Ottawa Citizen

Perfect time to review how we do politics

- BRIGITTE PELLERIN

Welcome to Week (counts fingers) 6 of the New Normal. It was on March 16 that the Citizen printed the words of Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, on its front page. Stay Home, she said.

Feels a lot longer, doesn’t it?

There is no question the world is a much different place now. Most of it requires a stiff upper lip but there are a few positives. A big one is the complete lack of partisan politickin­g we’ve had of late. I, for one, don’t miss it one bit.

Seriously; why have we tolerated partisan politics so long? Who, other than those whose living depends on them, needs political parties anyway?

We’re in the middle of a marathon-emergency, and everyone must do their part to defeat this virus so we can get back to arguing over the best way to ban single-use plastics. That’s our big focus right now. But what if we took advantage of this crisis to review how we do politics altogether?

Our system of government cannot work without opposition. Power corrupts, Lord Acton famously said, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s all right during an emergency to allow a political leader to, well, lead with the essential help and advice from experts. In a war, we look to generals. In a pandemic, we become dependent on public-health officials.

But the emergency won’t last forever.

Soon we’ll have to discuss, debate and vote on some pretty serious stuff. We’ll have to deal with the economic impacts of the crisis, for one thing. Certainly we need a great big rethink of how we treat the most vulnerable among us. The elderly, and adults with disabiliti­es who live in longterm care homes — and the personal support workers we all depend on — have suffered from our casual indifferen­ce for far too long.

Or how about homelessne­ss? In every major city, hotels are empty but somehow we mostly can’t use those spaces to let people currently without a home stay there, or if we do, there are major problems with the arrangemen­t. How did we get to a point where we can’t do anything to help them?

These are all hugely important issues. Complex, too. Political parties have got us used to the idea that there are only two possible options on any given question. You either support the party that’s in power, or you don’t. Well, what if someone else has a better idea? Can we not discuss this?

Most politician­s I know don’t like the party system. They find it limits what they can say and do, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the public interest. People go into politics to serve, and when you give them a chance, they get busy working with one another, in committees or otherwise, for the good of their constituen­ts and of the country.

Nobody goes into politics to become a trained seal at the mercy of her party whip.

Yet we’ve allowed parties to make it that way. This benefits nobody except those who control parties. It’s a rather small group.

Every time we face a crisis we realize we have a lot more in common than we ever thought possible. We’re all just trying to do our best; we bring our knowledge and experience to the table, discuss issues with other folks who have their own knowledge and experience, and together we talk until solutions emerge that satisfy most people.

This pandemic is teaching us the importance of listening to each other and taking the time to consider unfamiliar points of view. We can still disagree and argue, but we don’t have to be unpleasant — or worse, politicall­y binary — about it.

We live in a democracy. If we demand politician­s engage with each other in a constructi­ve manner and never go back to partisan nonsense, they will have to do so.

We are their bosses, after all.

Brigitte Pellerin is an Ottawa writer.

 ?? BLAIR GABLE /REUTERS ?? His way, or his way? Do our politics have to return to being a binary choice between parties once this is over?
BLAIR GABLE /REUTERS His way, or his way? Do our politics have to return to being a binary choice between parties once this is over?
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