More on the people's chamber and how to fix it

Andrew Potter reacts to one MP's recent proposal to change Question Period, using it as an opportunity to elaborate on reasons for the relative weakness of our legislature branch when compared to the executive (i.e., the PM and cabinet).

His reasons include:

1. Low quality MPs, and too few of them
2. The size of the country, whose associated travel and lifestyle demands makes it hard to attract committed candidates the further you get from Ottawa
3. The need to centralize power due to the nature of our federation, "especially the threat of Quebec separatism for the past 40 years."

His second and third points are particularly salient (we know, for example, that MPs who live far from Ottawa are more likely to leave politics voluntarily and no doubt discourages people from running in the first place), although both seem tremendously difficult to do anything about.  In fact, lately we've largely given up on talking about the third one.

On the first one, I'm less convinced, but discussion on the nature of our political leadership must be encouraged as it's something that we can reasonably do something about. Quality may be less of an issue that preparedness, although I've never seen any objective research on quality. I remain unconvinced that more MPs will solve things, but there are no doubt ways we can improve political leadership and citizen's understanding of it.