Parliament's sick, it needs a cure

The Hill Times Editorial Board - November 22, 2010

Liberal MP Keith Martin, who first got elected as a Reform MP in 1993 full of vim and vigour and who stayed with it when it transformed into the Canadian Alliance, and then the Conservative Party, ran unsuccessfully for the Canadian Alliance in 2000 and joined the Liberals in the 2004 election, attracted a lot of media attention when he recently announced he won't run again in the next election after 17 years in federal politics. Perhaps for good reason.

Mr. Martin has been telling the media that Parliament is sick, diseased and broken, that the entire system is controlled by unelected staffers who have more power than elected MPs, that hyper-partisanship is destroying Parliament, and that the vast majority of MPs feel the same way. Period.

He told CBC The Current's host Anna Maria Tremonti last week that when he first entered the House, he and most Reformers and the Bloc, for that matter, wanted to change the system, to reform it. They were heady days when there was a sense of urgency, he said, and a sense of trying to deal with some big challenges facing the country at the time.

But today, Mr. Martin said he can achieve more outside the House than in, and that's just sad.

A medical doctor, Mr. Martin said he got into politics to "make some changes and save people's lives." He was attracted by the bottom-up style of Preston Manning's Reform Party in which candidates signed contracts that said their first order of duty was to their conscience, their constituents and then their party leader. He said he set the bar low and aimed high. But then the Reform Party, as Mr. Martin put it, "squelched" and changed its structure to adapt to the system in which MPs who were more "hysterical" and "histrionic in their criticisms" against the other side were rewarded and the more thoughtful and bipartisan were sidelined.

Mr. Martin said he's not blaming Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the "hyper-partisan environment" in politics, nor can it be blamed on the minority government. He said the same thing has happened in Washington, D.C., and it's "now infected Ottawa."

He said the vast majority of MPs in the House feel the same way. Unelected partisan staffers who work for party leaders have more power than elected MPs, and most MPs want "a different environment, a different culture." Today, he said he would not encourage any smart, young people to get into federal politics, but to develop partnerships outside politics to effect change.

Mr. Martin is right. He put in 17 years, took his walk in the forest and decided he could accomplish more on the outside. Parliament goes on. It's up to the leaders to get together and drop the games and tackle the big issues facing the country and the planet. Being civil is easy, actually addressing the large and serious issues in a constructive way, is not. This goes for all parties, not all MPs, but all parties. Parliament must be relevant. From the inside.