Rob Walsh, the retiring nonpartisan chief legal counsel to the Canadian Parliament, laments the condition of Canada's representative democracy in an article in the Ottawa Citizen:
Walsh retired last week with worries about the fate of a Parliament where many of the players have lost all respect for the traditions, conventions and rules of the game that made Canada’s democracy work. They’ve been flouted, battered and worn down by partisan gamesmanship that all parties have put ahead of the public interest.
“The political game has become so driven by the desire for partisan gain and victories that the institution is forgotten. The traditions of an institution that emerged over the centuries . . . are just by the bye and now, it’s whatever works, and that disturbs me,” said Walsh in an interview. “We don’t have parliamentarians who value the House as an institution and will accept limitations on what they would otherwise do for the sake of the institution.”
In the cut and thrust of partisan politics, Walsh had the unenviable job of walking the neutral line of dispensing legal advice without alienating any side or stumbling into the political debate....“The House of Commons comes with a panoply of rules and traditions that are supposed to govern how the parties and members conduct themselves . . . and too often in recent times these values have been, if not forgotten, subordinated to short- and midterm political objectives and that’s regrettable and yes, it concerns me.”
He worries how democracy can work when time limits are imposed on legislative debates, more and more committee business is done behind closed doors, free debate is squelched by scripts and prepared texts, omnibus bills are crammed with massive legislative changes, and rude and raucous question periods are dominated by “sham questions and sham answers.”
Walsh's concerns about Parliament echo the complaints of many diehard institutionalists about the condition of Congress and some state legislatures. The story also provides intriguing details about the dilemmas that legislative attorneys sometimes face in balancing their nonpartisan role with their obligation to protect parliamentary rights and privileges.
A rose from The Thicket to Kevin Deveaux.
Photo credit: Ottawa Citizen
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