Shade from the potted plants
Marginalized Liberal MPs opt out of re-election
Living in the political limelight is the dream job for those who wish to be seen — it’s clean, it’s indoors and there’s no heavy lifting involved.
But for those who want to get stuff done, life in the House of Commons can be pretty frustrating.
Eighteen Liberals, 15 Conservatives and 14 New Democrats have decided they have had enough of the Theatre of the Absurd and are not standing for re-election. Those numbers are not out of whack with previous elections — except for the NDP, which has lost a third of its caucus.
What is curious is the number of members of the governing party who are quitting after just one term in office, despite there being every prospect Justin Trudeau will win again in October.
For some, the love affair with politics has curdled because their ambitions have been thwarted. But for others, disillusionment centres around the disconnect between the House of Commons and the people of Canada.
There is a belief among some departing MPs that the promise made by the Trudeau Liberals that they would be the voice of their riding in Ottawa, rather than the other way around, has been broken.
“I don’t feel we have lived up to that,” said one Liberal MP who has decided not to run again. He said he has become disenchanted over the course of the past four years by the regimented nature of party politics in Ottawa.
“Stephen Harper centralized power into the Prime Minister’s Office, but I don’t think this prime minister has done anything to change that. I thought I would have a lot more of a say. But a lot of decisions are made by non-elected officials,” he said.
One particular concern I have heard time and again from Liberal MPs is the presence of PMO staff taking notes at caucus meetings.
Both chief of staff Katie Telford and former principal secretary Gerald Butts were regulars at caucus, the preserve of elected MPs during the Chrétien years (Ian Brodie, Harper’s first chief of staff, did attend caucus — but at the prime minister’s insistence).
The Liberal MP, who asked not to be named, said the presence of senior staff “put a chill” through caucus. “Trudeau might have forgotten if someone spoke at the mic and said something he didn’t like, but those people have long memories,” he said.
His frustration was not limited to caucus meetings. He said the committee system is structured to keep MPs busy but they rarely manage to change legislation that has emerged fully formed from the Prime Minister’s Office.
In addition, most government MPs revile question period. As one parliamentary secretary said: “When the House is sitting, I have 30 hours of wasted time every week, if you include question period, which I do. I have to squeeze in everything else around this parliamentary stuff.”
Another said that he was prepped for question period by his minister’s communications team. “I was force-fed lines to memorize. I felt ridiculous reading the lines in the House. It is BS for soundbites. It may be relevant to people in ministers’ offices but for most Canadians, it’s ridiculous.”
There have been periodic attempts to make Parliament more relevant to Canadians. The Liberals might claim their efforts to change procedures in the House in 2017 were geared to that end, though in truth it was a power grab designed to neuter the opposition parties and speed government bills through the legislative process.
An effort by Quebec Liberal MP Frank Baylis earlier this year had cross-bench support but ultimately died on the order paper, as the successful businessman decided not to run again. Baylis’s private member motion on democratic empowerment suggested a number of changes, ranging from allowing petitions with 70,000 signatures to trigger debates in the House, to an increase in the number of hours a week devoted to private members’ business.
The reality is all such efforts are doomed because it’s not in the interests of any Canadian prime minister to devolve power from the centre.
Trudeau claimed that rule by cabinet was back when he was elected. That is not how it has worked out, according to any number of Liberal MPs. “Too much power is centralized — way, way, way too much power,” said one senior member of caucus who is running again.
That’s yet another sign that the Trudeau pledge to “do politics differently” was misleading and that the advertising was better than the product.
It appears to be confirmation of the “Savoie thesis” — the idea promoted by academic Donald Savoie that cabinet and caucus are just sounding boards for prime ministers who pay more attention to selected courtiers.
That may be inevitable when it comes to governing a modern G7 nation. As Eddie Goldenberg, Jean Chrétien’s former adviser, explained in his book, The Way It Works, the government in which he was a key player tried to engage cabinet in decision-making but quickly concluded ministers were so focused on their own departments they gave little thought to the big picture.
Inevitable or not, it is a development that has provoked a number of able backbenchers to resolve that playing the part of a bobblehead in question period, or a potted plant behind some prime ministerial announcement, is not the best use of their talents.