Introduction
The scholarly consensus on cabinet government in Canada argues that from Prime Minister Trudeau’s first government (1968 to 1979, the 20th Ministry) onward, the powers of the prime minister have become more centralized relative to both those of cabinet and parliament. Fed largely by Donald Savoie’s magnum opus Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, the mythology of cabinet government in Canada also asserts that the Pearson government (the 19th Ministry, 1963 to 1968) was the last to practise the principle of cabinet government that the prime minister acted as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), and that from Prime Ministers Trudeau to Harper, cabinet government has suffered from an inexorable decline into irrelevancy. The scholarly consensus thus sanctifies Pearson as the last non-centralizing prime minister and friend of the classical model of cabinet government, and respectful of…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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