Honouring a parliamentarian

Dan Gardner suggests a fitting tribute to Jack Layton would be the completion of a guiding document for our democracy.

There is a fitting way to honour such a man. Since the beginning of the year, the Public Policy Forum and the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights at the University of Toronto have been bringing constitutional experts together to discuss the production of a sort of pocket guide to Canadian parliamentary governance. That may sound like a trivial thing. It’s not. The Canadian system, inherited from Britain, is largely composed of unwritten rules. This project would put those rules on official paper for the first time.

It is essential that that happen.