The incredibly dull House that Harper built

It’s half an hour before Question Period in the House of Commons, on the day of the vote on the budget bill – the one the opposition parties claim they haven’t had sufficient time to debate. Yet, the chamber is almost empty — 30 MPs out of 308 are scattered around the empty benches and none appears to be listening to Conservative MP Chungsen Leung, who has has misfortune to be speaking to the bill for the government.

It would be fair to say his oration doesn’t match the Gettysburg Address in quality or brevity but it deserves better than the desultory response it receives from the paltry gathering of MPs, most of whom are either too young, callow or silly to sit on their respective parties’ front-bench.

They are here because they have to be — most are on what is known as “house duty,” a rotation designed to ensure the chamber has a quorum of 20 at all times. Most are reading the newspapers or carrying out correspondence and would be anywhere else given half a chance.

Why? Because they know that no one cares about anything that happens inside the House of Commons these days. Interest in and esteem for our most precious of parliamentary institutions is at an all-time low ebb.

This is, of course, not entirely new. Political scientist Donald Savoie has long tracked the draining of power toward the centre — first from Parliament to Cabinet in the post-war years; then from Cabinet to the Prime Minister’s Office under Pierre Trudeau.

But that process has been taken to new heights — or lows — under Stephen Harper. Now he has control of the House, debates are tiresome and votes a formality. In short, the House of Commons is irrelevant to his strategy. It is too unpredictable and allows the opposition parties the chance to influence the agenda, so, in the same manner that he has tightened control of his government’s message in its dealings with the media, the Prime Minister has sought to do an end run around it.

Monday was a case in point. Mr. Harper was noticeable by his absence, despite being in Ottawa all day. In the leadership debates in May, Jack Layton told Michael Ignatieff that most Canadians don’t get promoted if they don’t show up for work, but it seems the Prime Minister is the exception to that rule. He has always had a “never on a Friday rule” but it now seems to extend to Mondays too.

The interim Liberal leader, Bob Rae, wasn’t there either and, mid-way through Question Period, an email landed from the party saying he’s off to Morocco this week to monitor their elections.

But who can really blame the two men, who see themselves as Everest and K2 among the sandhills of lesser parliamentarians, for not wanting to waste their time with the nonsense that passes for discourse in the House? Iran is a powder keg and Egypt is in flames, but there were no questions from the opposition parties on either topic. Instead the NDP led off with a question about waste water regulations at the municipal level, while the Liberals were exercised about raw sewage in Charlottetown harbour. I had walked up to Parliament Hill to witness first-hand how wretched Question Period has become — it exceeded my wildest expectations.

It provided the odd moment of a light relief — such as when the jeans-clad Justin Trudeau tried to reel in Environment Minister Peter Kent with a Pythonesque trick question about what constitutes “ozone” and how its impact differs at high altitude and low altitude (“What’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”). The fun ended when Mr. Kent stuck to his talking points.

At least, Mr. Kent and a handful of his Cabinet colleagues were kind enough to take time out of their busy day to come along and subject themselves to the daily airing of grievances. But you can sense the disaffection on the government side at being grilled by a bunch of neophytes who have suddenly found people are taking them seriously because they’ve got the letters “MP” after their name.

Given the option, the entire Cabinet would dearly love to follow their boss’s lead and just not show up. Instead of reviving the House by ensuring the nation’s business is conducted in its hearth, the Conservatives seem content to allow it to slide into decline and irrelevance.

Earlier this year, this government was found in contempt of Parliament. A more appropriate charge these days would be contempt for Parliament.

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Source: National Post