GENERAL DISCLAIMER:-
The points made here reflect Mr. Chisholm’s personal experience and priorities. He in no way claims to represent “the last word” or the opinions of a representative and randomly-selected sample of people. He recommends that people read the book themselves and come to their own conclusions - especially people with different priorities from his own.
Quotes from the book
are in bold type. These include some reported “direct speech” by
the people interviewed; these are in blue “bold italics” . Page numbers in the book, where they are
located, are shown at the end of each quote.
(1) Immigrants face major problems and are generally
not understood
(2)
Some people consider
Canada to be a “great country” – but based on benchmarks that do not
necessarily resemble those of the rest of us.
(3) The jobs of federal M.P.’s are made extremely
difficult by a number of distinct factors, such as:-
3.1. Gross over-work
3.2. Lack of any formal or organised training and orientation for new
M.P.’s
3.3. Lack of any standard / clear job description for M.P.’s
3.3. A system of complex rules, both written and un-written, governing
what M.P.’s can or cannot do.
3.4. House of
Commons Committees often ineffective partly because (a) their recommendations
might be at odds with governmental priorities, (b) their work might be
interrupted and rendered useless at any time by elections and (c) lack of
recognition by government leaders of the importance of tenure for Committee
members and chairpersons.
3.5 Capricious and haphazard appointments
processes (for instance, to Cabinet)
3.6
“Overwhelming” numbers of calls from constituents having trouble with federal
government bureaucracies. Example: former Liberal M.P. for Miramichi (N.B.)
Charles Hubbard reports that his staff handled over 100,000 such calls from
constituents during his 15 years in office with his staffers averaging over 100
calls each day.
3.7. Constant
problems involving questions of contradictions of loyalties to the party versus
loyalties to riding constituents and loyalties to personal beliefs. Party whips
and individual M.P.’s often in conflict “by default” – for instance, because
the whip’s job partly involves persuading M.P.’s to vote in favour of a
proposed government bill when the said bill might go against the wishes of the M.P.’s constituents. Influence of caucus is also
important
3.8 Even
experienced M.P.’s are having serious difficulties on account of all the above,
and more.
QUALITY OF INFORMATION AVILABLE TO POLITICIANS, VOTERS AND EVERYONE ELSE
The issue of questionable or misleading information supplied
to M.P.’s and everyone else by the media – particularly the “mainstream” media
– lies outside the scope of the book, which in fact makes no reference to any
such problems (for instance, regarding unemployment and underemployment). This
serves to severely compound all the other problems facing federal M.P.’s.
Questions? Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member
OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
"The majority can't
appreciate the struggle that a minority feels," Quote by Saudi Arabian- born
Omar Alghabra, a Liberal MP from Mississauga-Erindale. He was referring to
immigrants, for whom moving to a new country is often such an integral part of
their experience that it plays into the dynamics of their self-identification.
(p. 35)
MR. CHISHOLM’S FORMER M.P., MARLENE CATTERALL
She makes some interesting and
important points. A couple of the most interesting ones are, along with
a possible analysis of them:-
(a) When she says “…what's the daughter of a lousy immigrant tailor
doing here?…”, this implies
a significant or widespread problem of negative attitudes in Canada towards
immigrants. (p.62)
(b) When she says “….what a great country they’ve
given us….”, such
an opinion – when expressed – is always relative to the benchmark that the
person making the statement had in mind. Even if everybody references the same
benchmark – which is invariably not the case – opinions will differ from person
to person. (p. 62)
QUOTES AND OBSERVATIONS BY
FORMER M.P. MARLENE CATTERALL, JUST AFTER HER FIRST ELECTION AS A LIBERAL
M.P.IN OTTAWA, OR LATER ON: -
(1) 'Okay, Daddy, so what's the
daughter of a lousy immigrant tailor doing here?' My dad had just died about
six months before and you know, he would have loved to see this." (p. 35)
(2) "What a great country
they've given us." (p.
62)
(3) Her outlook and idea concerning
Canada, following her first election as an M.P.: “….to continue that greatness, to make sure it was a
better country once she left the House of Commons.” (p. 62)
(4)
On getting started as an M.P.: "It would be very wise to
have someone encourage you to sit down at the beginning and say, 'Okay, what is
it you want to accomplish?' It is such a busy life, you just tend to jump in
and keep swimming.” (after
observing that) “…there was no opportunity to set goals or develop a plan.
