Question Period
Recently I’ve been listening to bits of the Canadian House of Commons Question Period podcast. What’s the Question Period? It’s that special time of day where all the MPs get together to yell at each other: the Opposition MPs pretend to care about Canadians, and the Government MPs pretend that they’re actually doing something. Here’s the basic format:
- Opp: Why aren’t you doing [something]?
- Gov: In fact, the Liberal government did [something related] worse than us.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. But to illustrate the point, here’s a paraphrased but non-hyperbolized exchange from last week:
- Opp: Why isn’t the Government holding to its promise to be more transparent by having its Ministers publish their spending?
- Gov: Our Ministers are spending less than the Liberal Ministers did. [Numbers provided.]
Notice how the questions are never really answered? Yeah. But hold on, it’s not just the Government that succumbs to this odd behaviour:
- Opp: Change the budget to match our suggestions.
- Gov changes the budget to come closer to opposition suggestions.
- Opp: The fact that the Minister of Finance changed his original budget is evidence that he is incompetent and should be removed from office as soon as possible.
No hyperbole there, either (the exchange took place over several days).
So, really, what’s Question Period? Its where MPs get a chance to posture for the cameras before going back to their normal, admittedly busy, days. Sometimes the questions and/or answers are hilarious, though, and sometimes there are those, “Oh, SNAP!” moments. And sometimes, just sometimes, a really profound question is asked (never answered, of course). Lotsa fun, overall.
The truth of it is that MPs ask questions just to show that they care about the issues, and MPs answer questions to show that they are, in fact, doing something. It’s not a place where work gets done — the real work happens during the other 10 hours a day that MPs work. It’s important because it lets the Government know what the non-Conversatives care about, and it lets the rest of Canada know what our elected representatives think we care about.
(And if anyone’s interested, the UK Question Period is much the same as the Canadian, with the following differences: half the number of languages, half the physical space, and twice the speed.)