- Hypocrisy is the mother's milk of politics and so it is no surprise that the party with the worst tempered and most unparliamentary leader in Tom "The Bomb" Mulcair and the the worst tempered and most unparliamentary MP in Pat Martin is the party moving a motion to promote civility in parliament.
- The last time the issue of rudeness and negativity in parliament was actually studied in a comprehensive and scholarly manner was a couple of years ago and the McMaster University profs who conducted the study found that then NDP leader and now NDP saint Jack Layton was the rudest and most negative and unparliamentary leader in the Commons and that the NDP MPs as a group were the rudest and most negative and unparliamentary MPs in the Commons.
- Now, Layton has been replaced by a leader in Mulcair who is known to be even more short and bad tempered than Ole RubNTug ever was and NDP MP Pat Martin seems to have gone over to the dark side even more than he had back in 2011.
- So the whole thing is a farce and everybody in parliament knows it but it seems the NDP thinks it can con some of the left leaning rubes out there to believe it is the party on the side of the angels and therefore the party to work for, send money to and support at election time.
- Meanwhile, Tom The Bomb and his Quebec dominated caucus propose to scrap or amend The Clarity Act so that a simple majority of 50% plus one will be sufficient to overturn a 145 year old country and government structure which makes Canada the only major nation in which something as consitutionally fundamental as national unity can be split asunder by a simple majority.
- To illustrate the rank hypocrisy of the Notoriously Dumb Party (the NDP), amending the party's consitution requires a 66% vote.
- Therefore, either the NDP is moronic or opportunistic or hypocritical or it really believes that its own party constitution is more important than the constitution of Canada.
- Loony tunes indeed.
UPDATED: Question Period rife with rudeness, Layton most negative, new index finds
Sarah Boesveld | May 31, 2011 1:06 PM ET | Last Updated: Aug 5, 2011 5:55 PM ET
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Reuters / Chris WattieNew Democratic Party leader Jack Layton holds up his coffee mug before the start of a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa May 25, 2011
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Oh, The Humanities!: Academics gather this week in Fredericton for the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, presenting papers on everything from subjectivity in ultrasounds to performing gastronomy to the crisis in public education. Throughout the week, we showcase some of the most interesting research.
Jack Layton and his caucus will enter Parliament Thursday with a promise to be a very civil Opposition. Even the NDP’s most notorious pitbull, Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, will be passing out buttons reading “Opto Civilitas,” Latin for “I choose civility.”
But on the eve of the new (ideally) more respectful parliament, a new civility index finds Mr. Layton among the worst offenders when it comes to negative exchanges during Question Period. The findings, from researchers at McMaster University, will be presented to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Fredericton on Wednesday.
The index looked at a representative sample of Question Periods from Canada’s 40th Parliament, analyzed text and video from the daily exchanges and, through a sophisticated coding mechanism, ranked how rude or civil MPs acted toward one another. Though few MPs have the opportunity to speak in the house, the ones who did were averaged out on the civility scale and their behaviour considered.
On a scale of one to 100 (one being really bad and 100 being top notch), MPs got an average score of 58 for both partisan commentating and attacking other MPs or parties. MPs were also ranked 34 out of 100 for their measure of rudeness.
Mr. Layton was deemed most negative, just ahead of former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, while Conservative public works minister Rona Ambrose was considered most positive after the House speaker.
While many Canadians (and even politicians) dismiss Question Period as an angry cat fight, index co-creator Alex Sévigny, an associate professor of communication at McMaster University, says it’s much more than that. This index, which he put together with Philip Savage also of McMaster University, and Andrew Laing of Cormex Research, aims to shed light on the complex dynamics of Question Period and gives Canadians a better understanding of how politicians get things done.
“It reflects the fact that politics is visceral, politics is human,” he said. “It’s not a game of logic and academic debate, it’s a representation of the spectrum of human experience because that’s what politics is. It’s about people’s hopes and dreams and feelings and fears and this kind of thing.”
Mr. Martin said he was surprised to see his party leader ranked most negative with a score of 39, especially since Mr. Layton tried to push for a private members’ bill ensuring civility two years ago. At caucus last week, the leader made a “threat of meaningful consequences” against those who heckle and display abusive behaviour in the House, said Mr. Martin.
He admits to being “as guilty as anyone and maybe more guilty than some,” having been nominated thrice at the National Press Gallery Dinner for the title of Attack Dog of the Year.
“It was a laugh, but it’s nothing to be proud of when you think about it,” he said, adding that incivility has gotten out of hand in Parliament. “We really have to ratchet it back because there’s nowhere else to go in terms of inflammatory rhetoric. People are shrieking and spraying spittle, so it’s really not a pretty sight.”
While Mr. Martin and the NDP are hoping to raise awareness about civility through buttons (John Baird, the minister of foreign affairs, has agreed to wear one), Conservative MP Michael Chong doesn’t believe that’s the answer.
“I don’t think that the behaviour in the house can be something brought about by a new spirit of cooperation,” said the MP for Wellington-Halton Hills. “I don’t think the behaviour in the house is going to change until the rules are changed.
He is lobbying to give more power back to the Speaker who, 30 years ago, would choose which MPs would get to ask a question — a set-up that would ensure more backbenchers got a chance to raise issues their constituents cared about. Today, the parties choose who asks the questions, resulting in far more partisan fighting, Mr. Chong says.
Ottawa should look to the United Kingdom’s model of daily exchanges for inspiration, he said.
“You’ll see the prime minister being asked about funding for a particular hospital or funding for a particular group in a person’s riding,” he said. “We don’t get those kinds of questions in our question period because they’re not “national enough” or deemed national enough for the parties who control question period.”
Mr. Martin agrees, but for different reasons. Britain’s “Question Time” is far more effective, he said, because parliamentarians are both civil and witty.
“It’s quite meaningful and if there is any jabbing, it’s done with wit,” he said. “Wit is a weapon more than volume and that would be a lovely change.”
In the McMaster civility analysis, the researcher Prof. Alex Sévigny found MPs used arguments that appealed to human emotion, the argumentative strategy known as ‘pathos’ used 46% of the time.
Only 7.2% of female MPs spoke up in Question Period during 2010 as opposed to 92.8% of male MPs — a number adjusted according to representation. Western MPs got more representative in Question Period, making up 46.4% of MPs speaking up in the House.
Perhaps not surprisingly, 59.9% of the questions posed were rhetorical, while 48.9% were information seeking.
“Politics is about making an impression, it’s about reinforcing an agenda, it’s about building a narrative,” Prof. Sévigny said. “I think that rhetoric and persuasion are a big part of that.”