…” “You
should almost have to go on a retreat to think through what it is you want to
accomplish." (p.
66/67)
(5)
"There are a few areas in which MPs bring very little
experience to the Hill [including] how to run an office, how to hire people and
how to look for [particular] skills." (p. 70)
(6)
She has said that “…few
committees studying emerging issues produce budget estimates, making
implementation of their recommendations more difficult.“ The
context is one where “…Elections could be called at any time, bringing an
end to committee deliberations, studies or reports. Alternatively, the
recommendations of a committee might be at odds with governmental priorities (Inference:
this might mean that they are partly or wholly ignored) She believed committees could do
far more to push the adoption of their recommendations: "Committees should take the
government's response, critique it and then publicize those views.” (p. 146)
(7)
When
she wanted to do something, she found that the most effective way was to
persuade the party Caucus of the merits of it before approaching any Minister
or the Prime Minister about it. This became evident during her time as party
whip.
(8)
On deciding whether to enter federal politics: "One of the things I really
had to think about was, am I prepared to be part of a team and to have my
freedom to speak out on issues ... limited by being a representative of a party
in the House of Commons?" (p. 172)
(9)
On
a haphazard and capricious appointments process within the party (for instance,
to Cabinet), not necessarily based on merit: "You like to think that when you work
hard and make an important contribution it's going to be recognized and
appreciated, and that doesn't always happen. That's one of the most
disappointing things about politics." Context: the MPs told the authors of
“Tragedy in the Commons” that other rewards were also distributed in an equally
confusing manner, and at the party's whim. (p. 182)
(10)
On
some of the challenges involved in being the party whip and her approach to the
job:-
"By a huge majority, people
vote not for the Member of Parliament," Catterall said, mentioning the much-cited
statistic that the candidate's name accounts for only 5 percent of the votes,
with the party and leader accounting for the rest. "They vote for the. party
and the leader that they want governing the country .... How can a leader in
the party ... deliver on the commitments they made during the campaign unless
people feel bound to defend those policies? You can't say I run for a party, I
get elected because I am a representative of that party, but then once I get in
Parliament I don't feel any obligations to what I said I was going to do once I
went for election."
To enforce party discipline as
whip, Catterall relied on informal processes. "If people really didn't
want to go and vote," she said, "and I absolutely knew that it was something that was crucial to
their constituency and that they weren't bullshitting me-if it really was
something extremely important; they wanted to support the party but they just
didn't feel they could vote for this, or they would be betraying the
constituents-I would say, 'What do you want to do? Do you want to be sick? Do
you want to go to a committee meeting somewhere out of town or to a conference
out of the country?'" (p. 172/173)
Questions? Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate
Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
M.P.David
Anderson pointed out that it was rare for his colleagues to engage in….
preparation (for
the job) . (p. 68)
---------------
“Many
(new M.P.’s)
soon realized they had no sense of the complex rules and processes-both written
and unwritten-of Parliament Hill, or how to navigate a place where so many
divergent personalities and issues come together.” (p. 68)
---------------
Liberal
MP Andy Mitchell, "You tend to understand where you come from really well,
and you think of reality through that prism. All of a sudden you are in
Parliament. You are working with men and women from right across the country,
who all come from a different prism." Others mentioned being overwhelmed by the
volume of work and the range of policy files they had to understand, usually
very quickly. "Despite all the people that advised me, I had no clue as to
what I was getting myself into ... the biggest surprises were the demands
placed upon you. There weren't enough hours in a day. There never would
be,"
said
Liberal MP Paul Macklin.
