Our politicians

Re: Parliamentary priorities, Letter to the Editor, Dec. 5 There’s been an odd and disheartening change in Parliament and the Legislatures of Canada in recent years. Some, with long memories, will recall the days when our elected politicians rose in those places and gave their opinions or debated e xt emporaneously with great conviction and without resort to prepared and written scripts in hand.

Today, we witness many of our elected members standing and reading from a prepared document without ever looking at the members opposite as they fumble through words created by who- knows- who. Why do so many lack the ability to speak directly, honestly and with some passion about the serious matters before them? It appears that we no longer require MPs or MPPs to be competently familiar with the subjects they choose to address. One suspects that many backbenchers are reading the party line written by some hired professional.

If I’m not mistaken, it was once a Parliamentary regulation ( enforced by the Speaker) that extensive notes were forbidden and any written information ( of reasonable length) would be accepted by the Speaker for distribution to all members and inclusion in Hansard. In other words, members of Parliament were expected to give their views with directness and honesty without resorting to a time- wasting recitation of a prepared speech.

Have the tweeting and texting habits of modern society completely destroyed our ability to produce great orators? George Dunbar, Toronto