There are a few reasons to worry about an unprepared and unsupported Parliament whose members disagree so fundamentally on the basic aspects of the job, as well as on what they were elected to achieve.
First, if MPs are confused as to their job description, their ability to do their jobs effectively is diminished. When roles and responsibilities are not clear in any organization, problems ensue. Critical tasks will be overlooked, or efforts will be duplicated. Important work will not be achieved. Without clarity on who is in charge, and who is responsible to whom and for what, inter-personal tension is bound to result. These issues also tend to be amplified during times of war, economic uncertainty or technological or change—times that especially demand a clear-headed, well-reasoned response from our elected leaders, even when the path forward isn’t immediately apparent.
Second, this reality confuses the media who observe Parliament and whose job it is to describe to Canadians how our country is being governed. Organizations whose leaders operate without a shared sense of purpose or responsibility are difficult to understand and explain. This challenge is only compounded by the reduction in journalistic resources devoted to the coverage of national affairs in news organizations across Canada.
Third, this lack of agreement about what MPs are supposed to be doing confuses the citizenry. This confusion results from impressions formed by the media’s coverage of national politics, and from direct interaction with politicians whose views on their essential function are so widely divergent. Within the five groups we describe earlier—the philosophers, geographers, partisans, the service providers and none-of-the-abovers—the MPs spoke of tensions and outright disagreements with colleagues who held different perspectives. It isn’t hard to see how difficult it would be to work together effectively given such a wide variety of often competing priorities. If the MPs themselves are unable to describe their own role clearly and coherently, it is hard to blame the media or the public for not understanding it either, and by extension, not knowing what to expect from their elected leaders.
What happens to politics, and the public’s perception of it, when there is so little coherence among Parliamentarians as to their fundamental purpose?
This lack of clarity of purpose can cause—and most certainly exacerbate—confusion, partisanship and a relentless focus on the short-term, and in particular, on the next election. These are, in short, the very qualities of contemporary Canadian politics that alienate so many citizens from politics and lead them to disengage from public life altogether. They are also likely to be the very qualities that MPs wanted to change or “do differently” during their own time in office.
Without an agreed-upon sense of purpose, measures of success will be equally unclear. In politics, this prompts Parliamentarians to fall back on what is the simplest and most immediate indication of success—getting re-elected. As most Canadians surely agree, as far as indicators of success go in public life, this is hardly satisfactory.