Change Parliament, but don’t bulldoze it
Reform will be a tough assignment
The new Trudeau government is intent on reforming, remaking and renovating Canada’s parliamentary institutions.
On the first day of the 42nd Parliament, the Liberals signalled major changes to the way senators will be selected and in the way the House of Commons will operate.
While both chambers are fixer-uppers that would benefit from a modernization, they were both designed to be resistant to change.
Not much has changed in the Westminster system since 1642, when Speaker William Lenthall told Charles I he had “neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak,” after the sovereign entered the House to seize five “disruptive” members.
The efforts of new Speaker, Geoff Regan, to improve decorum in the House and the attempts of Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef to make the Senate less partisan are going to be tough assignments.
“I intend to be firm and I intend to be fair. I will not tolerate heckling; we don’t need it,” said Regan, on his election Thursday, at which point he was drowned out by the hecklers.
Parliamentarians might not resist change but, like most people, they will resist being changed.
He is going to need the five-foot lump of heavy metal — the Mace — that sits in front of him.
It was the first day back at school and everyone was eager to tell their friends and desk mates what they did during their vacation.
MPs from all sides of the House mingled during the Speaker vote. Such was the perfect harmony, they might all have broken into a chorus of Ebony and Ivory.
There was an preternatural feeling to the day, as the Conservatives took their places to the left of the Speaker’s chair, the NDP reclaimed their traditional turf next to the interpreters’ box and the legions of new Liberals sat smugly on the government side.
Regan, a former Liberal minister and 18-year veteran of the House, said he had heard from many MPs who desired a better atmosphere and greater respect in the House.
That’s what they always say. That’s what they said when a special advisory committee looked at the subject in 1992; again, when Joe Comartin reviewed the report and sought the adoption of new powers for the Speaker in 2006; and again when Nathan Cullen launched his Civility Project in 2013. Nothing came of any of it because the House of Commons is, by nature, a rowdy cockpit of debate. MPs are passionate and committed — most of them don’t hate their opponents. Few are going to want to have decorum thrust upon them.
The new Senate appointment process, unveiled by Monsef and Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc on Thursday, is an exercise in the art of the possible.
A new advisory committee of non-partisans will now pick worthy Canadians to fill vacancies in the Red Chamber, rather than the place being filled with the usual suspects: party hacks, metropolitan elites and the like.
“We’re doing something that hasn’t been done before,” said Monsef.
Except it has. The U.K. House of Lords Appointments Commission had a similar mandate and has recommended 67 people for peerages since 2000 — all of whom joined as crossbenchers (independents).
However, a closer look at the “people’s peers” illustrates that they came from the same establishment backgrounds as the partisan appointees who preceded them — a motley gang of knights, academics, journalists and the like.
This is not to suggest the advisory committee is a bad idea; it seems to me the only thing that may redeem the Senate.
If the Liberals do manage to keep their partisan hands off the process, it may remove the worst of the whiff of hackery that has stunk the joint out in recent years.
But one suspects change won’t be quick or transformational. And that may be a good thing.
The parliamentary institutions of the Westminster system are precious. As Winston Churchill noted: “They possess an apparently unlimited adaptiveness and they stand as an effective buffer to every form of revolutionary and reactionary violence.”
A new lick of paint won’t hurt but let’s not bulldoze their buttresses.
WHILE BOTH CHAMBERS ARE FIXER-UPPERS THAT WOULD BENEFIT FROM A MODERNIZATION, THEY WERE BOTH DESIGNED TO BE RESISTANT TO CHANGE. — COLUMNIST JOHN IVISON