Stephen Harper skipped out on answering opposition questions in the House of Commons more often in 2015 than in any other year he has been prime minister.
Harper has attended only 35 per cent of the daily question periods in 2015, his lowest rate for any year since 2006, a Citizen analysis found.
The trend reflects what critics say is an increasingly inaccessible prime minister, who rarely holds press conferences and who, last week, signalled that he would not participate in election leaders’ debates organized by a consortium of broadcasters.
Now he has less time for question period where, by convention, the prime minister is held to account by MPs for his government’s performance.
Harper’s attendance’s rate in the 45-minute question-and-response sessions has declined almost every year but dropped more sharply in 2014 and 2015, the Citizen review of House of Commons transcripts shows.
In 2006, his first year on the job, Harper responded to questions on 64 per cent of House of Commons sitting days.
But in 2013, when he faced hundreds of queries about his role in the Senate expense scandal, he made it to only 46 per cent of question periods.
The downward trend continued in 2014, when he attended only 36 per cent.
In April and May of this year, he has made it to only six of 22 sessions.
His attendance this year has been markedly worse than that of the last two Liberal prime ministers in their final years in office.
It is considered unparliamentary to refer to another MP’s absence in the House of Commons, but in a scrum with journalists on Wednesday, New Democratic Party leader Tom Mulcair referred to Harper’s truancy.
“It was the first time we had had a chance to see Prime Minister Harperin quite a while,” he said Wednesday, after a session Harper attended. “We don’t see him very often in the House of Commons.”
“When the prime minister is not in Question Period, he is promoting Canadian values and interests on the world stage,” spokesman Stephen Lecce said in a email. “The prime minister is also meeting with Canadians and Canadian businesses on our government’s low-tax plan and benefits for families.”
Attendance in the House of Commons has become a campaign issue before. In the televised leaders’ debate in the 2011 election, then-NDP leader Jack Layton turned on then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s poor voting record in the House.
“Most Canadians, if they don’t show up for work, they don’t get a promotion,” Layton famously quipped, referring to an Ottawa Citizen story that found Ignatieff showed up for fewer recorded votes than other leaders.
“You missed 70 per cent of the votes. I think you need to understand a little more about how our democracy works.”
Ignatieff’s successor, Justin Trudeau, has posted only a slightly better record attending question period than the prime minister, but not by much.
Since he became leader in April 2013, Trudeau has asked questions in 39 per cent of the daily sessions, about the same rate for 2015. His office did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
That leaves Mulcair with the best record, attending 61 per cent of question periods since the New Democrats made him leader in March 2012. In 2015, he made it to just over half the sessions.
The House of Commons does not publish attendance records from MPs, but when the leaders are present, they typically speak during question period, with their remarks recorded in Hansard, the official record.
There is no legal obligation for cabinet ministers, much less prime ministers, to attend question period but convention holds that they should be regularly available to face opposition questions on the business of the nation.
As prime minister, with his attendant responsibilities and travel obligations, Harper perhaps has a better excuse than opposition leaders for chronic absence from Parliament.
But his attendance in 2015 doesn’t compare well to former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s last year on the job. Chrétien showed for just under half of all 2003 question periods when his government was sustaining heavy fire over the sponsorship scandal.
Chrétien’s successor, Paul Martin, made it to 40 per cent of question periods in 2005, his final year as prime minister.
On days he shows up, Harper answers an average of eight questions, and in recent years has adopted the custom of only responding to questions from other party leaders, not other opposition MPs.
Throughout his term, Harper has drawn criticism for his near-total inaccessibility to journalists who cover politics. He does not hold press conferences and fields questions from the press gallery only when there is a visiting head of state in town.
Last week, the Conservative Party announced Harper wouldn’t participate in the election leaders’ debates organized by the consortium of Canada’s largest broadcasters, instead opting for debates organized by smaller media organizations.
Note: An earlier version of this story said Thomas Mulcair attended 62 per cent of question periods since becoming leader of the NDP. The correct figure is 61 per cent.
| Question Period attendance record | |
| Stephen Harper (since becoming prime minister) | |
| 2006 | 64.1% |
| 2007 | 59.1% |
| 2008 | 53.1% |
| 2009 | 42.1% |
| 2010 | 48.1% |
| 2011 | 50.1% |
| 2012 | 48.1% |
| 2013 | 45.1% |
| 2014 | 36.1% |
| 2015 | 35.1% |
| Overall | 48.1% |
| Tom Mulcair (since becoming NDP leader) | |
| 2012 | 70.1% |
| 2013 | 61.1% |
| 2014 | 58.1% |
| 2015 | 52.1% |
| Overall | 61.1% |
| Justin Trudeau (since becoming Liberal leader) | |
| 2013 | 42.1% |
| 2014 | 38.1% |
| 2015 | 39.1% |
| Overall | 39.8% |
Source: Ottawa Citizen analysis of House of Commons records.
Source: canada.com/
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR
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