Early hope for a more civil Parliament

OTTAWA— On the first real working day of the new House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois failed to get the unanimous consent of the other MPs to respond to the Liberal speech from the throne.

Because the 10-member sovereigntist caucus is two bodies short of the minimum required to have de facto speaking rights in the Commons, it will have to beg its way into every debate of the new Parliament. When the NDP and the Tories found themselves in the same predicament two decades ago, the Bloc showed them no mercy.

Judging from the failure of the party’s first appeal to the kindness of its rivals, charity in the new House of Commons will continue to begin at home.

And even then it might be in short supply. When NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair rose to his feet to give his own party’s reply to the throne speech, Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells tweeted: “Surprised he’s at the front of NDP caucus. Leaves his back exposed.”

Minutes after the Liberal throne speech was read last Friday, the sound of NDP knives being sharpened in retaliation for Mulcair’s lost election campaign could already be picked up in the lobby of the Commons.

On Monday, Mulcair’s question period strategy seemed designed to demonstrate that the Liberals are not much different from the Conservatives. Polls suggest he has his work cut out for him convincing a significant number of New Democrat supporters that he is right.

Question period also confirmed that old habits die hard. Speaker Geoff Regan’s call for a ban on heckling seems to have fallen on some deaf Conservative ears.

The jury is still out on whether he was serious when he said the practice would end. If Regan was, he will have to start enforcing his suggestion.

If all this sounds like the beginning of a swift return to politics as usual in the House of Commons it is because it was never tone that stood to prevent the new Parliament from returning to the soul-sucking climate of the previous one.

The real path to parliamentary salvation always involved content more than form.

And on this score there is cause for early hope. Here are a few reasons. Question period is at its most useful when the government’s thinking on a given issue is challenged from a variety of angles.

On most issues, the main opposition parties in the new Parliament bring very different views to the table.

In the previous Parliament, the Liberals and the New Democrats did not always have the same take on the Conservative agenda, but they shared so much common ground that the differences between their critiques of the government were often more a matter of nuances. This Parliament will feature strikingly different opposition perspectives.

And then a government that is bent on taking on major policy challenges is one that provides the opposition parties with a lot to chew on.

On this score the Liberals’ ambitious agenda is a gift that seems destined to keep on giving for the opposition parties but also for the parliamentary press.

By definition, both the debate and the coverage of the Liberals’ agenda will involve a larger stage than that of question period.

As it happens, the Liberals are also flirting with the notion of limiting Trudeau’s question period appearance to once a week. Under such a regimen, he would take opposition questions for the full 45 minutes — as is the practice in the United Kingdom.

As a result though the prime minister would not be around to extinguish the inevitable fires that could flare up on the other days. Based on Monday’s question period, that might be for the best. On parliamentary performance, Trudeau is clearly not the first among equals in his cabinet.

With the prime minister absent from question period on most days and with big policy issues being debated in larger forums, the daily exchanges between the opposition and the government could lose some of their shine.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, the best thing that could happen to Parliament would be for question period to be downgraded from its current inflated status of main attraction to the rank of sideshow that it deserves. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.