The
extent of this pressure should not be a surprise; following an election,
federal politicians begin work almost
immediately after the ballots are counted and little time remains for
orientation or acclimatization. On top of it all, there are the logistical
challenges. For many parliamentarians, Ottawa is an unfamiliar city, often a
long flight away from friends and family, and they need to find a place to live
and sort out family arrangements. -MPs also must immediately set up and staff
at least two offices-one in Ottawa and one or more in the riding- and orient
themselves to the labyrinth of Parliament Hill and the federal government writ
large. A number of MPs mentioned that they had little or no experience hiring
staff and managing an office, and found little support in doing so. (p. 69)
---------------
"No, I don't think there is any school for preparation for being
a Member of Parliament." Muskoka Liberal Andy Mitchell (has
said) "If you could arrive at
Parliament knowing the way it works and all of those things, then you [would]
be more productive from day one. But that's theoretical; it's never going to
happen that way." Instead, the MPs acknowledged that the learning curve was daunting, and
that the only way forward was to learn by doing. (p. 70)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
"If
I would fault my leaders," said former Liberal MP Sue Barnes, "I never felt that
they'd learned our backgrounds. And it was funny because if you were put on a
justice committee, you were thought of as a justice person, when maybe your
expertise was in health. People in your caucus saw you as what you were working
on, and sometimes it was a match, and sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it was a
pigeon- hole that people never escaped."
Another problematic observation was that for all
the talk about the level of the debate and expertise, committees didn't much
affect policy and legislation. Conservative MP Randy White put it bluntly: "People will tell you 'I've done great work
on a committee.' But you really have to say, 'You did good work. You travelled.
You studied this and that. But what did you accomplish? Show us where the
legislation changed and what you did.'"
Other
MPs commented that the work of committees wasn't adequately integrated into the
government decision-making process. For this reason, former Conservative MP
Inky Mark, for one, complained that committees weren't productive components of
the legislative process. "Waste a lot of money, waste a lot of time," said Mark. "I mean, we study and study
and study things to death and they become nice packages to collect dust. It
[policy] does not change."
Several
factors contribute to such lack of productivity, as reported by the MPs we
interviewed, many of whom had served in minority Parliaments. Elections could
be called at any time, bringing an end to committee deliberations, studies or
reports. Or the recommendations of a committee might be at odds with
governmental priorities. (p. 145/146)
---------------
Tenure
and experience are important to committee work…… The longer MPs served together
on a committee, the better they got to know each other, and the better they
worked together. The significance of tenure, beyond being part of a
"team," is that MPs can become topic experts. This expertise helps
them create or debate policy more thoroughly-which, in turn, makes them better
MPs and makes it more likely that their work will have influence.
Some
of our interviewees, however, deplored the fact that party leadership ignored
the potential benefits of tenure. (p. 146)
---------------
Some
MPs were dissatisfied by the little control they had over the process that
turned the "variance of opinion" voiced during caucus meetings into
the official party line. "You discuss and discuss and discuss, but there's no
consensus. But the leader has to leave for the media serum ... and so he would
say, 'We're going to make a consensus on this, this and this. All agreed?' We
didn't have time to discuss it. And that's 'consensus,'" said Bloc MP Odina
Desrochers. (p. 150)
---------------
…(quote from the ) late Reg Alcock, a
Winnipeg-area Liberal MP first elected in 1993: "There's no orientation. There is no
training. There is nothing on how to be effective."
The political parties certainly didn't offer much by way of
support. Rick Casson, an Alberta MP first elected in 1997 in the second wave of
Reform MPs, found his initial days jolting. "The biggest surprise that I had when
I went down there after being elected through the Reform Party was the total
... I had some ideas about this big, well-greased machine [but] it was
chaos.'It was crazy," he said. "I don't know what it would have been like in '93, when they
all went down there. I went there in '97, and at least they had a few years
under the belt. But, as far as being new and thinking that somehow, there's going
to be some leadership or that someone is going to take you by the hand or
whatever, there was none of that .... You are on your own."
Whatever preparation the new parliamentarians did manage was
largely ad hoc and really began only once theyarrived in Ottawa. "You learn by the seat of
your pants," observed Claudette Bradshaw, a Liberal from New Brunswick. "I was always amazed at how
people go into it without having done any kind of homework," said the NDP's Penny Priddy.
And Myron Thompson argued that by the time MPs arrived in Ottawa, it was
already too late. "[Orientation] should take place long before the election ....
Find out what the heck you're getting into before you ever decide to run," he said.
