I know this particular speech has been floating around the Internet for a couple of weeks (also available here if the previous link is behind a firewall), but I felt it important to raise it once again, in light of my post last week on MPs not doing their jobs in favour of pandering to the public, and more reminders of how we no longer have a debt ceiling in this country because laws that eliminated it were passed without any MPs batting an eyelash.
The speech in question, delivered by Senator Lowell Murray as he winds down his political career (he is due to retire days before the Senate returns in September), was for a conference honouring prominent scholar Donald Savoie, who has literally written the book on centralised or “court” government in this country, and he spells out very clearly how our system of government has fallen into decline over the past 40 years. But he singles out a particular quote that every MP needs to memorise, and should be emblazoned on each and every one of their office walls.
“You are not here to govern; rather you are here to hold to account those who do.” — William Ewart Gladstone
And yet that is one of the biggest problems with MPs today – they are enamoured with the concept of being “lawmakers” like their American equivalents that they no longer do the jobs that they are supposed to do (keep hold of the purse strings so that governments must prove why they deserve taxpayer funds), and instead spend an inordinate amount of time drafting and promoting private members’ bills which will never, ever see the light of day.
Not that there isn’t an important place for private members’ bills – many a good thing has come from them. But each MP who is not a member of cabinet gets one slot, the order determined by lottery, and that’s it. So when opposition MPs spend all of their time holding press conferences on their bills that won’t ever see the light of day (especially once their slot has either passed or they’ve committed to bringing forward another bill), it sucks all of the time and attention away from the job they’re supposed to be doing – which is holding the government to account.
“Oh, but they’re symbolic,” they say. “They’re applying pressure to the government. They’re giving good ideas for the government to adopt (so that I can take credit for it of course). I really want to bring attention to this issue.” These are all excuses they’ve given on numerous occasions. But how much time have they spent studying budget implementation legislation, or the supplementary estimates? Pretty much zero. Even though that’s the job they were actually elected to do.
As voters and citizens, we should be getting outraged when MPs don’t do their jobs – when they pass 900-page omnibus legislation with cursory rubber stamps, leaving it up to the Senate to actually to the work of scrutinising the bill. Which is of course one more reason why people who think that MPs can do the jobs of Senators as effectively are hopelessly naïve. If MPs actually did their jobs, I might feel differently – but they don’t, and that is precisely why an appointed body that isn’t bound to the whim of the electorate has an important place in our system.
We should be demanding that our MPs actually hold the government to account, and scrutinise just what they’re passing – most especially when it comes to budget bills and estimates. It may not be sexy, it may not seem like the obvious way to grab media attention (totally for the cause they’re trying to promote with this private member’s bill – really!), but actual accountability can be compelling viewing. I’ve sat in on many a Senate hearing where ministers are being grilled over these specifics, and ministers and their officials are scrambling to answer (usually ineffectively, as the current crop of Conservative ministers tend to simply rely on the recitation of talking points). There are fewer speeches from MPs trying to score political points, virtually no six-and-a-half minute speeches with a rhetorical question appended to the end in a seven minute round, and instead there is substantive questioning. And those exchanges are the stuff that good political journalism should be made of.
But we are left with a system in freefall because of our gross civic illiteracy. And it has to be up to the voters demanding that MPs do their jobs for that to really change.