Vancouver Province
for August 16, 2001

The Legislature will be, for the next four years, the most boring parliament since those of pre 1989 Iron Curtain countries. There will be no passion … no laughter … no tears … no fun. In order to understand why that matters some salient facts about all Canadian legislatures, including the House of Commons must be revealed. I say revealed because somehow, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Canadians believe that their parliaments actually deliberate and decide matters.

Are you ready for this?

Canadian legislatures decide absolutely nothing and never have in living memory. There isn’t a moment’s deliberation and debate is utterly unknown. Legislatures are like Chinese operas – everything goes exactly as planned. You can count on one hand the times a Member of the Legislative Assembly, in the past 50 years, has even abstained much less voted against his party. All decisions are made beforehand by cabinet and parliament acts as a rubber stamp where some members are permitted, within limits, to complain. Not a single mind is ever changed with the so-called debates that surround legislation – the fix is firmly in place.

Am I saying, then, that the Legislature performs no useful function? Not at all. It just doesn’t perform the function most people think it does. Indeed, what I’m saying is because this rubber stamp process is now virtually without opposition the legislature will fail to perform it’s essential, democratic function – expose what the government is up to.

Legislatures, while having over the years lost all their power to the Premier or Prime Minister, do one very important thing – they provide a place and an opportunity for blood to be spilled figuratively so that it won’t be shed literally in our streets. And this is pretty important.

In a properly functioning House, proceedings start with Question Period where members of the opposition hold to a searing fire the feet of cabinet ministers. The art, of course, is to present a strong political statement with a question mark on the end of it in the hopes that the discomfort of the victim will attract public attention through the media. Similarly with contentious legislation. Speeches in so-called debates are not designed to change anyone’s mind because minds are bound by party discipline, but to expose weakness and to demonstrate to the public the foolishness of the government’s policy. Parliament is never better when in Committee, examining the ministers’ estimates. Line by line the minister must justify his department’s expenditures. The minister always wins, of course, but the process puts into public glare the money to be spent and also gives the opposition yet another chance to attack policy.

Some misguided folk think this is all bad. That governments should be given "a chance" to govern and that opposition should all be constructive – a political theory they would never permit in the running of their own golf club. The answer is that legislatures are adversarial because society is. One only has to listen to an open line program for an hour to hear how divided citizens are on virtually every issue of the day.

Until last May’s massive Liberal victory, the legislature had developed into a boisterous place, the bane of teachers sitting in the gallery with their grade VI classes. It was a place of great passion, anger and, yes, humour. In that Legislature Dave Barrett, the best opposition leader of our time, would excoriate the government benches for their wickedness. Bill Bennett, probably the toughest member of our time, would wound with a vengeance. (Bennett, his government’s record under attack by an opposition member who had spent time in jail, responded, "I’ll put my record against yours any time." Tough stuff but so were the issues, dividing the legislature as they did the public.)

There was humour too – lots of it. And, just when it was needed, often good natured humour.

This legislature will be four long years of backbench Liberals lobbing slow pitch set-up questions at ministers and rising in debate to congratulate the government. There will be little, if any, real testing of government policy and the place will have all the excitement of an opium den.

The Legislature will fail its one remaining duty – to give those who oppose what the government is doing the opportunity to be heard.

And most backbench Liberals elected to this legislature, bored to tears, will come to wish they hadn’t been.