(p. 66)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
Many
MPs sought informal advice and mentorship, but found that even that wasn't
always helpful. "You're getting tugged in every which way by different advice,
so it was pretty confusing when we were first there," said Toronto Liberal MP Bill
Graham. Even more experienced parliamentarians weren't always able to provide
direction. Catherine Bell recalled asking for advice from a colleague. "He said, 'I don't know;
I've been here for three years and I really don't know.' And I thought, 'Gosh
.... It takes a long time to learn things.'''
Some found their fellow MPs
less than supportive. "Guys
are really protective of their knowledge because of the ladder climbers; they
won't share and ... they don't want you to become as smart as they think they
are. Even in the same party. If I have a little more information than you, then
I got a better chance," Casson said. One exception to this overall lack of
guidance was that of the new Bloc Quebecois MPs to whom we spoke, most of whom
were assigned a party mentor upon their arrival. They were grateful for the
help. "I had a good MP as a mentor," said Alain Boire, a Bloc
MP for Beauharnois-Salaberry. "He had been there for a long time .... I asked for his
advice often. I didn't even know that when the bell rang I was supposed to
enter the Chamber. I didn't know that; I didn't know anything." However, the Bloc's mentoring program seemed
not to be universal, since other Bloc MPs explicitly mentioned that they would
have benefited from mentorship.
Only a few MPs said they spent
time learning parliamentary rules and procedure. …. (p. 67)
---------------
"Next to nobody knows the
rules of the House," Anderson said.
Even
apart from the rules, many newcomers claimed to have had little or no knowledge
of the methods, traditions or culture of Parliament. This was particularly the
case for those elected as members of the Reform Party. "Fifty-one of us went and
didn't know a damned thing about the House of Commons .... [We were like] deer
in the headlights," admitted Randy White, a member of the initial group of
Reform MPs.
Many
soon realized they had no sense of the complex rules and processes-both written
and unwritten-of Parliament Hill, or how to navigate a place where so many
divergent personalities and issues come together. It was difficult to see the
pattern. For some, the challenge came' from the realization that they lacked a
broad knowledge of the country and its regional idiosyncrasies. "I was naive, thinking this
place has three hundred people and that they can all work together on global
problems .... That wasn't the case at all," said White.
Many
had moments not unlike that described by Barry Campbell, a backbench MP who sat
as a rookie in the 35th Parliament of 1993. "We were First Nations, new
Canadians, Ph.D.s, historians, teachers, store clerks, former CEOs, lawyers,
yes, but also a convicted criminal, and, I would soon discover, the mentally
certifiable," Campbell wrote in an adroit series for the Walrus about
his experience as an MP in 2008. "For some, this was the
best job they'd ever had; for others…..,”
(p. 68)
---------------
………. For some, the parliamentary
salary was the most money they had ever earned; for others, the least. There
were single mothers and divorced fathers .... It was a community gathering, a
microcosm of Canada."
Said
Liberal MP Andy Mitchell, "You tend to understand where you come from really
well, and you think of reality through that prism. All of a sudden you are in Parliament.
You are working with men and women from right across the country, who all come
from a different prism." Others mentioned being overwhelmed by the
volume of work and the range of policy files they had to understand, usually
very quickly. "Despite all the people that advised me, I had no clue as to
what I was getting myself into ... the biggest surprises were the demands
placed upon you. There weren't enough hours in a day. There never would
be,"
said Liberal MP Paul Macklin.
The
extent of this pressure should not be a surprise; following an election,
federal politicians begin work almost
immediately after the ballots are counted and little time remains for
orientation or acclimatization. On top of it all, there are the logistical
challenges. For many parliamentarians, Ottawa is an unfamiliar city, often a
long flight away from friends and family, and they need to find a place to live
and sort out family arrangements. -MPs also must immediately set up and staff
at least two offices-one in Ottawa and one or more in the riding- and orient
themselves to the labyrinth of Parliament Hill and the federal government writ
large. A number of MPs mentioned that they had little or no experience hiring
staff and managing an office, and found little support in doing so. ( p. 69)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
Even MPs with prior experience in provincial or municipal
government found the initial weeks and months difficult. Penny Priddy, for
instance, who'd previously served as a municipal councillor and a provincial
Cabinet minister in B.C., said it was "incredibly difficult" to get
started operationally. "There was just so much that I didn't know. I was very
frustrated at not being up and running as quickly as I thought I should be,
which of course is always yesterday," she said.
