We are not an awful people, but we have an awful politics. How’d that happen? Any chance we can make it better?
We are not an awful people, and we don’t elect unworthy representatives. This doesn’t get said often enough, but your members of Parliament are good people. They are decent men and women who upend quiet lives, endure the indignity of electoral campaigns, leave their loved ones at home and jet weekly to Ottawa. They bring big hearts and steady purpose. They want nothing better than to help their constituents.
Then they get here and bray like jackasses for an hour every day. They hurl vile calumnies, unleavened by wit, across the centre aisle of the Commons. They’re shocked when the other side does the same. In the galleries above, strong men and schoolchildren avert their gaze.
Recent highlights have included an afternoon spent debating whether Pierre Poilievre, the government’s utility infielder, was right to describe carbon taxation as a “tar baby.” On another day, opposition members called 22 times for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to be fired. Probably after, oh I don’t know, the 15th time they could have moved on. A few days before that, the Liberals got tired of baseless Conservative accusations that they’re planning to raise taxes, so the Liberals decided it was their turn to accuse the Conservatives of planning to raise taxes. Also without any basis in truth.
Nor is this daily wallow an accident. It is meticulously planned and rehearsed by hundreds of politicians and their staffers across the parliamentary precinct. They rise before dawn to pore over the headlines and plot the day’s stratagems. Opposition members start bidding at breakfast for a part in the show. Government members meet over lunch to rehearse their evasions and their outrage.
Question period isn’t the root of what ails our politics. But it is most certainly the hub, the swamp, the KICK ME HERE sign where everything we hate about our politics converges every day. The half-truths, the confected fury, the mayfly attention span, the ritual humiliation of the thoughtful or eccentric. And above all, the waste: of time, energy, hope.
So what say we fix it?
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Another view……
Dysfunctionl parliament
http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/579352
Mr. Wells may be correct about Question Period and the lack of civility and clarity in the questions and answers. However, the House of Commons is not a static institution and it has evolved (for better or worse) into today’s creature. This is now the norm regarding decorum. We could have the South Korean model, where the various parties empty seats and take part in a donnybrook. Verbal fisticuffs are less physically destructive and definitely entertaining. The best way to stop the spectacle, don’t broadcast Question Period. I doubt this will happen.
Every 2 weeks the fattest MP from each party should have to get in a wrestling ring for 20 minutes and have at it with the others on live tv and no referee. After a couple turns at this they might put all that hot air into something productive , like jogging instead of the yowling in question period every day.
Wells is wrong, Canadians *do* elect unworthy representatives during each and every election cycle – and they do so because they are more interested in toeing the party line than anything else.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find most partisans voting for a turnip if their party endorsed it and allowed it to run in an election for no other reason that it was the {insert party of choice} turnip.
Actually ya know, based on the power each of the party leaders enjoy within caucus Canadians might as well elect turnips… turnips wouldn’t need to be reminded that their job is really to sit down, shut up, and vote how and when the party leader tells them to.
Something has to happen. I watched QP again today and for the life of me I can’t figure out how many of these people hold their jobs.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
What’s gonna happen Jack? The rank and file party membership is gonna stand up a demand better? The MPs are gonna refuse to ask the questions, make the statements, or give the answers, that the party leader tells them to? The party leaders are gonna grow a conscience and straighten themselves out?
pft…. it’s not gonna happen.
The answer to your “for the life of me I can’t figure out how many of these people hold their jobs” question is pretty simple – because partisans keep supporting their party and the party system.
There’s one way to break the cycle but every time people like me suggest it we get told that our opinion doesn’t count because we refuse to lend them any credibility at the polls.
Maybe change the rules so that the only answers acceptable to questions are answers that do answer the questions instead of deflecting with “ non-answers ” ! ( Yes but then Parliament would be about actually debating issues and the way to score points would be by having better and more rational arguments based on the best facts and evidence one can find ! Good luck with that ).
Instead of a Speaker of the house we might need a debate master using the same rules that are used in debating society contests ?
One idea would be to connect every Politician to a lie detector 24/7 or at least when they are debating in Parliament where they are supposed by Parliamentary rules to be truthful. Isn’t it un-Parliamentary language for a member to say that another is lying ! The fiction in Parliament is that they never lie in the House: So they should have no objection then to all be connected to a lie detector or have some high tech lie detecting system or software in use during debates or speeches LOL .
O.K. most of this is mostly in jest but the fact that it isn’t realistic does mean that logic and honesty i.e. rational decision making have very little in common with the way humans make politics as winning an power are more important that the common good.
[b]Maybe if we had an effective MSM that didn’t encourage or collude with B.S. , dishonest or simply illogical arguments and an involved educated in logic population that took politics seriously ? Sad that we don’t have either ! [/b]