Parliamentary machine headed in wrong direction: It's time to fix it! Joe Jordan's list of how to make Parliament work better. By JOE JORDAN Published December 21, 2009    1 Comment

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OTTAWA—Even before Parliament shut down for the holiday break, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the machine was heading in the wrong direction. Personal insults would seem to be the norm. Committees are dysfunctional and Question Period is painful to watch. So, in an effort to mitigate the distribution of coal lumps, and in the giving spirit of the holiday season, I have put together a short list of things that the Canadian electorate may want to add to their Parliamentary wish lists.

The first request has to deal with the Member of Parliament mailings that have been in the news lately. These are referred to as Ten Percenters, as an MP can send one to every constituent every 10 days. The original idea was to provide a mechanism for MPs to communicate with their constituents on a regular basis. Good plan until the humans got involved. What this has morphed into is a tax-payer subsidized communications channel for party research departments to blanket the country with crap that nobody wants or reads. Add to this nonsense that many times the MP who has their name on this stuff is not even aware of it. So enough, at the very least restrict the use of Ten Percenters to distribution in an MP's own constituency or better yet save the trees, let alone the tax dollars, and eliminate this from the MPs' office budget altogether.

The next item could be classified as more a symptom than a problem, unless you are the poor bureaucrat at the end of the informational assembly line.

For a variety of reasons, the number of questions on the Order Paper has risen exponentially, a term that my son tells me means that the number is increasing at an increasing rate. All I know is that under the Standing Orders, or the House rules, there is a requirement to answer these questions within a specific period of time and I can only guess at the resources that are being sucked into this vortex.

I realize that MP's need information to do their job, but before you jump all over me on this please go and read the actual questions that are in the system. Now I did say this was a symptom, the problem seems to be that it has become increasingly difficult to get any information out of the government through other channels and as a last resort this House tool is increasingly in play. Parliament has a statutory oversight responsibility and we are dancing around Parliamentary Privilege territory unless someone turns the information tap back on. As a side note, we no longer need to speculate about what the "$64,000 question" is, I guarantee that it is on that list and I wouldn't be surprised if the cost to answer some of them breaks the $100,000 mark.

The third item on the list is an old hobby horse of mine and involves Friday sittings of Parliament. It seems to me that having Parliament sit four days a week would allow MPs to spend an additional day among the people they are in Ottawa to represent. They might actually learn that the daily Question Period in the House is increasingly lacking any relevance in their constituents' lives and perhaps the focus should shift away from saying things to doing things. I realize that this change would require politicians, and press, to avoid the temptation to run the "lazy bums" angle, but aren't the holidays supposed to be about hope!!

Fourth, we need the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to review the Standing Orders to ensure that the rules are working under minority governments. This state of nature would appear to be the new "normal" and we should not just assume the system can handle the shift. I would also add the notion of term limits and shortening the Parliamentary calendar to that agenda.

Finally, I think it is time that the old tradition of signing the pairing sheet is resurrected. Pairing is a process where two MPs on opposite sides of the House agree not to vote for a specific period of time. This would have prevented the recent situation of an obviously ill Bloc Québécois MP having to come into the Chamber to vote. It would also reduce the cost of ministerial travel, as the government would not have to drag an opposition MP along on trips to ensure that voting ratios remain the same. The Canadian Parliament has been around a long time and sometimes the old rules actually had value.

So there you have it, a short list of things that could be looked at in the future. As for the present, the coal train has left the station!

Joe Jordan is a former Ontario Liberal MP and now a consultant with the Capital Hill Group.

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