"Most of my issues are around the quality of debate and the research and the fact that you can pretty well get up in the house of assembly and say whatever it is you like," she said. "You don't have to be concerned with truth."
Put more bluntly, she was saying that the province's elected members were often full of what might be charitably called hooey. Bunkum and horsefeathers.
It's not an uncommon sentiment among members of the public, and if the statement was from one of those ubiquitous morning-radio bits where they stick a microphone in front of someone who is filling their gas tank to measure "the public's" opinion, it would have been unremarkable.
But this was the Premier speaking. Kathy Dunderdale, the newly elected Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. She was defending a decision to keep the legislative assembly closed for what could be months - it might not sit again until spring. Spring! Her explanation, she told the CBC, is that important work can be done outside the legislature.
"I don't find it a place for a very healthy, open, constructive debate to start with," she said.
Ms.Dunderdale's statements bring two thoughts to mind. One, that they are a startling way for a sitting premier to describe the legislative assembly, the single most important institution in a functioning democracy, the embodiment of the will of the people.
Two, she has a point.
Whether in St. John's or Victoria, Toronto or Ottawa, it is true that much of what goes on on the floor of our various legislatures is little more than staged theatre. Important decisions are made, and important debates are had, but in the day-to-day goings-on of the assemblies - reflected to the public through Question Periods - one can, as Ms. Dunderdale noted, "pretty well get up in the house of assembly and say whatever it is you like."
It doesn't lead to a fruitful exchange of views. More often than not, QPs are an exercise in point-scoring and shottaking, on all sides. Standard question from opposition member to government member: "When will you finally admit that you are terrible?" Standard response: "This government is super-awesome and I feel sad for you that you had to lower yourself to such a baseless accusation."
The public appears to have cottoned on to the pointlessness of it all. A survey conducted for the Public Policy Forum last year found that about two-thirds of Canadians thought Question Period - the one in Ottawa - is "a forum for politicians to grandstand for the media and try to score cheap short-term political points." More than half of respondents said they "think less of our system of government when they see scenes from Question Period" and only 35% said they thought Question Period "accomplishes something."
Given all that, it's not all that surprising that Ms. Dunderdale would be fine with shuttering her provincial version of it for months. Or that Alison Redford, the premier-elect in Alberta, would decide not to bring the Alberta legislature back until February, a nine-month gap since its last sitting. Ms. Redford reversed course after a public outcry, but as my colleague Kevin Libin reported last week, there were concerns from inside her team that recalling the Legislature would mean a rough ride in Question Period. Reasonable people might conclude that it would be foolish to rage against Ms. Redford in QP since she had only just won the PC party leadership in a surprise victory and had not yet had time to accomplish anything worth criticzing, but Question Period is not a forum for reasonable people. It would only serve to have her "raked over the coals" for an hour a day by opposition members, one insider noted.
But there's a clear downside to squeezing sitting days out of legislative calendars, too.
"This has been an undercurrent weaving itself through the provinces, and largely out of the public eye, for some time," says Keith Martin, the 17-year MP who decided against seeking re-election last spring. "But there's a dangerous element to the undercurrent, too, in that it removes the checks and balances that are the only way the public has to hold governments accountable."
In Dr. Martin's home province of British Columbia, the legislature sat only 46 days in 2010. In Alberta, 50. In Newfoundland and Labrador, 51. (The federal parliament sat for 119 days in 2010.)
Dr. Martin, now a consultant, says that politicians and the public can easily become comfortable with the idea of legislatures not sitting since they have a "veneer of efficiency." Certainly that was part of Ms. Dunderdale's argument: we can get more work done outside the assembly.
But at what cost? "It eviscerates our democratic principles," says Dr. Martin.
The curious thing about the disdain for Question Period is that the public still very much wants its politicians to be working. Many a pollster has argued that the turning point in last spring's federal election came when Jack Layton dropped the leaders debate's only unqualified zinger on Michael Ignatieff, pointing out that he had the worst attendance record among any of the party leaders at House of Commons votes: "You know, most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion," Mr. Layton said. It was a good sound bite, although a sophistic one: Mr. Ignatieff no doubt had tasks that kept him away from casting votes on matters whose results were almost always pre-ordained anyway. Still, the election turned for him, and not in a good way, from about the point at which the "he-doesn't-show-up" broadside was levelled.
So, then: We want politcians to work, but the thing through which we most often see them working is deeply flawed. Even the politicians think so.
There were signs, back in the spring, that change was on the way: a motion brought forward by backbench Tory MP Michael Chong to reform Question Period had passed through a parliamentary committee and public hearings were to be held to consider his proposals, which included giving the speaker more power to discipline miscreant MPs and diluting the influence that party leadership had over the process. But the Chong plan died when the federal election was called, and in the new session he is 123rd on the list of MPs with private-member bills or motions they would like to table (the order is decided by lottery). It could take years for his number to be up, unless someone is willing to swap.
"I think these changes need to be brought to Question Period, and I'm encouraging other members and the government to think about bringing them forward," Mr. Chong told Postmedia News last week.
Dr. Martin says structual changes would help, but "the parties themselves have to grow up. They have to put the public good ahead of their own political fortunes."
"I hope we can show a more mature and adult approach to the way politics is played."
Change, it is clear, is needed, whether it comes from new rules or simply from politicians deciding to better respect the process. Improvement is a must. Because if newly minted premiers can't see the value of a sitting legislature, then the problem can't get much worse.
Origin
Source: National Post
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