Tragedy in the Commons (16 page)

But the largest category of Question Period–related recommendations involved the Chamber’s culture of antagonism, which MPs felt alienated citizens from politics writ large as well as from the pursuit of political office. An MP who was a former teacher, Myron Thompson, suggested the Speaker should enforce better behaviour, the way Thompson once enforced classroom respect and congeniality. Other MPs believed the change should start at the top, said Ken Epp, Edmonton Conservative MP. “I really would like to see party leaders from all parties engage in sober debate, and not
throwing the malicious barbs back and forth,” he recommended. And of course, the existing culture is perpetuated by negative political advertising, which is currently heavily underwritten by tax credits and subsidies, and produced without requiring leaders or candidates to stand publicly by their messages. It may very well be time to implement Andrew Coyne’s suggestions to terminate this subsidization, or to instill greater accountability by making political leaders authorize, or even voice-over, any attack ads their party commissions. Or, to go even further, maybe tax-deductible donations should not be allowable for this type of advertising, in the spirit that the public purse should not be used to undermine constructive and necessary debate.

“It [the behaviour] could be changed by politicians tomorrow if they decided not to do it,” said NDP MP Bill Blaikie. “[But] the reward is to be left out of the story and to be left out of the story is like you’re not there. And to look like you are not there is to look like you’re not doing your job. So publicity becomes a kind of a substitute for achievement. What do you measure? Well, you measure, ‘Did you get on the
National
?’ ‘Did you get in the media?’ And yet the things that are the most important over the years were things that were often achieved obscurely.”

Where there may be a glimmer of hope is if MPs buck the current trends. If MPs stop blaming each other for their histrionics in the House. If they stop blaming the media. If they stop blaming the Speaker’s inability, or unwillingness, to police the place appropriately. At some point, we hope MPs stand up and take responsibility for their own behaviour.

Bill Blaikie, an MP for over twenty-nine years, might have put it best. “The real scandal is that the place is seized so
often with scandals and alleged scandals,” he said. “That is the scandal. You’re down in the corner talking about whether we are going to be able to drink the water or breathe the air or grow plants in the soil by the year 2030—and all they’re concerned about is who gave what contract to whom. It’s not that corruption doesn’t matter; it’s just there is something ultimately not corrupt but something
wrong
about being obsessed by those issues, and those alone, both on the part of whatever Members of Parliament are obsessed by it, and on the part of the media that constantly feed this thing. That’s the most frustrating. That is what drove me wild and still does—of all the things that we should actually be putting our heart and soul into. Instead, it’s the sandbox.”

CHAPTER SIX

Where the Real Work Gets Done (Sometimes)

C
anada was a fiscal mess in the early ’90s. By 1995 the federal debt was $554.2 billion, thanks to the budget deficits that governments allowed from 1980 to 1995. The trend began with Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals in the early ’80s, and despite progress in reducing the deficit under Progressive Conservative governments led primarily by Brian Mulroney, the debt itself continued to rise into the Jean Chrétien era, which began in 1993. Through that time the federal debt as a share of the economy grew from 46.9 percent in 1985–86 to 68.4 percent in 1995–96. At that point, servicing the debt represented the government’s single largest expenditure—it cost 36 cents of every dollar it spent. The accumulation of borrowing led international capital markets to examine the fundamental stability of the Canadian economy.

When the Mexican peso collapsed in December 1994, an international crisis loomed. Some in Ottawa interpreted the event as a warning. The Reform Party called for action on the debt, as did Canada’s banks and a series of think tanks.
But what really triggered change was an editorial in the
Wall Street Journal
on January 12, 1995. “Mexico isn’t the only U.S. neighbor flirting with the financial abyss,” the editorial began. “Turn around and check out Canada, which has now become an honorary member of the Third World in the unmanageability of its debt problem.”

