By Lori Turnbull

December 13, 2024

As the holidays loom and MPs prepare to explain themselves to their friends, families, and constituents back home, there will no doubt be an abundance of yuletide blame deflecting. The fall sitting of the House of Commons has not been a tribute to the health of our democracy, and the fact that there’s enough blame to go around gives everyone an easy out.

For most of the sitting ending next week, the House of Commons has been stuck in an impasse. To quote Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, it’s “paralyzed.” A motion of privilege, initiated by Poilievre, has pre-empted the Orders of the Day via filibuster with rare exceptions for urgent government business ‑ such as this week’s supplementary estimates ‑ since early October.

That there is a motion of privilege pending is not a problem in and of itself. This is a completely legitimate parliamentary tool and an important one for the opposition in holding the government to account. And, to the extent that there is politics at play, it wouldn’t be the first time a procedural tool was used as a tactical gambit. The difference this time is that no one, on either side of the House, seems remotely interested in resolving the issue so that the House can get back to normal.

This is likely because political leaders and their parties are still able to pursue their political and partisan objectives even though the legislative process is largely on hold. Question Period is still happening, as are committee meetings, which means that the opposition still has opportunities to take jabs at the government. But it is increasingly clear that elected officials are not taking their role as custodians of the parliamentary process seriously.

The motion of privilege in this case stems from an attempt by the Conservative Party to force the government to hand over all documents connected to the Sustainable Development Technology Canada Fund. In June, a scathing Auditor General’s report concluded that the Fund had essentially become rife with conflicts of interest and misappropriated money. The former chair acknowledged approving more than $200,000 in grants to her own company. Auditor General Karen Hogan found that the Fund violated its own conflict-of-interest policy 90 times. Visions of the infamous sponsorship scandal come to mind.

It is increasingly clear that elected officials are not taking their role as custodians of the parliamentary process seriously.

The Fund was cancelled and, in compliance with a Conservative motion, the Liberals shared documentation with Parliament to shed light on what went wrong. However, some documents were missing. The Conservatives then claimed that the Liberals violated parliamentary privilege by not putting everything on the table. House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus agreed. The Liberals say they are holding back because the documents that they produce will be given to the RCMP in support of an investigation and they don’t want to set a precedent for using the parliamentary process in this way. Liberal House leader Karina Gould has said that this would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There is no denying that the issues at play in this case, including potential misuse of public funds and separation of the judicial and legislative branches of government, are serious. But despite the validity and the weightiness of the points on either side, there seems to be a lack of earnestness and willingness to follow through.

Surely, the government could do a deal with one of the smaller opposition parties to bring the motion of privilege, and the stalemate, to an end. Similarly, the Conservatives could either negotiate with the other opposition parties to defeat the government and, if that’s not possible, make this their key issue of focus in their fight to bring down the Liberals. But none of that seems to be happening.

Partisan scorekeeping and electoral strategies, including calculations about the timing of the next election, are more important to politicians in our current environment than the most vital roles for government and opposition: to govern responsibly and to hold the government to account, respectively.

The bottom line: it seems that politicians are not willing to maintain a healthy balance between their partisan roles and their parliamentary ones. And we have all grown accustomed to it. It would be the height of naivete to expect any political party to completely forego its partisan interest to protect and/or pursue the public interest. If they don’t align, we know which one will usually get put on the backburner.

Almost all public institutions are in some kind of public-trust crisis because they are not delivering what people want and they are not drawing people in. Parliament may be the guiltiest of them all. Voter apathy is at a dangerous level. Some politicians are winning on the promise to burn the institutions to the ground. Given that the elected House is the democratic mechanism that ties the government to the people, we need to bring new life to the House of Commons before it’s too late.

Options like electoral reform, a more widespread adoption of the Reform Act, and increased resources for civic education would be sound places to start. Without meaningful change in parliament, doubts about its utility and purpose will grow.

Policy Columnist Lori Turnbull is a professor in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University.