False Comfort and Future Consideration

This week I sat in my place in the House of Commons and enjoyed some theatre. It wasn't so much the re-election of the Speaker or even the Throne Speech that interested me but the demeanor of the members during Question Period.There had been a faint hope that this current session would prove more amicable and it seemed to start off with a certain civil sense of decorum this week. Yet by Friday I could detect those familiar undertones that characterized that most unruly of parliaments last session. Ministers didn't so much answer questions as they hurled veiled insults back at the opposition parties. It all seemed eerily familiar ... and troubling.For too long now we are encountering different varieties of polarizers in politics, in all parties, who breed and benefit from confrontation. They are not a large group but they have begun to define politics in Canada, and it's not a pretty sight. As the week wore on, I thought of the observations of the American poet, Richard Armour, when he said: "Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left, instead of right or wrong."Every single parliamentarian in the House is acutely aware that this past election formed a kind of judgement on all of us for spending too much time in partisan attacks and too little energy on working cooperatively for some of the huge issues that now confront us. Yet from the moment we entered the chamber you could see various members subtly attempting to take the gloves off, hoping no one would notice. But of course we did and by the time the week ended I could see the polarizers strutting their stuff on the various panel shows - everything new was old again.Over the next few entries I want to take a stab at putting out some new ideas for a more non-partisan House of Commons and what exactly that might look like. Having already spoken with a number of MPs from various parties on this subject, I can discern my ruminations won't be taken seriously. But unless all of us make some type of effort in this direction we will only witness the continued erosion of voter turnout and the increasing irrelevance of national government. Many seasoned MPs informed me in the last few days that I'm living a pipe-dream if I honestly think these ideas can work. But that's just the thing: I do believe it and I want to explore the possibilities. The alternative is not one I would like to consider.The drama critic George Nathan could well have been speaking to the Canadian condition when he penned: "Bad officials are elected by good citizens, who do not vote." We have to do better, politicians and citizens both, if we wish to find a future that has been as effective and accommodating as our past. To non-partisanship we move then, in hopes that something workable might emerge that can assist both politicians and media alike to search for a more effective collective condition.