As every politician is only too fully aware, the Canadian public is in an unruly mood. The signs are everywhere, though mostly in B.C.: lawsuits for electoral fraud, "recall" campaigns aimed at unseating incumbents between elections, demands for referendums on everything from casinos to tax increases to constitutional amendments. Even a matter as trivial as the salaries paid to members of Parliament is, in the circumstances, a land-mine that most prudent politicians would prefer to avoid.

Some are inclined to view these populist eruptions as all of a piece, either to be decried as mindless mobbery or celebrated as a democratic awakening.

But this is too simple. Between the extremes of absolutism and anarchy, representative government is inevitably a question of balance. How much power we give our rulers, and how much accountability we should demand in return, will depend on the nature of the relationship beween the government and the governed.

It is a complex association. They tax us, rule us, even jail us, and yet they serve at our pleasure, and may be dismissed if they displease us. They feed us, build us schools and roads and hospitals, yet none of this munificence is bought but with our own money. They flatter us, lie to us, take us for boobs; we mock them, loathe them, distrust them instinctively. Yet what is more honoured than "democracy," or more revered than "leadership"?

How to describe this relationship? Churchill said that in a democracy the government is the servant of the people and not its master, which is a fair starting point. Indeed, in a quite literal sense, members of Parliament are our employees. But what kind of employees? And what kind of employer?

Think of the public as a kind of chief executive -- a busy, ill-read, slightly scatter-brained, occasionally cranky chief executive, not one for details, but whose horse sense on most matters can usually be trusted. In any event, he's not only the CEO: he owns the place. So right or wrong, he has the last word.

The people we elect may be viewed in this light as the executive's adviser or secretary, as indeed ministers of the crown were originally advisers to the king.

More than delegating to them the tiresome day-to-day business of governing, we rely on them: for advice, sometimes for comfort, even for amusement. Yet, valued employees that they are, we still wouldn't trust them with the silverware.

Thus understood, we may yet be able to reconcile representative government with the new demands for public accountability. Take recall, first. An employer of course must have the right to hire and fire, to reward good performance and punish the bad. But a wise employer also provides his employees with some measure of job security. This is necessary not only to attract and keep good help, but to get the best out of them while they are on the job.

You are unlikely to get good results from your workforce if they are forever looking over their shoulders in fear of being fired. They won't think independently, they won't act decisively, and they won't take risks. Better to give them the freedom, and the responsibility, that comes with the assurance that their jobs are safe -- at least until the five-year performance evaluation.

That doesn't mean that they should be beyond any public scrutiny between elections. Recall may be appropriate in cases of gross misconduct or dereliction of duty. Likewise, no employment contract can protect the employee who lies on his resume or fiddles the till. In cases of out-and-out fraud or misrepresentation, as with the government of B.C.'s deliberate misstatement of the province's financial position before the last election, it is right that the public should be able to seek redress from the courts, as would the executive who suspected his comptroller was keeping two sets of books.

What about referendums, then? Didn't we agree that it was a good idea to delegate responsibility? If we hire leaders to advise us, shouldn't we trust their judgment? Yes, most of the time. But nothing in that requires us to abdicate all decision-making authority. In matters of high import, like taxes or constitutions, the people should have the final say, if that's what they want. That's what chief executives do: make the big decisions. It's the job of elected leaders to bring before the public the issues that require their attention. But it's the public that should make the call.

Finally, what about MPs' pay? The point is well made that for what we ask them to do, members of Parliament are underpaid. One answer to this is to pay them more, as an independent commission has lately recommended. But the other is not to ask them to do so much. Maybe $106,000 is appropriate for the sort of full-time work that sitting in Parliament has become. But who says it has to be a full-time job?