CKNW Editorial
for November 3, 2000

Ted White, Alliance MP, has raised the question of attendance in the House as an issue. I don’t know what Mr White’s attendance record is like and, frankly, don’t much care. Let me tell you why.

For one thing, it makes no difference, in most cases, whether or not a member is actually in the chamber. I know that visitors to the gallery are often shocked when they see a dozen or so people there but in fact the presence or absence of somebody actually in their seat is meaningless. Even at Question Period there are only usually a dozen players at the most who get to play the game of framing a statement as a question or responding with prepared buckets of barnyard droppings – the remainder act as applauding seals to give comfort to whatever side they’re on.

Should the MP, however, be sure to be in the Chamber when important bills are being debated?

Only if they’re concerned that someone who cares sees they’re not there. In all cases the end result was determined in cabinet long before. There are no debates in the House in the sense that you might be persuaded of another’s view or they of yours. It’s all been settled. The leader through the whip tells you how you must vote and that’s that. There are times when you will want to put some views on Hansard so you can impress the folks back home with your erudition but whatever you say will have no impact on anyone who counts.

Occasionally there are times when an MP can make a contribution to a committee but those are few and far between because, again, they are political exercises where the whips run the show.

Perhaps a more meaningful criterion might be the votes an MP attends. Again, this is more for show than for real. The government makes sure of its majority by a system of pairing where MPs from opposite sides of the House agree not to vote if their partner is absent. This arrangement exists for the reasons I gave above – debates and votes in the House are sham.

Why, then, do we even bother sending MPs back to Ottawa?

That’s a pretty good question. The only reason I can think of is so that constituents can, if they have business with Ottawa, have someone to look after their interests. Sometimes there are government grants to grab a piece of … or a pension cheque gone missing … or a useless supplication to be made to someone in government.

When the late Pierre Trudeau said that 50 yards off Parliament Hill MPs were nobodies one could only be surprised at the geographical limitation. They’re nobodies, period.

Opposition MPs are a bit further up the ladder than government ones for at least they can raise hell when the government screws up. The perform the useful function of holding the government’s feet to the fire but that’s as far as it goes. There is nothing the opposition MP can do about anything.

What this means, of course, is that opposition MPs look in every nook and cranny to find an issue that will get them on camera coast to coast. It’s not that their vigorous and fact filled intervention under the TV lights will change anything but it will get their faces into living-rooms back home and that might help them get elected next time.

What the public has to understand is that the ordinary MP plays absolutely no role in developing policy or legislation and don’t let anyone tell you different. The Prime Minister, of course, will claim in the MPs home constituency that so-and-so MP was very helpful indeed in the discharge of his duty but that’s about as accurate as a mother, after baking a cake, giving credit to the three year old who passed her the box of cake mix.

Is this all Rafe Mair cynicism? I wish it were but it is accurate to a fault and is the reason I’ve been on about reform of the system. I have called the Liberal MPs political whores – I have never called any of them whores without the adjective – and that’s what they are. But that’s not their sin – it’s the fault of the system. The government MPs sin is in not leveling with his constituents and saying it like it is as Mr White has done.

The name of the game is simple. If you want to get along, you go along. If you’re lucky you might get a parliamentary secretaryship or even a phoney baloney ministry like Hedy Fry has. For the majority of MPs all you can hope for is that the public doesn’t find you out.

I’m afraid that Ted White might be very unpopular with his colleagues on both sides of the house for blowing their cover.