National Post (National Edition)
— REX MURPHY,
Canada is now governed from a cottage doorway.
In this extraordinary time in Canadian history the national Conservative party is in a swoon. The party has jammed itself into a cat’s cradle of cross purposes and lack of focus. Having defrocked its leader via some internal broil, then started and stalled a parody of a leadership race, when the present crisis hit, it is on the political equivalent of an ice pan slowly drifting to warm waters.
A few of its key members are doing what little can be done in such a context. But a coherent, continuous and full Opposition is just not there. It is less odd than regrettable that in the peak of a crisis, and an unprecedented explosion of expenditure, the Conservative Opposition hardly checks in. It is bad for the government, too. Governments need opposition. It saves them from arrogance, it bolts them to accountability.
The party holds an impressive number of parliamentary seats, but without a Parliament to sit in, numerical presence is irrelevant. This also means the region of the country the Conservatives almost exclusively represents, which we ritually refer to as the West (to B.C.’s chagrin) is lacking that representation. This has two effects.
The first is obvious. It means a whole region of the country will not see its priorities reflected, or reflected only poorly, in the minority Liberal government’s choices and policies.
Given that government’s embrace of global warming as a creed, and its not-so-subdued antagonism towards the oil industry, any effective targeting of support to the industry is very unlikely. The $1.7 billion allotted to clean up orphaned wells has no connection with the forward dynamic of the industry — ending the landlock, consenting to an east-west pipeline, stemming the flight of companies and jobs.
Secondly, the tacit arrangement with the separatist Québécois, which provides this government with a de facto majority — though not often spoken out loud as such — adds another dimension to the “anti-oil” mentality of our times. Witness Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet in chorus with Green Leader Elizabeth May with the deliberately provocative and insulting “Oil is dead” mantra. We should consider that it is difficult to work with a separatist party without, in some way, obliging the goals and aspirations of separatists. Of one thing we can be sure, “national unity” will not be their homework of choice.
It is the informal alliance with the Bloc that is the mechanism that gives security to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government. It is that which has enabled this most curious method of governing we have seen in the last two months. The House of Commons has become as close to irrelevancy, without a full shutdown, as is possible, and Canada is now governed from a cottage doorway. The safeguards of oversight, procedures and protocols of parliamentary democracy have been simply switched off.
In a normal world this would be seen as a staggering surrender of both form and substance in democratic governing. The government has no continuous challenge when the Opposition party cannot meet in Parliament. Government by morning announcement and emptying the treasury by the billions nearly every day is a travesty. We will see, once the quarantine ends and time unfolds, that there will be a price for this slackness.
This is where the Conservatives have been deeply lacking. The Party has a handful of members, as I have said, doing their individual best, the party as a whole however is without force or presence.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer may have been done in unfairly. But he is still there as its chief. He appears not to consider that worthy of leveraging. An Opposition leader in a time of crisis, even outside Parliament, can command attention to the issues he wishes debated, can exact some measure of response from a self-shielding prime minister. It just takes energy, will power and real engagement. We have not seen that.
While Trudeau governs from home and Scheer intermittently appears, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and the NDP itself, seem — to quote the wonderful ballad of Clementine — “lost and gone forever.”
The NDP has both the numbers and the talent to put some check on a government that is exercising unwonted fiscal powers and exploding the national debt, without anything approaching adequate scrutiny. But to do so would probably mean, every now and then — for the sake of parliamentary oversight — working with the Conservatives.
This is, however, a state of being never to be contemplated. Temporarily or sporadically, to line up with Conservatives … why even the thought of it, to virtuous social democrats, will bring on mumps, or worse. So the NDP stays off field.
The dignity of a nation is a resource in its governance. It cannot be abandoned without cost. The rites and rituals of Parliament, its protocols and practices, impart weight and dignity to the function of its members. Its splendid and historic buildings, the site itself on a hill in the capital, speak of seriousness and respect and pride of nationhood. Stripped of its proper setting, replaced by a kind of press conference soliloquy, under damn tent, it becomes mundane.
I’ve watched, with some pain, one of those virtual make-believe Commons sittings and it resembled more the fossilized opening of “The Brady Bunch” than the deliberations of a modern democracy. It was like a bad call-in show (I am familiar with the format) and attempting to co-ordinate the rules of the House with this pale mimicry simply does not, and cannot, work.
The MPs participating looked lost and alone as they spoke out or into the Zoom void. It would not have been out of place if some tuxedoed voice had interrupted to do an Excedrin commercial, or tout the latest miracle skin cream. This cannot continue.
It is surely past time to bring Parliament back to something like full function. To work whatever protections for health are thought necessary, and have the nation’s MPs do their deliberations in the House they fought so fiercely to get into in the first place.
If Costco can open, I surely do not understand why the House of Commons of the Canadian nation cannot, as well.
THE GOVERNMENT
HAS NO CONTINUOUS CHALLENGE.