People are getting far too bothered by the parliamentary farce known as Question Period. Isn’t it a disgrace, they say. Why don’t they fix it, they say – meaning why don’t they dull it down? Yet QP provides most of the slapstick and melodrama that’s accessible to tourists on Parliament Hill. Make it all nice and proper and Parliament will become less interesting than ever. Far better to liven it up – for example, by bringing back the ancient, honourable banging of desk lids that got banned when MPs permitted TV coverage in the 1970s.
We don’t need a better kind of good behaviour in the Commons. We need a better kind of bad behaviour – in the Commons generally and in QP specifically. We especially need a better kind of invective. Canadian MPs have demonstrated occasional brilliance in putting down their honourable opponents. (One classic: Prime minister John Diefenbaker’s reference to MP Flora MacDonald, his colleague, as “the finest woman ever to walk the streets of Kingston” – an excellent example of an insult that offends a person and a place at the same time.) Ordinarily, though, they rarely match British MPs, the acknowledged masters of parliamentary invective.
Sir Winston Churchill was one of the best. He understood the importance of the spontaneous insult and practised his delivery diligently. On Labour prime minister Clement Atlee: “An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street and, when the door opened, Atlee got out.” On Sir Stafford Cripps, Atlee’s chancellor of the exchequer: “There, but for the grace of God, goes God.” (This wisecrack may have factored, years later, in NDP leader David Lewis’s derivative one-liner: “There, but for the grace of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, goes God.”) On his cabinet colleague John Reith: “There he stalks, that wuthering height.”
But Churchill was only one in a famous tradition. Conservative Benjamin Disraeli on Liberal prime minister William Gladstone: “He has not a single redeeming defect.” Gladstone on his cabinet: “My blubbering cabinet.” Labour Party leader Michael Foot on Conservative Lord Tebbit
There was a day when politicians were expected to conduct the business of the Commons without the mere reciting of hack-honed talking points. The old standard still flutters. In its most recent report on parliamentary question periods, the U.S. Congressional Research Service cites Canada’s QP as an important exercise “that creates an atmosphere of spontaneity and excitement.” The research service describes it as “a verbal fencing match in which precocious opposition members spar with [cabinet] ministers.” In fact, alas, QP rarely thrills this much any more.
It is typically Canadian that the country experiences a pang of collective guilt every time an MP gets off a good one-liner. But the real purpose of QP is the ritual humbling and the ritual harassment of the government. British MPs know this – which is why they consider it rude not to insult their colleagues.
Many Canadians apparently think that QP is exclusive to parliamentary democracy. This is wrong – and the sooner the U.S. returns to a QP of its own the better. In the first Congress (1789-1791), presidents and cabinet ministers appeared in person, on the floor of the Senate, 14 times; on the floor of the House of Representatives, eight times. In its own study, published last year, the Congressional Research Service notes: “In the early years [of the country], presidents and cabinet ministers appeared before the House and the Senate.” It was James Madison, the fourth president (1809-1817) who manoeuvred an end to the practice. He argued – quite correctly – that this parliamentary device could prove “embarrassing and perplexing” for presidents.
Indeed. Freed from the necessity to engage legislators directly, the U.S. imperial presidency began gradually to take shape. Presidents would henceforth be protected from looking too human. Now presidents would never need answer hostile questions or urgent questions directly.
The quest to restore the American QP has never stopped. Congress came close to restoring it during the Civil War and during the Second World War. Through the years, many senators have campaigned for it. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton favoured it. Most recently, Senator John McCain, as a presidential candidate in 2008, promised that, as president, he would ask Congress for permission “to come before both Houses to take questions and to address criticisms.”
There are many reasons for rough-and-rude Question Periods. As one British MP put it, QP puts “the fear of God” in civil servants who must prep answers on short notice. QP helps to balance the respective powers of the legislative and executive branches of government. It gives prime ministers a chance to show that they can keep cool and control their tempers – an essential prerequisite of power.
