This chapter is concerned with the constitutional implications of populism for Canadian parliamentary democracy. It begins with working definitions of two crucial concepts – “populism” and “the constitution.” It then offers an account of how contemporary Canadian populism has attempted to reshape the constitution and identifies the possible effects of populism on legislative powers, processes, functions, and actors; on relations between citizens and their elected representatives; and on relations amongst the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. A brief conclusion explores the possible long-term constitutional significance of these populist initiatives.

POPULISM AND THE CONSTITUTION: WORKING DEFINITIONS

Neither “populism” nor “the constitution” is a term of art; they are words whose meanings shift over time and across space. “Populism” in contemporary America is quite different from Australian or Austrian populism, but also from its Canadian cousin, though populists and populisms have often wandered back and forth across the 49th parallel. Likewise “constitution,” a term whose technical and vernacular meanings have evolved as they migrated across the Atlantic and from Canada's colonial period to the present.

Populism

As a recent study of populism notes, the term “has an essential impalpability, an awkward conceptual slipperiness.” However, like the other “p-word” – pornography – even if we cannot define populism, we can usually recognize it when we see it. And we have been seeing it for much of our history – arguably as far back as the 1837 uprisings in Upper and Lower Canada and the Riel rebellion of 1885.