With his choice of off-colour words to tweet about the authoritarian Conservative management of Parliament, New Democrat Pat Martin set a new low for what passes for political conversation in Canada these days.
But the Manitoba MP’s foul-mouthed rant also drew more attention to the darkening mood of the House of Commons than any reasoned argument would have attracted.
After only 50 sitting days, the well of the new Parliament is already poisoned.
That should come as no surprise.
The atmosphere of the last three Parliaments set new highs for toxicity.
Inasmuch as it rewarded with a majority a party that routinely thumbed its nose at parliamentary democracy to sustain its grasp on power over its first five years in office, the last election did little to cleanse the air.
Still, for all the reciprocal finger-pointing, there is ultimately enough blame for the swift deterioration of the parliamentary environment to go around.
And while the roots of the phenomenon pre-date this Parliament and/or the reign of Stephen Harper, it is being amplified by the current federal dynamics.
Here are some reasons:
l Dubious Conservative casting: A government that does not want to spend its mandate fighting parliamentary fires does not put a pyromaniac in charge of the House.
In hindsight, the appointment or - rather - reappointment of Peter Van Loan as government house leader hardly heralded a post-election government conversion to constructive debate in the Commons.
Van Loan manned the same fort for part of the first Conservative mandate and he exhibited a rare knack for throwing oil on the fire of opposition passions.
It was over the same period in his other duties as minister for democratic reform that Van Loan dismissed Premier Dalton McGuinty as the “small man of Confederation” for speaking up for a fairer Ontario share of the seats in the House.
This week the minister offered an unusual rationale for the government’s systematic use of closure and time allocation to speed its bills through Parliament. Van Loan argues that if a two-hour leaders debate is long enough to decide an election, three or four hours should be sufficient time to dispose of a government bill.
• A culture of minority rule: Most MPs on both sides of the House have never operated in a majority setting.
Some are rookies. Many others were elected during the seven-year minority cycle.
Conservative strategists are accustomed to using every trick in the book to advance the government’s agenda.
The opposition parties are used to having real impact on the process. Both have yet to become completely acclimatized to the post-May 2 realities.
As it happens, majority parliaments can be more fractious than minority ones. In a majority setting, the opposition is not forced to walk the talk of its anti-government rhetoric while the party in power knows that it will be years before it is held accountable by voters for its actions.
• Competing claims to legitimacy: For five years, irreconcilable ideological differences with the opposition prevented the Conservatives from implementing the agenda they are force-feeding through Parliament this fall.
Having finally secured a majority, they feel entitled to implement the measures they campaigned on and, at the end of the day, that is the way our system works.
But by the same token, the opposition parties together earned the support of more than 60 per cent of voters last May. That provides them with a strong basis of legitimacy.
The role of opposition MPs is not that of mere spectators.
• Ongoing opposition bidding war: It is no accident that NDP frustrations boiled over this week. The party has been getting poor reviews for its uncertain performance in official opposition. During last week’s parliamentary break, the third-place Liberals earned the kind of coverage that more usually attends the official opposition.
The return of a critical mass of adults to the front bench of the NDP once its leadership campaign is over may help raise the level of the discourse. But with the opposition parties fighting each other for a larger place in the media sun even as they face a take-no-prisoner government, don’t pin a lot of hope on this Parliament ever becoming a beacon of civility.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer with the Toronto Star.