both the monarch, and the nobility.

Canada does not have a House of Lords, nor any Lords, as none have been appointed since the Nickle resolution of 1919. (Conrad Black chose the British Queen over Canada when he renounced his Canadian citizenship to become a British Lord in 2001.) In fact, our lower house is elected and our upper house is appointed – at times by what appears to be mere political patronage. 

What Canada needs is a term that makes it clear the elected will of the people is not in any way subsidiary to the Senate, the Privy Council, or the executive. 

Finding the best name

We have many options. House of Representatives, the term used by the oldest Western democracy (the U.S.), is already employed by Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica, among others.

An Indigenous word could be employed as part of a real reconciliation process. After all, our country's name derives from the Huron-Iroquois word for settlement: kanata. Quebec derives its name from "kebec," the Algonquin word for a narrow passage in the river, and Ontario is derived from the Iroquois word "kanadario," which means sparkling water. 

Similarly, in Ireland, the lower house is called "Dáil Éireann," which means "assembly of Ireland" and is the principal chamber of the Oireachtas, a Gaelic word for a deliberative assembly of freemen. 

A discussion is warranted to find the best name to shift us beyond our colonial past and better reflect the unique cultural and political history of this land. 

We populate a land that had a sophisticated political culture prior to French and English colonization. The Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy had a bicameral legislature, and their constitution – the "Great Law of Peace" – influenced the U.S. Constitution. 

In such a country, the place where democratic principles are most at issue (notwithstanding executive fiats, cabinet confidences and party discipline), requires a name more befitting the place where our elected representatives conglomerate, and debate. The current title is a tragedy of the Commons.

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