Parliament is sick, and we need a new beginning
If the public wants a majority, it will find a way to get one
Gordon Gibson
Wednesday, Sep. 16, 2009
We need an election, notwithstanding the view of most pundits. They are wrong on this one.
Some say, “But it will cost $300-million!” C'mon. Ottawa spends that much every nine hours, every day of the year. So between midnight and 8:42 a.m., you've paid for the election. As a sidebar for those who criticize the government for delay on economic stimulus spending and “shovel ready” projects, this also creates thousands of instant jobs across the country. (Most of the Elections Canada expense is payroll.)
Some say, “The election won't change anything. We will still have a minority government. That is what the polls say.” This opinion is based on an incomplete reading of the polls and of the existing Parliament.
The most important element of the polls is not in the party standings. It is in the fact that public opinion has swung strongly from support for minority governments to a wish for majorities again. The previous view was based on the not unreasonable idea that a minority Parliament would keep a government under control. The new view is based on the fact that it hasn't worked out well.
In a more mature political culture than exists in Ottawa, minorities can work well – and have done so spectacularly in the Canadian past. But that outcome requires a spirit of co-operation and some “win/win” being available to the smaller parties. With a government in “we win, you lose” mode, that won't happen – and that, alas, has been the Harper approach.
The current Parliament is totally dysfunctional. Everything is about electoral advantage. The atmosphere is poisoned, and the poison will be drawn only by a new mandate and a new beginning.
Little is happening in the way of legislation, though, in truth, that is not urgent because we have lots of laws in the country already. Little is happening on policy because the government is afraid of the environmentalists and the Americans on the climate-change issue, afraid to offend interest groups by cuts on the budgetary side, afraid to offend Quebec on anything, and so on.
The most important gap is in the central work of Parliament, the very reason for which its ancestor was invented in England hundreds of years ago. That is what used to be called “the power of the purse” – the right of the people's representatives to deny funding to the Crown until satisfied that the money and the associated taxation are absolutely required and being efficiently used.
What is required to do this job is a detailed understanding of the policies and plans of the departments of government and the line-by-line spending forecasts. That done, the next job is to look at expenditures after the fact to see whether they were made as promised and whether they did the good things they were supposed to do.
Now, this is pretty important stuff. Unfortunately, it's hardly being done at all these days. As the size and complexity of government has increased, so has the job. At the same time, the capacity of Parliament to do its basic work has been undermined by our truly vicious partisan climate.
The only way MPs can begin to tackle their most important job is with a functioning set of committees with a continuity of membership and expertise of staff. Alas, committees are allowed almost nothing in the way of staff experts, and committee membership is routinely shuffled to discipline or reward MPs.
Instead of defending the people against the government, Parliament and its committees have been twisted into agencies to defend the government from the people. This has been a long time coming – it's not just the current bunch that's to blame. But the situation is worse than ever due to non-stop partisan jockeying.
So the consensus being discovered by the pollsters in favour of a majority government is well based in the public good. And if the public wants a majority, it will find a way to get one.
What this means is that voters are going to have to choose between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, the only two with any chance of forming a majority. The necessity of making this choice will squeeze the New Democrats and the Greens, as many of their former supporters pick either the Conservatives or the Liberals. Which way will they go? Who knows? But Parliament is sick and needs to be rebuilt by an election. Let's get on with it.
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