MPs are 'nobodies' on the Hill, 'like pawns in a chess game': Franks

 

By Bea Vongdouangchanh, The Hill Times - May 2008 

Forty years after former prime minister Pierre Trudeau said that MPs are "nobodies" 50 yards from Parliament Hill, Parliamentary expert Ned Franks says he got it wrong—MPs are nobodies on the Hill, but somebodies in their constituencies.

"They've always been nobodies on Parliament Hill. It's when they get away from the Hill that they're somebodies," said Prof. Franks, a retired Queen's University political science professor. "They're somebodies in the constituency. When they get to Ottawa and the battle of the titans is going on between the party leaders, they're like pawns in a chess game. They're disposable, they lead the attack and they get knocked off the board."

Liberal MP Keith Martin (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, B.C.) agreed, saying Parliament is broken. "MPs have a responsibility. They're accountable to the public but they don't have the power to execute their duties. Right now, it's like rolling sand up hill. It's a Sisyphean task to try to get anything done in this Parliament," he said, adding that while a lot of important work can be done one-on-one in riding offices to help constituents, MPs' mandates are national. "The reason we're sent here is to deal with issues of national importance and our ability to do that has been severely truncated," he told

Mr. Martin said reforms need to take place, but not through many of the recommendations found in a recent report by Queen's University's centre for the study of democracy, titled "Everything Old is New Again: Observations on Parliamentary Reform," by Tom Axworthy. The report, released on April 23 in Kingston, Ont., calls for House and Senate committee chairs to be paid Cabinet ministers' salaries, Parliamentarians to sit on committees for the full term of Parliament (with more researchers), and that the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament become a management body in an effort to strengthen Parliament's role, make it more relevant and boost its reputation.

"Pay is not an issue. The issue of strengthening resources for committees is not an important issue because that implies that committees have researchers who are not doing a good job, which is not true.

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Our researchers in foreign affairs are fabulous. All the researchers I've ever seen on Parliament Hill are outstanding and do outstanding work. That's not the problem," Mr. Martin said. "The problem is being able to drive an idea from idea to action. Partisan bickering, and the desire to make a hit on the other side over issues that are not relevant to the Canadian public dominates the public discourse."

"Everything Old is New Again" also says Treasury Board and the Office of the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Office should revise the system by which the $220-billion annual estimates link expenditure to performance; Parliament, not the executive, should be responsible for salary ranges of senior officials as well as budgets of all agents of Parliament; and that House and Senate clerks should be made "accounting officers." Moreover, it says that a task force of prominent Canadians with Parliamentary experience should write an accountability code to assist Parliamentarians with a new accounting officer system; that the Auditor General, the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons and the Senate National Finance Committee should oversee the government's large expenditure on public opinion research; and the five caucus research bureaus should be more accountable and assist Parliamentarians in work as MPs rather than political partisanship.

But Mr. Martin offered up his own recommendations, saying the media need to take a role in focusing more on substantial debate and policy ideas rather than the adage of "if it bleeds it leads." He said if only money bills and substantial legislation related to the governing party's election platform were confidence votes, it would allow MPs to dissent more often. There should also be more time allotted for private members' business and there needs to be a way to compel the government to take committee reports seriously. "People send us here and wonder why we can't do anything," he said. "I've seen so many really good people in Parliament leave because they can't get things done in this political quicksand. That's sad for Canada."

Prof. Franks said that when committees are not "partisan warfare by other means," they do good work. "When committees divide on partisan lines, it's a sign of failure," he said, comparing the British Westminster committee system to Canada's. He said the British "select committee" system, which looks at departments, are non-partisan and are often chaired by opposition members who make it a priority to get all-party consensus. He said the sheer number of MPs at Westminster also helps to have a more civil committee system, which comes in addition to the number of MPs in safe seats, who stay for at least 10 years compared to Canadian MPs' average term of four and a half years. Prof. Franks said MPs sit on committees as an honour in the U.K., rather than here, where committees are seen as "a chore or duty" and MPs "are put on, taken off, moved to another committee, shifted around. I think the Public Accounts committee has about 100 members who can be substituted. That's no way to have a committee."

Conservative British MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, who chairs a 197-member all-Parliamentary U.K. committee and was in Ottawa last week to meet with the House Finance Committee, said the committee dysfunction in Ottawa "would never happen" at Westminster. He told

The Hill Times that he "would never. 

 

dream ever of being partisan, of questioning a government minister down a partisan line and neither would any other committee member" because they are not "party animals," but rather there to present the "best possible report" to government.

"A lot of committees actually have opposition MPs as chair, so therefore we wouldn't dream of that because one, it's counterproductive; second, you don't get good reports; and thirdly, dare I say it, it probably shows the people of whichever country, of the United Kingdom, that Parliamentarians are squabbling kids. In Britain, we're trying to get over that. Our stock is not very high and in Britain. We're trying to reestablish the credibility of our Parliament."

Mr. Axworthy's report says allowing Canadians to access debates and proceedings in the House of Commons through television was a mistake, and calls for the Speaker to use his power more effectively in controlling bad behaviour and decorum.

California-based organization Centre for Digital Democracy's Paul Taylor disagreed that television was a mistake. Mr. Taylor, who was in Ottawa with Mr. Liddell-Grainger, said that there were similar concerns in the U.S. when C-SPAN started televising Congressional debates, but blaming TV for bad behaviour is like blaming a car for drunk driving. "The coarseness of the political discourse is because the people in the arena decided it was in their narrow, sort-term interests to be coarse. Television is simply showing them doing what they do," he said.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger agreed, and said television allows the public to be more engaged with federal politics. "You've got to decide what you want in a Parliament. Do you want the people to be involved in your Parliament, or do you want them to be oblivious of what goes on?" he said, pointing to the same concerns during Britain's Prime Minister's Question Period. Mr. Liddell-Grainger said although Question Period is "theatre," it's also democratic and includes people in the process.

"Canada is a damn big country. Vancouver is a heck of a long way from Ottawa, whereas the furthest point anywhere from London is only 700 miles, and that's the difference. We are very proud of our democracy in Britain as you are in Canada, and rightly so, but it's a two way thing, citizen and Parliament at all times," he said. "I think television is good. I think news reporting is good. I think MPs in committees are good. I think MPs standing up for the affairs of their people and constituents is right. That's democracy."

For Mr. Martin, however, citizen engagement is more than watching debates. He said Canadians are turned off from politics because they feel MPs can't really affect change and so are turning to NGOs and civil society in order to make changes. "That's why we see so many citizens who want to engage, who want to deal with the challenges they see in the ground. They're doing it themselves," he said. "They're mobilizing not only locally, but regionally, nationally and internationally. They're doing it because they can make things happen."

 

 

Prof. Franks said Parliament is always evolving and always needs reforms, but despite its flaws, it's still ahead of many legislatures. "There's a strong school of British political science that says Parliamentary government is dead in Britain," he said. "In some ways, our Parliament, as kooky as it is, is more individualistic, has more life in it than the British. It's a weird and wonderful place really."

bvongdou@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

http://hilltimes.com/page/printpage/.2008.may.12.pawns