Windsor Independent - March 2016

Saved by the Bell
with Andrew Bell
Apathy & Irony:
Asking Questions
About Question
Period
In October, we watched as an overwhelming
number of Canadians swarmed polls across the
nation to publicly state their lack of confidence in
yet another term of Conservative leadership on
a Federal level. The result was a Liberal majority
unparalleled in decades, but just over a hundred
days into their mandate, and our national
frustration seems to have returned in full force.
It would be unfair to paint this new Liberal
government with the broad brush of failure,
especially relatively early in their mandate, but
there are legitimate reasons for Canadians to be
discouraged. The national economy is struggling,
the foreign policy landscape is becoming more
hostile every day, and a country divided seems
determined to dig deeper trenches between their
ideological values instead of building bridges.
Canadians are frustrated, and becoming
increasingly apathetic in every medium that
doesn’t involve the anonymity of their keyboards.
And while I’m far from a certified political pundit,
I find myself in a similar mind-set as I watch the
gears in the Canadian democratic machine spin
without any personal sense of agency. My only
recourse is to use this soapbox to discuss the
broken system we operate in, and hope that it
resonates as a call to action.
Political apathy has long been framed as
a hallmark of my generation. Despite our
powerful presence and influence on this past
election, it’s becoming harder and harder to keep
that engagement alive beyond our regularlyscheduled
civic duty. My generation tends to see
the concept of participatory democracy at face
value, as a paradoxical pipe dream. We’ve spent
our lives being taught that the only decision
we can be trusted to make is to cast a vote for a
representative to make those decisions on our
behalf.
And that’s not to say that holding regular
referendums on every single decision made on
a municipal, provincial or federal level would
lift us out of that apathetic funk. The logistics of
that kind of directly participatory system would
be insurmountable, and as pompous as it might
sound, there are national and international
policies that should not be subjected to the
uneducated whims of the Canadian public.
However, the current system that we cling to does
not do justice to the diverse needs and wants of
our communities and our country as a whole.
Take this past election as an example. We were
presented with a number of options for local
representatives to the Federal government,
separated into ideological categories based on
their affiliation to a major political party. Rather
than voting for representatives based on their
individual values and ability to advocate on
our behalf in Ottawa, we vote for parties whose
aggregate power determines who will run the
country – meaning we can’t hold them fully
accountable to election promises.
Politicians, in theory, play a valuable role as
an intermediary between the wishes of their
constituents and the structural mechanism needed
to evaluate, approve and implement those wishes.
Our political system suffers from a systemic
inability to move forward in tandem on behalf
of all Canadians. Instead, we watch competing
interests fight each other for dominance, and
struggle to hold onto that foothold at all times.
Differing opinions are the cornerstone of a
modern society, and while all should be given
a fair shake, there’s a difference between what’s
best for the aggregate as opposed to individual
stakeholders.
A good chunk of this apathy seems to be derived
from a perceived lack of access. Since we don’t
know that we can watch our representatives in
action without travelling to Toronto or Ottawa,
we feel disenfranchised to have a say in how their
riding is being represented and the issues being
discussed. And I was in that boat, until a year ago
when I stumbled home from my local watering
hole and happened to flip through channels and
land on a broadcast of Provincial Question Period.
If you’ve never seen Question Period before, I
would cautiously recommend watching an episode
through the extensive digital archive held by both
the provincial and federal governments. Question
Period is a forty-five minute interactive session
that runs every sitting day of Parliament, and
allows elected Members the opportunity to direct
questions at Cabinet Ministers and the Prime
Minster. In theory, this highly-publicized forum
should ensure the government is held to account,
but instead it is marred by painfully scripted
questions and responses, as well as the lack of
decorum displayed by elected representatives of all
party affiliations. To be honest, it comes across as
a very loud, public squabble between two children
over a toy that neither of them fully own.
To fully understand my disappointment, it’s
important to understand that our multi-party
system that we spend so much time boasting
about is only valuable in theory. We have the
ability to vote for a handful of parties, but not
only do most of them not have the resources or
voter base needed to hold tangible power, but they
also fall into two categories once they enter the
legislative arena: government or opposition. Make
no mistake – these are the only two parties that
truly exist within our current democratic process.
If we base our valuation of our elected
representatives in terms of their public presence
– specifically, their ‘performance’ in the dramatic
theatre of a widely-televised Question Period –
then many of us are right to feel disappointed in
the immaturity and inefficiency of these Members.
