After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a parliamentary delegation from one of the newly independent Baltic states visited Ottawa to observe Canada’s democratic institutions in action. As is common for such groups, they were ushered into Question Period, Parliament’s most extensively covered activity. Shocked at the spectacle, they cringed. Is this how political debate is conducted in a leading democratic state, a country to which many emerging democracies look in modelling their own institutions? But one member of the delegation, an actor, chuckled at what he saw. He had quickly realized that a theatrical performance, albeit amateurishly executed, was on display. Many Canadians see Question Period the same way.
A healthy measure of partisan combativeness is the essence of parliamentary debate, but what now characterizes Question Period often borders on what many foreigners would consider offensive to the standards of decency and modesty associated with Canadians. The pretense of Question Period is that it allows the opposition to hold the government accountable, to illuminate issues of public policy and public administration. The reality is one of ferocious fulminations, of members mindlessly jumping up to applaud every few syllabic utterances of their caucus colleagues. How has this happened, and how can it be tempered?
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Imagine if all politicians had to be by law connected to a lie detector during question period !
The rules used in debating societies competitions would apply in that questions would have to be addressed by real answers or at least deflected by using actual logic and or wit: We might still get B.S. but it would have to be clever B.S. and no shouting down allowed.
Just dreaming I guess since even the most logical truth based arguments seem to never happen or if they happen change the policy positions of either the Opposition or the Government: The last thing the debates do is find answers or consensus to actually solve problems.
“Imagine if all politicians had to be by law connected to a lie detector during question period!”
That will de facto happen when we get one TV station that has say a host like Ezra Levant interviewing politicians and then after the politician has sugar coated an issue Ezra says “roll clip” where the politician has said the opposite in QP … Sun TV will be the “lie detector”.
The problem isn’t so much QP as it is a lazy, incompetent MSM/PPG (particularly TV with the power of images) that is progressive and thus in bed with the agenda of progressive politicians.
As Glen Beck has shown, in his civics 101, progressivism dates back in the USA to President Woodrow Wilson and has reached a point where the authority of Washington has taken on a religious role of “faith hope and charity “with other peoples’ money. Look no further than Layton and the gun registry where he proposes to keep it for “free”. There will be no charges to gun owners he says; the government will cover the cost. Huh? Let’s get Lorne Gunter on Sun TV to interview Jack on how “free” works by asking “Jack, where will the funding of $106 million a year ultimately come from to cover the cost of the bureaucracy?”
We need to see Jack’s body language as he fumbles progressive Ponzi game answers to that.
I wonder if the coalition has realized that if they form the govt, they can’t ask questions anymore, just have to answer them. And as all three parties would be involved, that would just leave the conservatives to ask questions. And, as very few of them would be in cabinet, they might sit for a whole session and have to keep their mouth shut, just be trained seals. Would the conservatives get the questions that the ndp and bloc get to ask along with the lib question time.
Or, would QP be a much shorter and more civilized event.
Re #3: They would probably ” TRY ” to have their cake and eat it too in that they would give each part of the Coalition it’s proportional time in asking questions in question period just to limit the numbers of questions the Conservatives could ask !? Could be wrong it would depend on how the speaker interprets the rules.
This could backfire on them since a part of the Coalition might ask questions embarrassing the other part(s) due to internal rivalries or disagreements. In addition if they formed a united Coalition caucus wouldn’t they all know each other’s tactics and caucus secrets so that the information about strategy would be available to all if one part decided to stab the other parts of the Coalition in the back ?
They might initially agree to hog the question period question time , as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, and have an agreement to just ask soft ball questions that could be answered making the Coalition look good: Doubt it would work for long ” amiably ” with the Block being part of the Coalition. Or even if it’s just the Liberals and the NDP, could they cooperate for an extended period of time without some internal maneuvering eventually causing hard feelings due to rivalries.
Just speculating on possibilities. LOL