There are at least two sets of questions that emerge from the MPs’ descriptions of their time in Parliament. They are questions we hope all concerned Canadians will discuss.
First, should we be troubled that the good work the MPs described was done almost entirely away from the public gaze, restricted to the more private spaces of committees and caucus?
On the one hand, maybe this is to be expected. In few other workplaces are most proceedings on the public record, with mistakes made on the job put on display for all to see. Therefore, in order to work productively, it may only be natural for MPs to seek out spaces where they are not required to constantly perform.
On the other hand, the work of the Parliament of Canada is critical to how we live together as a society since decisions made on the floor of the House influence issues as diverse as Canada’s economic policies, its healthcare system, and whether the country goes to war. Given its importance, the MPs’ description of a Parliament that works largely in private is cause for concern. If citizens are only able to watch and scrutinize political gamesmanship, how are they to understand the work of their elected officials, to say nothing of their ability to hold these same officials to account during an election? How can high-level debates be brought out into the open for the public to see, evaluate, and even participate in?
Furthermore, as technology and evolving social attitudes lead to greater demands for transparency in society, should we be concerned that Parliamentarians claim they can’t engage in critical debates or produce good results in public? What role does the party’s own incentive structure play in this? Does this suggest we should look for ways to better organize Parliament’s work? For example, if attendance in the House is so poor, should parties require more of their MPs to turn up? Or should we instead find other ways to hold political debates on the issues that matter?
Second, if, as the MPs suggest, the parties play a role in the current problems plaguing Canadian politics, shouldn’t they also play a role in helping to solve these problems?
We know that Canadian citizens are certainly not engaged with political parties—less than two percent of Canadians are members, and voter turnout is at a record low. And if Parliamentarians are also frustrated, perhaps parties are not meeting their obligations to Canadian democracy.
Political parties play critical roles in the functioning of our democratic infrastructure. They are responsible for engaging citizens in politics, selecting candidates for elected office, aggregating diverse policy perspectives and contesting elections. They dominate the public’s understanding of politics such that most people cast their vote for a party and rarely elect independent MPs.
Political parties are also granted special tax status: their operating costs are heavily subsidized by Canadians through public financing and generous tax incentives, and roughly half of their election expenses are reimbursed from the public purse.
So it should be no surprise that the MPs were so fixated on their party. And the integral role that parties play is all the more reason to address their shortcomings. Put simply, political parties need to be revitalized, recognizing that they are integral to the health of Canadian democracy.
Political parties are organizations made up of citizens. Reforming them, therefore, requires citizen participation. However, it would seem that we are currently in a vicious circle. Parties need to be renewed, but parties turn people off from politics. Disengaged citizens do not want to join parties, and so parties are not being renewed or reformed in the direction the citizenry would like.
Perhaps the first step in breaking this circle is to openly discuss how exactly Canadians want political parties to work within our democratic institutions—essentially, how we want them to work for and with us.