If question period is ‘broken,’ is anyone going to fix it?

“Question period is broken,” Liberal MP Corey Hogan told the House of Commons last week.

In fairness to the current state of question period — and those responsible for it — this is hardly a new complaint. One could spend a long time discussing how Parliament’s daily airing of grievances came to be the way it is or who has made it so.

But just because question period has long been lamented does not mean it isn’t worth lamenting anew.

“The current format of question period falls short of its goal of providing true accountability,” Hogan said. “There are shallow questions, shallow answers, a degree of repetition that would make an advertiser blush and mad applause on both sides as though we were hitting oratory high scores in 35-second exchanges about procurement. “

If he could convey one thing in his remarks, Hogan said, it was “that it does not need to be this way.”

That is the eternal promise of political reform. But if question period and other elements of Parliament don’t need to be the way they are, change still requires someone to actually do something about it.

The House of Commons considers itself

Hogan was leading debate during what is typically a little-noticed day on Parliament Hill: the day that is designated near the start of each new Parliament for MPs to discuss possible changes to the standing orders and procedures of the House. In this case, the debate was being held on a Friday, a traditionally half-hearted day in the House that plays out while many MPs have already left Ottawa for the weekend.

Hogan had at least generated some attention last week by publicizing his suggested reforms ahead of the official debate.

“After talking with colleagues on both sides of the House, I … do not believe that what I am going to say is remotely controversial, though we may disagree on how best to resolve it,” Hogan said on Friday.

WATCH | Liberal MP proposes reform:

Liberal MP proposes reform for ‘broken’ question period in House of Commons

Rookie Liberal MP Corey Hogan proposed changes to the daily question and answer period in the House of Commons on Friday, suggesting experiments and proposing ideas like extending the time limit for longer, more detailed interrogations. ‘I believe Canadians deserve better.’

To start, the Liberal MP would like to lengthen the time allowed for each question and response, at least for a couple sessions of QP each week. Hogan hopes this might allow for substantive exchanges.

As others have proposed in years past, Hogan suggests the House could establish a rotation that would have QP focused on certain ministers each day. And he’d like to somehow reduce the repetition that now dominates QP each afternoon (QP has lately devolved into a procession of MPs essentially repeating the same question over and over again, perhaps purely for the sake of generating social media clips).

“I am new to the House, but what I have learned is that while we disagree often and vigorously, we have a chamber full of dedicated, kind and brilliant people from all walks of life; we just do not act accordingly in the chamber,” Hogan told the House last week. “Question period as currently constructed shows us at our worst, not our best, so let us improve, or at least try to improve. I believe that Canadians deserve better, and I believe we can do better. I hope to work with all members in providing them with better.”

Conservative MP Michael Chong rose after Hogan had finished and noted that much of what Hogan proposed was in line with a motion that Chong once tabled in the House. 

“Canadians know that something is not quite right with their democratic institutions,” Chong said when he presented that motion. “They know that something is not the way it should be.”

That was in 2010. 

In his own speech on Friday, Chong focused on three areas of potential reform.

First, he said, the Speaker should once again have the power to decide who speaks in the House, instead of party whips. Second, committees should be made more independent from party leaders and whips. And third, the prime minister should not have the power to select key parliamentary officers.

“I think checks and balances on power and how power is distributed in Parliament are an extremely important topic of debate,” Chong said. “We have all seen what has happened in other democracies over the last number of years, the weakening of guardrails and the importance of guardrails in restraining executive power.”

If knit together, Hogan and Chong’s proposals could form the basis of an ambitious reform agenda. And the rest of the day’s debate covered an array of possible tweaks to the finer points of parliamentary procedure.

But it remains to be seen whether anything will come of Friday’s discussion.

Will anything come of these hopes for reform?

Officially, last week’s debate has been referred to the procedure and House affairs committee for consideration. But the committee is not obligated to pursue a study or report back to the House.

“This debate is interesting to members who are interested in parliamentary procedure, but only when the committee on parliamentary affairs … reviews these suggestions carefully and reports back to the House with recommendations that MPs can support can we change the standing orders instead of just talking about changing the standing orders,” Conservative MP Pat Kelly said in concluding his own contribution to the debate.

In recent parliaments, MPs have declined to give reform much consideration — and it’s arguably been 40 years since MPs last conducted a comprehensive review of how the House of Commons works.

An attempt by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to launch a discussion of reform in 2017 came to nothing. A Liberal MP later proposed a raft of changes in 2019, but only months before the House was dissolved for a new election.   

Chong’s motion in 2010 passed an initial vote in the House, but then went nowhere at committee.

The procedure and House affairs committee is currently pursuing a study of foreign interference, but at least one member — vice-chair Michael Cooper, a Conservative MP — says he’d be interested in reviewing the standing orders.

“At present, there are no plans by [procedure and House affairs] to study the standing orders. However, I am interested in seeing that a study be undertaken, which in my opinion is long overdue,” he wrote in an email this week. “Without more, a one-day debate on proposed changes to the standing orders in each Parliament is inadequate. I am hopeful that a study can be taken up in this Parliament.”

If question period is broken, the next question is whether anyone is willing to try to fix it.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/question-period-reform-hogan-chong-analysis-9.7083463?cmp=rss