OTTAWA, Canada—Canada's Parliament is the black sheep of its commonwealth family, the rowdiest house of governance amongst its closest siblings and an embarrassment to the country, say some members of Parliament.
“Parliament is sick.”
That is the diagnosis of Dr. Keith Martin, Liberal MP from British Columbia who sat as a conservative MP before crossing the floor to join the Liberals.
He's not the first to come down hard on the behavior of MPs representing Canadians—and likely won't be the last. As it is now, Parliament's most popular hour, question period (QP), where opposing MPs level questions and insults at the governing party, looks like a schoolyard shouting match.
It's a level of decorum far below that of its parent Parliament in England, and an embarrassment to all Canadians, Martin says. “It desperately needs to be changed because if it doesn't, serious problems in our country will not be dealt with.”
He described a visit by a British parliamentarian to Canada who was appalled by what he saw.
The Hansard, the written record of parliamentary debates, captures the subtle insults and slippery answers common in QP, but it doesn't record the shouting, finger pointing, jeers or heckles that frequently erupt. Occasionally, some of those comments can elicit censure from the speaker, but it is rare.
Martin says ongoing decline in decorum dumbs down the level of debate and makes running for public office less appealing for Canada's brightest minds—the people who come up with the best ideas to address problems facing the country who are often ignored in Parliament now.
“If they are ignored, they will leave and not run and all you have is a group of people fighting with each other where politics trumps public policy.”
Martin might be one of the most outspoken on the topic, describing some MPs as “petulant pre-pubescent children,” but others have also raised the issue. One of the most informed on the issue is New Democratic Party MP Joe Comartin.
Comartin says QP has been particularly bad for about 20 or 30 years, far below that in England, Australia, and New Zealand, Canada’s closest political cousins.
Television helped shape up those parliaments, Comartin explains, because they added rules to curb the worst behavior of MPs. Unfortunately, despite a special committee that made similar recommendations here in the 1980s, nothing was changed in Canada.
“It was always bad, as it was in those other legislatures. But when they knew TV was coming in, they changed their rules so their populace wouldn't see them misbehaving, and it worked,” said Comartin.
In those parliaments, MPs actually seem to respect each other, he says. “The exchanges that go on there are one professional person to another.”
But Martin doesn't quite agree with his NDP colleague. He believes a large part of the problem has to do with the way the media focus on the clash of the day rather than the substantive matters that are the real work of Parliament.
He believes if the media focused more on the MPs proposing good ideas and ignored the attack dogs that grab headlines, such behavior would begin to fade away.
“[The Canadian] public is not being served well by Parliament and this spiral of negativity continues to descend,” said Martin.
Martin says MPs need to put more effort into finding ways to work with each other, coming up with good ideas to address the country's ills and less effort into attacking each other and finding ways to bring the other side down.
Without that, he says, debate will continue to spiral downward and fewer of Canada's brightest minds will be willing to enter public office. And without those bright minds and constructive debate, fewer and fewer Canadians will turn out to exercise their right to vote—a right Canadians have given their lives to defend.
“That is the big tragedy,” said Martin.
And with all that negativity, Martin says people with ideas don't get the attention they deserve—either from the media or their own party. Rather than rewarding the politicians with the good ideas, party leaders are often more inclined to reward those that tow the party line and lead the attack against their opposing politicians.
“We support and reward bad behavior,” he says.