Nothing focuses Canada’s attention more than seeing its name in an international headline. To prevent the sort of financial calamity that has since befallen countries like Greece and Russia, then finance minister Paul Martin set to work on a budget that would come to define a new age of financial responsibility for the Canadian government. “Mr. Speaker,” he began his budget speech of February 27, 1995, “there are times … when fundamental challenges must be faced, fundamental choices made—a new course charted. For Canada, this is one of those times.” Martin’s 1995 budget proposed spending cuts of $25 billion. It shrank the federal government by 45,000 employees over the following three years. The $15.3 billion the federal government paid out to finance unemployment benefits annually was to decline by 10 percent. The budget cut federal transfers to the provinces to finance welfare programs. Even old age pensions were not spared.

Remarkably, given the extent of the cuts, the Liberal government’s approval rating rose by five points—from 58 percent to 63 percent—in the wake of the budget, according to an Angus Reid Group poll, and two out of three of the people surveyed indicated they approved of the budget.

So how did Martin do it? One helpful factor was that both major opposition parties, the Bloc and Reform, favoured radical spending cuts. After Martin tabled the budget, both parties
criticized the Liberals for not cutting
enough
. But in his exit interview, Martin himself credited the efforts of the finance committee led by Toronto-area Liberal MP Jim Peterson with helping to sell the 1995 budget. Knowing that circumstances required a federal financial plan, Martin assigned Peterson’s committee a stage-setting role. They were to travel the country gleaning ideas on what to do—knowing that the meetings would also inform people how dire Canada’s situation was.

“Don’t meet with the business community alone,” Martin recalled telling Peterson. “Hold public meetings—but don’t meet with the business community alone, don’t meet with the First Nations alone, don’t meet with the educators alone. You have them all come to the table so that when the business community says, ‘You have got to cut taxes, therefore cut social programs,’ and the unions say, ‘You’ve got to increase social programs and increase taxes’—people saw the tradeoffs they were forced to make. The committee did a tremendous job.”

Beginning in mid-October with a deadline to report to Parliament on December 7, 1994, Peterson’s multi-partisan finance committee began “pre-budget hearings,” which provided an opportunity for citizens to advise Ottawa how to reduce its $40 billion deficit. It was an informed group. Among the fourteen fellow committee members were the economists Stephen Harper and Herb Grubel, both Reform Party members, as well as the Liberal lawyer and committee vice-chair Barry Campbell, and the Bloc economist and vice-chair Yvan Loubier. Among the witnesses testifying before the committee were some impressive luminaries, recalled Peterson. “We had seventeen or eighteen of the most important stakeholders in the country.… Business, labour,
NGOs—we had presentations and I breathed a sigh of relief because at the end of it, every one of them said we had to do something with the deficit. Now there was absolutely no agreement on what should have to be cut. Or how to do it. But when you had unanimity coming out of that incredible group of leading Canadian thinkers, it gave a tremendous boost to the concept that we had to deal with this.”

Pension experts told Peterson and his committee not to tax RRSPs or pensions. Others argued against taxing company-sponsored health plans. In fact, everyone who came in seemed to have suggestions about where
not
to cut. By mid-November, Peterson commented sardonically, few of the witnesses had offered any suggestions about where
to
cut. “Most of the witnesses are very self-serving,” he observed, describing a paradox in the consensus he was hearing. Don’t raise taxes, people told him. But do cut the deficit.

The finance committee’s December report recommended a combination of cuts and tax hikes. But public response was unequivocal. The report set off what the
Wall Street Journal
called a “spontaneous tax revolt.” Call-in radio shows and newspaper editorialists came out against any new taxes. Martin had the momentum he needed to convince the Cabinet that any deficit-cutting needed to happen through spending reductions.

Once Martin released his budget in February 1995, the
Wall Street Journal
did a one-eighty and applauded: “Canada’s bold budget ought to be an inspiration to other countries struggling with overextended governments.” While Canadian reactions were more muted, an editorial in
La Presse
hailed “a welcome return to realistic public spending,” and the
Globe and Mail
expressed relief that “the government [had] avoided a crisis.” Almost two decades later, even an organization as loath to praise Liberals as the Fraser Institute lauds the 1995 Martin budget as “a defining moment in Canada’s fiscal history.”