In the end, many MPs simply accepted that there was just no way to
be prepared for day one as a Member of Parliament. "Well, I think we all did
rather well. But were we prepared?" asked an NDP MP from Winnipeg, Bill
Blaikie. "No,
I don't think there is any school for preparation for being a Member of
Parliament." Muskoka Liberal Andy Mitchell agreed: "If you could arrive at
Parliament knowing the way it works and all of those things, then you [would]
be more productive from day one. But that's theoretical; it's never going to
happen that way."
Instead, the MPs acknowledged that the learning curve was
daunting, and that the only way forward was to learn by doing. "In the first days of
Reform, the big class of '93, our learning curve was vertical," recalls B.C. MP Jim Gouk. "Literally, we had nobody
to tell us anything. Plus, [even from] the little that people could tell us-we
were down there to try it differently. So we made lots of mistakes." (p. 70)
---------------
He ended up becoming the
committee's vice-chair. It was on this committee that Telegdi witnessed what he
regarded as an egregious mismanagement of human resources. Despite its topic, the
public accounts committee had only two chartered accountants among its members,
one of whom was Liberal MP Alex Shepherd. Shepherd, however, had voted against
the wishes of the party leadership on the gun registry, and as punishment,
according to Telegdi, the party higher-ups took him out of public
accounts-leaving only one accountant on the committee. "It didn't make any
sense," said Telegdi, who believed the move "weakened the
committee."
"If
I would fault my leaders," said former Liberal MP Sue Barnes, "I never felt that
they'd learned our backgrounds. And it was funny because if you were put on a
justice committee, you were thought of as a justice person, when maybe your
expertise was in health. People in your caucus saw you as what you were working
on, and sometimes it was a match, and sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it was a
pigeon- hole that people never escaped."
Another
problematic observation was that for all the talk about the level of the debate
and expertise, committees didn't much affect policy and legislation.
Conservative MP Randy White put it bluntly: "People will tell you 'I've done great
work on a committee.' But you really have to say, 'You did good work. You
travelled. You studied this and that. But what did you accomplish? Show us where
the legislation changed and what you did.'"
Other
MPs commented that the work of committees wasn't adequately integrated into the
government decision-making process. For this reason, former Conservative MP
Inky Mark, for one, complained that committees weren't productive components of
the legislative process. "Waste a lot of money, waste a lot of time," said Mark. "I mean, we study and study
and study things to death and they become nice packages to collect dust. It
[policy] does not change."
Several
factors contribute to such lack of productivity, as reported by the MPs we
interviewed, many of whom had served in minority Parliaments. Elections could
be called at any time, bringing an end to committee deliberations, studies or
reports. Or the recommendations of a committee might be at odds with
governmental priorities. (p. 145/146)
---------------
Tenure
and experience are important to committee work, we heard. The longer MPs served
together on a committee, the better they got to know each other, and the better
they worked together. The significance of tenure, beyond being part of a
"team," is that MPs can become topic experts. This expertise helps
them create or debate policy more thoroughly-which, in turn, makes them better
MPs and makes it more likely that their work will have influence.
Some
of our interviewees, however, deplored the fact that party leadership ignored
the potential benefits of tenure. (p. 146)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
…multi-party caucus can be set
up to bring together MPs from different political parties who share a common
interest.
The
off-the-record nature of caucuses allows members the freedom to discuss how
they really feel about an issue.
Some of the debates can be off-colour, and the debating can be spirited,
interviewees said. "One thing about our caucus-
there were drag-me-out debates. You've got people with one opinion, people with
the totally opposite opinion and you try and meet in the middle. It's a huge,
huge thing," said Conservative MP Carol Skelton, who credited Prime Minister
Stephen Harper with great skill at bringing his caucus to consensus. "He's really, really good.
The PM stays there for the whole caucus meeting. He's always there. He'll get
right into it, too. Basically at the end you come out with a consensus. It
might take you the whole time, but you come out with a consensus."
"[Caucus]
was probably the most stimulating part of my career," said Liberal MP Roy Cullen. "When I got to Ottawa, I
went to my first caucus meeting and the debate was so intense I turned to a
colleague and said, 'Is it always like this?'"
