In praise of the outliers in a hyperpartisan political world
On some days in Canadian political news, especially in Ontario, “the Liberals” sound like the busiest politicians on the planet.
When they’re not trying to legalize marijuana or experiment with pharmacare and guaranteed income, they’re raising immigration levels and the minimum wage.
All those measures actually come from two governments, of course — one headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the other by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. They are different governments, but they are often described simply as “the Liberals” in the media.
It’s common shorthand in political reporting — I’m guilty of it myself — but lately I’ve been wondering whether we ought to be more careful about using partisan titles as synonyms for governments. My concern isn’t just potential grammatical confusion between two governments of the same stripe, but how the shorthand plays into rampant cynicism about the political class.
Trudeau and Wynne won power with Liberal votes, but they’re expected to govern for citizens of all political stripes — even the people who don’t vote at all. Yes, it’s true that there are some stories that involve these heads of government wearing their hats as party leaders — Trudeau’s relationship to chief fundraiser Stephen Bronfman, for instance, or Wynne testifying at a trial of her former advisers.
But are we political reporters contributing to the hyperpartisan climate in politics these days by referring to governments by their party labels? You don’t pay your taxes to the Liberals — you pay them to the federal or provincial government. Everything is politics, novelist Thomas Mann once wrote, but does everything have to be partisan, too?
Cynics would say that the answer to that question is yes, especially since the arrival of what’s known as the “permanent campaign” in Canadian politics.
This is the phenomenon by which elections never really end. It became more pronounced in the last decade in Ottawa with a flurry of minority governments and the emergence of political advertising in between campaigns. (Former prime minister Paul Martin’s government kicked off that development, but prime minister Stephen Harper’s government turned it into common practice.)
When Parliament is locked in permanent campaign mode, you have to hunt harder for examples of cross-party co-operation. They still exist, but they often get drowned out by the hollering across partisan divides. This week, however, we have seen a few examples. The “parliamentarian of the year” awards by Macleans magazine are an annual glimpse into how MPs are able to get beyond their partisan differences. Each year, MPs rank each other on who works the hardest, who’s the best orator and so on — as well as who is the overall best parliamentarian.
The big winner this year was not exactly a household name: a rookie Conservative MP named Garnett Genuis, who seems to have made quite an impression on his colleagues (of all political stripes) in just two years in the Commons. Genuis is only 30 years old, a new MP from an Edmonton-area riding and “a really good guy,” according to the Liberal MP for Brampton East, Raj Grewal.
“He’s one of the smartest MPs in the House,” Grewal told Macleans columnist Paul Wells.
Also this week in cross-partisan news, the prime minister appointed an all-party committee to oversee national-security matters. Composed of MPs and senators, representing the three main political parties, the committee will be reviewing activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Communications Security Establishment, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency.
All members will reportedly have high-level security clearances and be subject to an oath of secrecy. With those kinds of strict rules will come another condition, presumably — no partisan games. We’re trusting these politicians to put their party differences aside to do this job, clearly because we still believe there are some matters in Canada that need to kept free of partisan antics. National security is definitely one of those subjects. So too, it seems, is North American trade, where we’ve seen Trudeau’s government appointing high-profile Conservatives — former interim leader Rona Ambrose and former cabinet minister James Moore — to serve on an advisory trade panel while NAFTA’s future is up in the air.
Over in the Senate, meanwhile, non-partisanship is becoming the new, dominant force this week. The Independent Senators Group (ISG) now has more senators than any other party in the Senate and it gained new resources this week to do its work in the Red Chamber.
So we’re going to have some trouble using that old partisan shorthand in the Senate — and possibly on trade and national security panels. We can’t just report on what’s happening in these areas as the work of “the Liberals” (or any other party).
That’s probably a good thing. Everyone may love a party, but we don’t have to see everything as partisan. sdelacourt@bell.net
Why there’s still hope for cross-party co-operation