The Unbroken Machine: Canada's Democracy in Action by Dale Smith

Author:Dale Smith [Smith, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-03-04T07:00:00+00:00

The Decorum Distraction

Whenever anybody talks about things that need fixing in the House of Commons these days the conversation pretty much begins and ends with a single topic — decorum. What the public doesn’t seem to realize is that the debate about decorum or the lack thereof in the House is only a distraction from the real problems the Commons faces.

Everybody seems to believe that Question Period (QP) is the real and true expression of how the Commons functions on an ongoing basis, which is simply not true. There seems to be little appreciation that QP is not only political theatre but it’s also the occasion to let off some steam in what can otherwise be a crushingly dull day. This is part of the problem — pretty much all of the spark and spontaneity has gone from Canadian politics. If QP wasn’t situated in the middle of the day to liven things up a little, we might end up being concerned by the rash of narcolepsy that followed, and shortly after that, by the fact that our MPs are slowly being replaced by mindless robot drones who simply deliver speeches into the record and vote as instructed.

Political theatre is necessary for the proper functioning of democracy. If there was no drama, people would tune out entirely. But it needs to be recognized as such — for as much as Question Period serves as an opportunity in which the Opposition parties and government backbenchers get a daily chance at asking questions of the government in order to hold it to account (and the fact that government backbenchers have turned away from this role and are instead using their allotted questions to either congratulate the government or ask planted questions that will lead to a policy announcement is actually troubling), it also allows MPs to showcase their debating skills. Or it would, if they had any, which is another part of the problem. We can’t escape the fact that we do have an adversarial system, and that system exists for a reason. This isn’t a campfire where we all get to hold hands and sing songs. It requires a certain amount of cut and thrust if it’s to maintain the necessary adversarial functions, and QP is one of the best showcases of that.

“But what about the schoolchildren in the gallery?” is the constant plaintive wail from all the concerned people who seem to think MPs demonstrate worse behaviour than said children. Why not simply tell those same schoolchildren the truth — that this is theatre. It serves a function, and that, really, the rest of the day is dull but rather collegial. It’s a bit like gym class for MPs in that way, which may, in fact, be an analogy that might work to explain things better. It’s less than an hour out of every day in which they get to have a bit of fun. Should we really be begrudging that when nobody can be bothered to tune into the

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