The Year Of Our Dysfunctional Parliament

It's a critical time for our country. Expect little from those who are empowered to do something about it.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Image source: Nabil Saleh on Unsplash.

It’s October and the Liberals have survived two votes of non-confidence since the House of Commons returned in mid-September. There will be more of these votes to come in the months ahead.

On Wednesday, opposition members of Parliament and a handful of Liberals voted for a Bloc Quebecois motion in support of raising Old Age Security rates by way of a private member’s bill, a move the government doesn’t support. They’re worried about the cost, the focus on old folks over young, and the precedent of being bullied into spending billions in state cash by way of a PMB.

Beyond the votes, Conservatives are using their time in the Commons to investigate the government for this and that, and to jam up parliamentary business in the meantime. It’s their job to do the former, within reason, but less so the latter, unless it’s related to the former. They believe Canadians are fed up with the Liberal government (true) and want an election (false).

It’s all very confusing, unless you start from the premise that the next federal election is underway and nearly everyone in the Commons is now running while also sort of doing the jobs they’re meant to be doing before the official election period begins. If you add to this premise the fact that we’ve also entered an early “silly season,” the antics in the House make even more sense.

Politico defines “silly season” as a time during which “the government tries to govern while the Official Opposition aims to produce as many headaches as possible using the standing orders that rule the House of Commons.” We’re in for a year of it, unless the government falls early, which it might.

There’s plenty of substantive business before the House, real and important matters which we expect parliamentarians to be working on. There’s a pharmacare bill, which the NDP wants passed and which the government has promised to get sorted by the end of this year. There’s an elections reform bill. There’s an artificial intelligence and data protection bill. There’s an online harms bill. There’s plenty more, too — and a Senate waiting to move through its own processes if the House should ever get around to sorting out theirs.

The major bills before Parliament are important stuff. Real stuff. The sort of stuff you expect to get done, well and carefully and, one hopes, with consideration and cooperation in both chambers. But while it’s true that all parliamentary business is, to some extent, political and partisan, everything is now political and partisan in the most toxic way our elected representatives can manage. That’s not productive.

Writing on Twitter, Philippe Lagassé explains what might be driving this problem. Regarding the BQ’s OAS motion — which, recall, passed despite government opposition — he argues

Once the Commons starts demanding --against the judgement of ministers and with an implied threat of non confidence-- that the executive provide a royal recommendation to a PMB, we should elect a new Commons.

The Commons has effectively lost confidence in the government, but for partisan reasons related to posturing and preparation for the election, neither the BQ or NDP are yet prepared to vote as such because an election isn’t yet in their best interests.

The Tories are ready to go for it for similar but opposite reasons: they are prepared for an election. Accordingly, as I pointed out earlier on Thursday, we’ll get endless shenanigans until the government falls early or we grind it out until the October 2025 fixed election date.

In the National Observer, I argued that this omnishambles has the Liberals committed to the balancing act of their lives. The polls suggest they’re cooked and time isn’t on their side. But they are in power, so they’ll want to govern as long as they can, get as much done as they can, and, perhaps, try to sort out a plan for turning things around. So they’ll do what they can do to survive.

Maybe Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will wear out his welcome with people. He’s not a likeable guy. Perhaps the economy will improve to the point where it’s both improving and in which people feel it’s improving. I wouldn’t bank on either coming to pass or, if they do, saving the Liberals. But miracles abound in a world awash in grace and hope.

That sounds like our world, right?

The year ahead is set to be a nasty, unproductive slog — a toxic and unofficial election period in which partisan political concerns, always present, grow to ten times their usual size and everyone is on their worst behaviour. It will be a masterclass in pursuing the lowest common denominator as the country struggles with crises in affordability, housing, healthcare, climate, foreign policy, and war.

Should the election come early, the chronic condition will become acute for a time before a new parliament — and likely a new government — comes to replace the old one. That period will be, as Gramsci warned in another era and context, a time of monsters.

What comes after that time may be worse than what we have now, dysfunctional in its own way, or functional in a way that is much worse than our current monstrosity. After that, we will repeat the cycle, a little worse the next time, and then again and again and again. We call this process federal politics, a series of events from which we never learn a thing.