IN PAUL MARTIN
’
S
judgment, it was Peterson’s 1994–95 finance committee that prepared the ground for Canada’s most important budget—which has been credited with rescuing the Canadian economy and giving the impetus for our current reputation as a relative paragon of global financial responsibility. It is highly unusual that anyone should credit a parliamentary committee with such a feat. Unlike that finance committee, which was assigned extensive and high-profile consultations, most committees in Ottawa pass unremarked, attract scant media attention and are attended only by a few stakeholder groups. The general public rarely notices.

It is understandable that Martin would so effusively praise committee work in our interview—he was simply giving credit where credit is due. But he wasn’t alone. The majority of our interviewees emphasized that some of the best and most productive work on Parliament Hill took place in committees, as well as in the off-the-record, closed-door gatherings of MPs known as caucuses. It was in committees and caucuses that MPs could collaborate, debating and advancing policy, and bringing local issues to the national stage. “Committee is where the work gets done,” said Walt Lastewka, Liberal MP for St. Catharines, echoing a sentiment expressed by many of his colleagues. “The majority of work in Ottawa is done in committees. A lot of people don’t realize that,” said fellow Ontario Liberal Pat O’Brien.

We were taken by surprise that former MPs so frequently cited committee work as a highlight of their political careers. Committees don’t always get such glowing reviews. One doesn’t need to read
Dilbert
to know that, in many office cultures, they are seen as administrative graveyards where ideas are buried in endless discussion. In Parliament, it seems, committee work has an entirely different reputation. “We dealt with real issues, very substantive issues, and we came to grips with some real problems,” said Werner Schmidt, a Conservative MP from B.C. He also stressed their cross-partisan approach. “If a good idea comes forward from the NDP, fine. If a good idea comes from a Liberal, fine.… If it is the right position, I am not going to oppose it. Why would I do that?” he said. “The feeling of the committee [is that] we are here to do a job … and then, what can we do to bring this together?”

Because committees and caucuses do tend to exist “under the radar,” members’ repeatedly expressed enthusiasm for them is hard to assess independently. Are committees really all they’re cracked up to be, or is it just that they are more effective than what’s on display in the House of Commons? Dale Johnston, former Conservative MP for the Alberta riding of Wetaskiwin, hinted that the latter might be the case. “Committees are good because there’s a genuine desire to get things done,” he said, implying that other, more public, areas of parliamentary business are less productive. Werner Schmidt agreed: “What is portrayed in the mass media is Question Period and not committee work. Question Period is the theatre of Parliament. It’s not where the work gets done. It’s where the voting takes place, but it is not where the work is done. The real work of Parliament is done in committees.”

Whatever the reason, if the purported “best work” of Parliament takes place away from the public gaze, how are Canadians to observe and understand the work of their elected representatives—not to mention hold MPs accountable? So just what happens inside committees? What makes them so effective? Whatever happens to their reports and studies? And can we learn anything from them that is relevant to other aspects of life on Parliament Hill?

NEARLY EVERY MP IS
expected to serve on at least one committee—a multi-party group of parliamentarians who are charged with considering a particular item of legislation, in addition to various policies and program areas. According to the House of Commons Compendium:

Committee work provides detailed information to parliamentarians on issues of concern to the electorate and often provokes important public debate. In addition, because committees interact directly with the public, they provide an immediate and visible conduit between elected representatives and Canadians. Committees are extensions of the House, created by either standing or special orders, and are limited in their powers by the authority delegated to them
.

Party whips decide which MPs are placed on which committees. Committee seats are apportioned according to the distribution of the seats in the House. Each committee has a chair who is elected by the members of the committee. The committee chair is usually drawn from the governing
party. Each committee also has two vice-chairs, one drawn from the Official Opposition and the other from another opposition party.