Despite
the intensity of the exchanges, however, some MPs were dissatisfied by the
little control they had over the process that turned the "variance of
opinion" voiced during caucus meetings into the official party line. "You discuss and discuss
and discuss, but there's no consensus. But the leader has to leave for the
media serum ... and so he would say, 'We're going to make a consensus on this,
this and this. All agreed?' We didn't have time to discuss it. And that's
'consensus,'" said Bloc MP Odina Desrochers.
"I
have often compared it to a family," said former Liberal MP Marlene Catterall
of a party's caucus. In 2001
Catterall became Ottawa's first
female chief whip, and played that role for more than two years in the Chretien
government, in addition to serving six years as deputy whip. "We could have all the discussions
we want about where we are going on holidays this year. But once the family
makes a decision, the family is going together on a holiday."
To
Catterall, the good functioning of the whip is integral to the operation of a
healthy caucus. "You try, and let people know that you are trying to make sure
that they have a role they can play that is important to them, and they can
make a real contribution through their committee work," Catterall said. "That is for starters.
Secondly you listen to them when they have a concern about something coming to
the House, and you see if there is any way of accommodating what they are
concerned about.
"I
happen to feel I have had the experience of working in a very democratic
caucus," Catterall added. "When we were in government, there was
something I wanted to accomplish, something I wanted to get done. And the first
question from the senior policy advisor was, do you have caucus onside? Because
if you can have caucus onside you can have just about anything, and if you
don't, it's a tough sell. And that says to me a lot about the importance of
caucus to [Prime Minister Chretien].
"From
then on, any time I wanted to do something, any time I wanted the minister to
change his or her mind about something, that's what I did, whether it was the
local Eastern Ontario caucus, Ontario caucus, the women's caucus, the
particular policy committee of caucus. I worked it because I knew that was what
would get the minister and the prime minister onside." Or as Liberal MP Ken Boshcoff put it, "The route to change is
through the internal caucus system."
"Some
of it is quite formal," recalled Conservative MP Chuck Strahl. "When you have major
initiatives you actually have a group that you talk to before you mention a big
important initiative. So if you are agriculture minister, you will have a group
of agriculture-invested caucus members, maybe a dozen of them or twenty of them
even, and you are expected to meet with them once a month. You talk to them and
then move ahead on changes-to the Wheat Board, for example. 'Are you guys okay with that?' 'Does
anybody see a problem with that?' So actually it's quite formal. You are
expected to do that [consult]-and if you don't do it, often you won't be
allowed to bring [a proposal] to Cabinet. You are expected to tell people at
Cabinet level what the caucus thinks about it. [The process is] quite formal,
and actually to the point where, if you can't check that box, if you can't say,
'I have talked to my support group or my internal group,' if you say, 'Oh, I
just forgot to do that this time,' -they will say, 'Well, bring it back next
month-you are off the agenda.' So in our party, at least, it was quite formal
and quite strict. You either could display caucus support or you could not
bring it forward."
Backbench
MPs could affect policy in informal ways, Strahl added. "At every moment of every
caucus meeting, Question Period-[even] time when you're sitting alone in your
thoughts-caucus members are not shy about buttonholing you as a minister to tell
you what you should be doing .... There is a lot of ongoing consultation. Some
of it is formal letters and stuff, but backbench MPs on the government side
have many opportunities every week to bend the ear of ministers …….
(p. 150/152)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
Like all NDPers, Ogle had been
elected on a platform that was pro-choice. Problem was, Ogle was a Catholic
priest who was strongly opposed to abortion. "So this was a matter of life or death
philosophically," Broadbent said, speaking of the seriousness that Ogle felt
about the issue. So when a vote came up in Parliament that hinged on personal
principles about abortion, Broadbent lifted party discipline for Ogle, and Ogle
alone. "I
accepted his decision," Broadbent says, "even though he was elected
by a program or party that accepted a woman's right to choose. It would be
total hypocrisy on his part to vote, so he did not vote with the party on that
instance-as I recall he abstained."
Chretien-era Liberal whip Marlene Catterall downplayed concerns
about the bonds of party discipline, at least as they existed in Jean
Chretien's government. Prior to her time in federal politics, she had been a
municipal politician with the capacity to vote freely; she didn't have a party
whip watching over her shoulder each time she cast a ballot. So before she made
the decision to pursue a federal political office, she considered whether she
wanted to subject herself to the behavioural restrictions required by party
membership.
