Joseph Maingot in Iqaluit in 2012. In 1956-57, he was hired by the RCMP as the first postmaster of Iqaluit, then Frobisher Bay, working in a shed attached to the detachment.Samantha Dawson/Nunatsiaq News
The often-misunderstood concept of parliamentary privilege goes far beyond free postage, fancy restaurants and the airline tickets members of Parliament receive. What started as a measure to protect parliamentarians from arrest (or worse) by angry British monarchs became a complex matrix of laws, immunities, powers and freedoms that allow MPs and senators to safely conduct their legislative functions without fear or interference.
J.P. Joseph (Joe) Maingot mastered that matrix when he got the top legal job in the Canadian House of Commons and wrote Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, a book that became the definitive, much-cited bible on privilege and practice in Canada, Britain and other Commonwealth countries, and established his international reputation.
As an assessment in the Canadian Parliamentary Review put it, the book would not only be headed for the libraries of members of Parliament and other legislators but “it also would be an invaluable tool in the offices of lawyers contemplating lawsuits against members.”
Mr. Maingot, former law clerk and parliamentary counsel for the House of Commons, died in Ottawa on Oct. 23 of complications after surgery required to treat a leg fractured in a fall at his home. He was 92.
John Patrick Joseph Maingot was born in Ottawa April 9, 1931, to Albert Joseph Maingot, a Trinidadian solicitor who had fought with the Canadian Army in the First World War and then settled in Canada, and the former Dorothy Glynn Gallagher (of Irish heritage). Growing up in Ottawa, Joe went through school and university with a record of academic achievement and athletic vigour, eventually acquiring football-star status with the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees.
He moved on to Osgoode Hall Law School, financing his legal studies with interesting jobs such as a stint with Frontier College as a labourer-teacher at an asbestos mine in Cassiar, B.C., working in the mine during the day and teaching fellow miners in the evening. In 1956-57 he was hired by the RCMP as the first postmaster of Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit), working in a shed attached to the detachment.
Upon graduation, he opened a law practice in Fort Erie but soon sought bigger challenges in an Ottawa law firm with a vigorous litigation practice.
Mr. Maingot wrote Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, a book that became the definitive, much-cited bible on privilege and practice in Canada, Britain and other Commonwealth countries, and established his international reputation.courtesy of the Maingot family
His move to Parliament Hill, first as an assistant law clerk in 1967, came about, according to an Ottawa Citizen story, because federal legal officials had been impressed with his appearances in court, including the Supreme Court. Four years later, he was promoted to the senior legal position in the Commons which he filled with a sometimes eccentric flair and a comprehensive understanding of parliamentary law.
The law clerk and parliamentary counsel is one of the senior officers who help the Speaker run the federal legislative machinery while respecting and defending parliamentary privilege. Law clerks seldom go to court, more occupied with interpreting the content and legality of legislative proposals, advising the procedural clerks and Speaker, assisting MPs on private bills and other motions.
With engaging charm, Mr. Maingot developed friendships with MPs of all political stripes and all levels, from prime minister to newly elected backbencher, and often shared his expertise (and hospitality) with members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
There is no doubt that over his 11 years as law clerk, he came to love his parliamentary job as an outlet for public service and for the challenge of both the principles and the practice of parliamentary privilege, as well as the quality of draft legislation and parliamentary procedure.
But while parliamentary privilege may be effective in protecting MPs and legislative institutions, it does not necessarily protect the officials who work in them from the vagaries of politics or from power struggles in the system that runs Parliament.
There was a particularly tempestuous atmosphere in the Commons in the spring of 1982 in what became known as the crisis of the bells and, according to a column in the Ottawa Citizen by Frank Howard, Mr. Maingot became a victim of it. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had been ramming omnibus bills through the Commons and when it came to Bill C-94, an energy package, the Opposition Conservatives balked, boycotting the House while the division bells which call MPs to vote were allowed to ring for 15 days.
Speaker Jeanne Sauvé refused to intervene. It is still a mystery what advice she received from Mr. Maingot and her other senior officials, or what measures the officials should have taken, but Mr. Maingot was dispatched to the Law Reform Commission shortly afterward.
The Law Reform Commission, made up of judges, law professors and other experts played an important role assessing the efficacy of current laws and making recommendations to improve them. The commission was shut down by the Mulroney government in 1992, however, as part of a cost-cutting program and Mr. Maingot retired from the federal government. But he returned to the parliamentary legal world as an author and international consultant.
His expertise was already being used in England and around the Commonwealth. Through the International Parliamentarians Union in Geneva, he also advised on parliamentary proposals in Yemen and Kyrgyzstan and visited East Timor, helping prepare for its independence. In addition, he served as an election observer in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution.
He produced new editions of his earlier books and, along with his former researcher, David Dehler, he wrote Politicians Above the Law, A Case for the Abolition of Parliamentary Inviolability, in 2010.
It was an important entry into the political and legal debate about which produced better government and less corruption – the carefully defined and limited Canadian/British style of privilege, or the system in 70 per cent of the world’s countries in which constitutions protect members of their parliaments or national assemblies from all criminal processes while in office, known as parliamentary inviolability.
Mr. Maingot, through the International Parliamentarians Union in Geneva, advised on parliamentary proposals in Yemen and Kyrgyzstan and visited East Timor, helping prepare for its independence.Supplied
Mr. Maingot remained active in Ottawa society until his death, loving nature, music and culture. Always involved in sports, he played hockey twice a week until he was 87 and was inducted into the Elder Skatesman Hall of Fame in the 80-plus category. He continued to downhill ski and cycle.
He was a trekker, walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage trail 800 kilometres across Spain in 1988. In 2007, he and sons Patrick and Peter walked across Northern France to Amiens on the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge to honour the service of his father, who fought and received a battlefield commission during bloody battles in France and Belgium.
Mr. Maingot leaves his wife of 25 years, Simone Couture Maingot (née Hickey); his sons Patrick and Peter; daughter, Albani; granddaughter, Isabelle Mallory-Maingot; siblings Paul, John, Mary; and his sons’ mother, Barbara Ann MacMahon Firestone. He also leaves his Couture stepchildren, Pauline, Guy, Hélène, Rose-Marie, Jacqueline and Monique and their families. He was predeceased by his son Michael Joseph; his siblings Margaret, Elizabeth, Dorothy, Barbara and Philip; and Francine Normandine, the mother of his daughter.
Mr. Maingot’s most important contribution to parliamentary government remains the research and writing that produced Parliamentary Privilege and his influence lives on – in House of Commons debates where he is often quoted (as recently as in the brouhaha over Chinese interference in Canadian elections) and in the plethora of citations and footnotes found in the conclusions of inquiries, commissions and academic studies of parliamentary privilege, as well as in other parliamentary literature.