Tom Clark, son of my schoolboy contemporary, Joe Clark, is the host of CTV's "Power Play". Part of that public affairs show is his asking parliamentarians to "tell me something I don't know". As with his predecessor, Mike Duffy, there is not much that Tom doesn't either know or suspect about the currently dysfunctional Parliament.

Why is it dysfunctional? Probably because our form of representative democracy

developed slowly as a challenge by (first) the great landowners and (then) by wealthy merchants to the powers, inherited or usurped, by the monarch. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown", the more so because the barons and men of wealth were resisting it. In due course democracy, once defined as mob rule, came to be understood as the wider "one person, one vote" distribution of political power. .

The Crown, its advisers and delegates - " the Executive" - still needs and always will need to be challenged but there is still a certain disconnect both between voters and those who "represent" them and between Members of Parliament and the few elected and unelected persons who wield real power.

Many of us are represented by backbenchers in the House of Commons (literally, representing 'communes' / communities) by people whose influence is either minimal or who are under the strict control of the Prime Minister's Office. Their partisan loyalty and propaganda imply that the nation's business is being well managed. Canadian governments, particularly the current one, are determined to give us as little information about it as possible.

Recent parliaments in Canada have been completely dominated by the Executive branch of the government. The ministers of the Crown are disciplined and / or silenced by the PMO. Oddly, it may be the unelected senators with their longer tenure who are best able to resist the presidential stance of those who, constitutionally, are merely prime ministers. The present PM successfully manoeuvred an inexperienced Governor General into proroguing Parliament in order to shield him from defeat in a confidence vote.

Since then Parliament has functioned as a partisan cock pit. All members of any party in the Commons should be able to speak freely either for their constituents or from conscience. The office of Governor General, rather than being a reward for party service or offered to a popular personality, should be a held by a constitutional expert with something of Her Majesty's own grasp of the responsibilities and limitations of the Crown in Parliament.

If such a person were not available in Canada at any given time he or she might be found elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Such an appointment of someone well versed in our British monarchical and parliamentary traditions would correct a constitutional aberration that has been evident since the 1926 clash between Governor General Viscount Byng and that earlier wily, politician, Prime Minister Mackenzie King.

The appointment of a vice-regent form another Commonwealth country would re-emphasize the value and importance of our world-wide connection with similar democracies and become a symbol of our being part of a post-national world.

"Tell me something I don't know", says Tom Clark. This space would like answers to the following:

1. How should the power of the PMO and its unelected moles be reduced, as the

2006 Gomery Commission recommended?

2. How can Canadians be persuaded to test for at least the life of two Parliaments

the effectiveness of proportional representation as a more democratic system ?

3. To put that another way, how can we get beyond the 'first past the post' method of electing MPs and the system that, effectively, leaves almost half of Canadians without an effective voice in Parliament by the party of their choice?,

4. If the Senate is to be reformed, could the province not be represented equally

by 10 senators each, chose for 10 year terms not by the PM but by the legislature of their province?

5. Should appointment to the office of Governor-General not require either

expertise in constitutional law or the consent of both Government and Official Opposition parties to the appointment of a veteran legislator?

6. Prince Charles and his consort will visit Canada next month. Both lack the charisma of many popularly elected officials.

Since, unlike him, she will play no constitutional role here or elsewhere and her reception in Canada will be more a matter of curiosity than of respect, had he considered coming by himself?

7. Since the so-called 'Glorious /Revolution' of 1688 established the right of Parliament to amend the order of accession to the Throne, should the parliaments of Commonwealth countries be consulted about the possibility of William V, rather than Charles III, succeeding Elizabeth II?

8. Ottawa is asking the Supreme Court whether or not it has the right to appoint a single national securities regulator to unify the present separate provincial and territorial jurisdictions.

Section 91 of the Constitutional Act gives the federal government authority to regulate trade and commerce, Section 92 states that the provinces regulate their internal industries except where regulations are declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the greater advantage of Canada as a whole or of two or more provinces within it. Except for the usual separatist blustering, do we really fear another federalprovincial crisis since Quebec objects to a national regulator?

9. Since the United States of America, now the most populous part of the anglophone world, will not much longer be the sole super power, is there a way in which it could, within the next 50 years, establish a new relationship with the Commonwealth?

In the global age, is the old-fashioned, independence, nationalism and jingoism of the U.S.A. not a problem?

I used to tell my students that there are no foolish questions. There are only foolish answers. The above queries are simply requests for expressions of opinion. Perhaps somebody will tell me something I don't know.