"One of the things I really had to think about was, am I prepared to be
part of a team and to have my freedom to speak out on issues ... limited by
being a representative of a party in the House of Commons?" The way she reasoned, the party
was a lot more important to voters than her individual name. (p. 172)
This is immediately followed
by the part about Marlene Catterall’s perspective already noted before, on p.
172/173:
“On some of the challenges
involved in being the party whip and her approach to the job:-“
---------------
After Chretien resigned, Paul Martin brought in his own version of
the ladder of dissent. The "three-line whip" was a discipline system that
categorized bills in one of three ways. Liberal MP Roy Cullen contrasted
Martin's comparatively lax party discipline with Chretien's. "Under Mr. Chretien
everything seemed to be like a confidence vote," said Cullen. But Martin
allowed more flexibility with his three-tier voting. "Tier one was like a
confidence matter, such as a budget or Throne Speech [where MPs were expected
to support the party]. Tier two would be policy matters that are very important
and that MPs would be encouraged to support. Tier three was free votes. And if
we thought that [ an issue] was a category one instead of a category two, we
could thrash that out beforehand," Cullen said. (p. 173)
---------------
….to how they were evaluated by
their party leadership, and how promotions or discipline were allocated. They
had a general sense: making it into Cabinet meant they were doing something
right; being banished to the back row of the House of Commons meant they were
doing something wrong. But reasons for these decisions were seldom given.
Cabinet
posts were particularly controversial. Most MPs acknowledged the importance of
balance in gender, region and ethnicity in promotion decisions. But several
said that too many appointments were undeserved-or allotted for inscrutable or
unknown reasons. Several MPs suggested that a promotion was more often tied to
their demographic profile or the riding they represented-or to their ability to
fundraise for the party-rather than to how well they'd done their job.
Even
those who were promoted sometimes expressed surprise at their promotions,
particularly when the appointments had little to do with their
pre-parliamentary knowledge or interests. Eleni Bakapanos recounted receiving a
call from the PMO, informing her that she'd received an appointment in the
justice ministry. She thought there'd been a mistake. "I said, 'Tell the prime
minister to call me back- I didn't
finish law school.'"
"When
I was appointed to Cabinet [as the secretary of state for physical activity and
sport], sports came as a complete surprise. I didn't see it coming," said Liberal MP Paul
DeVillers, adding that he had no background in the area, save for running in
his spare time. "What was the most frustrating was to see people recognized
and rewarded that you know are less competent than other people, because of
political debts," said Liberal MP Marlene Catterall. "You like to think that
when you work hard and make an important contribution it's going to be
recognized and appreciated, and that doesn't always happen. That's one of the
most disappointing things about politics."
The MPs told us that other rewards were also distributed in an
equally confusing manner, and at the party's whim. For example, permission to
travel for parliamentary business-an important aspect of committee work-is
granted by the party whip. But as Bill Matthews described it, if you weren't
"playing the game," your travel request would be denied. "You can see who was going
where. All you had to do was reflect on a six-month period and see who was
rewarded and penalized," Matthews said. (p. 181/182)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com
---------------
FEW PEOPLE TODAY recognize how haphazard the
evolution of political parties in Canada has been. As informal gatherings of
federal politicians, they date back to Confederation; Canada's first federal
election saw Sir John A. Macdonald's Liberal- Conservative Party beat the
Liberal Party. But parties themselves were only recognized in limited ways and
weren't even mentioned on the ballot until a 1970 change to the Canada Elections Act. In
addition to providing voters with greater clarity,
this change was designed to ensure clearer accountability for the ways in which
political parties spent public monies.
Increasingly, laws were established to clarify parties' financial
obligations. The 1974 Elections Expenses Act, for instance, required parties to conform
to spending limits and public disclosure regulations in order to receive
federal funding. And some of that funding came in the form of tax credits
designed to encourage individuals rather than corporations or …, (p. 182)
Questions?
Comments? E-mail Robert T. Chisholm, Associate Member OSPE, at attention_to_the_facts@hotmail.com