Even once an election has finished, their boots
must stay on the ground, running a constant
campaign against their opposition in a vicious
dog-fight of ideological values instead of working
together to build a country that values and
enhances the lives of its citizens.
Inside of a single session, you’ll find members
reading strongly-worded indictments of the
government in power. As either side of the House
speaks, the other will use any tactics they can to
derail the message: booing, pounding on tables,
and shouting over the person giving the answer.
The result is a lack of focus directed towards
solutions, in favour of assigning blame for failure
to the party in power, or the party who just left
power. We should be ashamed of these people
who use their power and influence to further
the interests of their party over those of their
constituents, but we also need to recognize that
Question Period, and our democratic system as a
whole, have systemic shortcomings that allow for
these partisan politics to thrive.
The desperate need for electoral and democratic
reform is not new, and the Liberal government
came into its first session with those guns blazing.
They called for immediate changes to the way
that Question Period operates, and optimistically
stated that they would abolish the first-past-thepost
system for federal elections. To hear these
issues discussed is exciting, but if we’ve learned
anything from the Canadian political process, it’s
that promises are much easier to make than policy.
If we value the concept of parity in governance
– just like we celebrated gender-balanced
appointments to the Liberal Cabinet last Fall –
then we need to look at the ways that partisan
politics dilute this parity. Instead of stacking
power onto either side of the House, we should
endeavor to spread both responsibility and
oversight of government departments across
political parties and ridings, based on merit
instead of political affiliation. We should give
the Speaker of the House more ability to keep
Members in check, and encourage as much
cooperation across the floor as we possibly can.
Let’s look to our neighbours to the South for
a parallel – whenever Democrats gain power,
Republicans fight tooth-and-nail with the goal of
regaining power while promising a repeal of those
decisions, and vice-versa. Any decisions can be
revisited and overturned, all policies are fair game,
and two steps forward can easily become three
steps back in a matter of months.
The real question we should ask ourselves is how
comfortable we are with merely assigning blame,
instead of brokering solutions. We spend time
and resources pointing fingers and jockeying
for political leverage, and change leadership
periodically when the opportunity presents itself
– but we won’t actually accomplish anything until
we view ourselves as a country as a whole, instead
of a sum of our dissenting parts.
It’s time to stop looking to the top of the power
structure as our litmus test for success or
failure. It’s easy to buy into the media click-bait
demonizing Trudeau (or Wynne or Harper or
Dilkens, for that matter) based on policy decisions
made by the party in power. None of those
decisions are made independently, and although
they serve as the face of their party, we need to
recognize that these decisions and the actions
(or inactions) that they spawn are the result of an
elected group of representatives, theoretically on
our behalf.
In a column in the National Post last month,
Andrew Coyne frames the issues with Question
Period as a cultural dichotomy and offers a bleak
solution:
“It isn’t a matter of a few especially obnoxious
MPs or bullying leaders. It’s cultural; a shared
culture of obsequiousness, cynicism and gall,
a collective readiness to set aside the ordinary
restraints on human behavior. Culture is far more
engrained, far harder to amend, than mere rules
and procedures. Change all the rules that you like,
but unless the culture changes, the result will be
much the same.”
I’m not calling on Canadians to riot in the streets,
tear down the government and start fresh. That’s
a step that I hope we’ve evolved far enough as a
society to be able to avoid. With that being said,
it’s impossible for such apathetic citizens to ever
break this vicious cycle without becoming more
engaged in the process, and our best course
of action is to directly demand more of our
representatives. Public accountability is only
important if the public actually cares.
So, here’s my plea – stop using social media to
feign political engagement and outrage. You have
easy, public access to the work your government
is doing and the actions of those you’ve elected to
represent you. You also have the ability to pass on
your concerns to elected members in your region,
and you don’t even have to leave your house. We
need to demand that our elected officials at all
levels operate with decorum, and insist that their
political chess-moves designed to advance the
ideology of their parties are far less valuable than
their actions to make tangible changes and present
policy to help all Canadians, not just those whose
vote they are coddling.
There’s an old saying that you can’t have your cake
and eat it too – but as someone who’s paying for
the cake, if you don’t tell anyone in charge of the
bakery what you expect it to look or taste like, you
shouldn’t be that surprised or upset that the cake
you get tastes like shit.
24 MARCH 2016 Vol. 04 | Issue 03