Will Canada’s new Parliament be more productive than the old one was?
The message from the voters seemed clear enough on Sept. 20: get back to work; stop playing political games; stop wasting time with partisan posturing and delaying tactics; you have a pandemic and many other serious matters to deal with, so get on with it — now!
By and large, the 338 members seemed to get the message. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on election night that he had heard it loud and clear and accepted it. The leaders of the NDP, Bloc and Greens sang much the same refrain.
All except for Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole. He was defiant on election night, declaring that, for his party at least, the war was far from over. The Conservatives, he vowed, would fight on to defeat the Liberals in the Commons.
O’Tooleian bluster aside — and bluster it was; he has his hands full trying to bring the fractious Conservative party under his control — the other leaders seemed genuine in their protestations of willingness to work together in a new spirit of co-operation.
The proof of promise will be performance, and the Liberals’ performance since Sept. 20 makes one wonder.
Trudeau will unveil his new cabinet Tuesday. Did he really need more than a month to move a few deck chairs and apply patches to holes left in the hull of the ship of state by the departures of four ministers (one by retirement, three by defeat)?
The new Parliament will not open until Nov. 22. Given that the Liberals’ post-election agenda was spelled out in some detail before and during the campaign, did the prime minister really need two months to get his ducks lined up before meeting the House?
The timing could be the product of careful, conscientious planning. But, if you happen to have a suspicious mind, you might wonder if the lengthy interval between the election and the throne speech might, just possibly, owe more to political strategy than to due deliberation.
Prime ministers of late, of whatever political brand, have displayed a disinclination to spend any more time than absolutely necessary in the cockpit of the Commons.
When I went to Ottawa in 1965, the House met five afternoons a week, three evenings (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) plus Friday morning. Unless he was travelling somewhere, the prime minister was expected to be in his seat for question period five days a week, along with virtually all his ministers.
Over the years, the sitting hours have been reduced, the prime minister appears less frequently, and Parliament meets for fewer days per year. It’s no wonder that there is a mad scramble to ram crucial bills through in the dying days of every session, or that so many important measures are left to die on the order paper.
From the 1950s to the 1990s, the Commons normally sat for 150 to 200 days a year, on occasion exceeding 200 days. Those numbers began to decline quite dramatically as the old century ended and the new one began.
Weeks were built into the Commons schedule for MPs’ constituency work and vacation time. One hundred sitting days, or just over 100, have become the norm. The House sat for 122 days in 2018 (a normal year), 75 days in 2019 (an election year) and 86 in 2020 (a COVID year); so far in 2021 it has sat for 76 days with 20 more scheduled by year’s end.
If MPs are serious about buckling down to work, they might welcome more sitting days. Or maybe not.
CORRECTION: In last week’s column (Oct. 18), I said General Wayne Eyre, interim Chief of the Defence Staff, had come under fire for writing a positive character reference for a major-general who had once been found guilty of sexual assault. That was wrong. In fact, Gen. Eyre came under fire for publicly supporting Maj.-Gen. Peter Dawe, who had written the character reference for the officer in question. My apologies to Gen. Eyre.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. His new book, “Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World,” co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, has just been published. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.