Prospects for a Beleaguered Parliament
Robin Sears
Fans of Canadian parliamentary democracy owe Stephen Harper a lot. No, seriously!
He has single-handedly launched a real national debate on the role and relevance of our venerable ‘Peoples’ House,’ though one suspects that was an unanticipated and unwelcome consequence of his decision to shut Parliament down twice in thirteen months.
Conservatives who complain that it was ‘their right’ to make such a decision, that Liberals had done it before and that it won’t make any difference to most Canadians still struggling to recover from the recession, are missing the point.
To many observers this is the final straw in the behaviour of a series of governments’ denigration of the traditions and role of Parliament. It does not matter really where you begin counting the transgressions from, or who was responsible for them, there is enough blame to go around.
In the post-war era, many point to the rather brutal use of closure to end the Pipeline Debate in 1954 as the beginning of the end. Some remember angrily the changes to the rules that ended night sitting, and the end of the requirement that every department’s budget had to go through the Estimates approval process in the 70s and 80s. Others cite the changes to members’ ability to block debate following the bell ringing battle around the Charter of Rights debate in 1980. In the midst of the current partisan anger at the Harper government it might be useful to recall that each of those insults were imposed by Liberal governments.
So what is to be done?
Changes to confidence votes, and to government’s prerogatives concerning rules on issues apparently trivial – scheduling of opposition days, to consequential – unilaterally shutting down the House, need to be addressed. But to this observer, it is the sad circus which Commons committees have become that is the most powerful indictment of the accountability deficit that faces Parliament today. When the House is in session, as a weekly ritual, Liberals and New Democrats snarl at the Harper MPs deliberate frustration of committee proceedings. They do not often acknowledge the foolish hyper-partisan grandstanding on their own part that has tempted the Conservatives to be so cavalier about committee authority. Needless to say, the Conservatives in opposition were similarly childish in their misuse of the committee platform.
In serious legislative bodies, the committee system performs several essential functions. It helps train new MPs in the art of legislative process. It provides an opportunity for ordinary citizens to speak ‘truth to power’ in a public setting governed by shared rules of conduct and decorum. Most importantly, it provides an opportunity for expert and focused oversight on government: its plans, its performance and its transgressions. But such a committee system requires a number of ingredients which have disappeared with successive waves of ‘reform,’ or which never existed in our version of Parliamentary democracy.
First and most important among the missing ingredients is, not surprisingly, money. Money to buy expertise, money to pay research staff, money to travel and hold public hearings widely. The tiny committee budgets are not an accident, of course. They are the means by which governments limit the power and impact of committees. We spend nearly a billion dollars a year on all the functions of Parliament today. One percent of that amount would transform the professionalism and effectiveness of Commons committees. [I do not include Senate committees in this indictment because despite similar challenges, they have often been able to perform an admirable role of serious reflection and revision on difficult subjects. Sad to say, that is mostly because no one pays much attention to their work, and they do not therefore often attract the divisive partisan tactics that have increasingly crippled their cousins in the other chamber.]
A research director, a legal adviser, and a team of young committee staff could have meant that the embarrassing circus that is the Commons Ethics Committee in this Parliament might have been different. The showboats and clowns who dominate that committee might less often be the face of the committee if it had carefully prepared agendas, research, witness preparation and legal counsel, with input to the staff work from both government and opposition. Imagine the difference in the conduct of the Afghan prisoners’ debate if the committee had the benefit of having travelled to the region, had consultants who were experts in third world prisons and Afghanistan. Imagine how much harder it would have been for the government to hornswaggle members with hilariously censored documents if the committee had its own investigative team.
A much longer list of reforms is essential to the long-term process of re-invigorating the Canadian Parliament. A tough, professional, well-funded set of permanent committees would give that campaign a powerful launch.
Robin Sears is the Senior Partner at Navigator Ltd., a Toronto communications firm. He was previously national director of the NDP and Chief of Staff to Bob Rae.