First, who's for and who's agin? Seems that the party organizers, pollsters, advisers, and consultants are mostly hostile or incredulous: Warren Kinsella, Marjoleena Repo, Calgary Grit, and so on. This figures: if you have built a career striving to be the power behind the throne, it stands to reason you will be alarmed by a challenge to the power of the guys on the thrones. Something similar with a lot of the Parliament Hill press corps, many of whom seem determined to be dismissive (though I have not been keeping track systematically). Spend your career measuring the forces among (and nurturing sources among) the apparatchiks while sneering at the helpless, spineless backbenchers, and you have cause to be alarmed by MPs suddenly considering giving themselves a spine transplant. It's editorialists and punditti who seem more understanding of what Chong's bill is driving at.
Second, Michael Chong seems to be playing a long and careful game. His package doesn't push too far: he wants MPs to declare their authority to remove leaders, but nothing about their authority to choose new ones. And there is a gesture at balance: if he seems to be giving power to the "elite" MPs, he also has a populist pitch: empower the riding associations too.
And he is not playing alone, nor playing the rebel. We have seen our share of rogue MPs be lionized for getting themselves sanctioned by the boss, but some of them give the impression that they would not play well with others in any circumstances. Chong's point is that parliamentary power is collective -- and he seems to have lined up substantial numbers of allies all over the House of Commons in a time of furious partisanship. He also is careful to say this is a resolution of democratic principle, not a coup against his party's current leaders. And he has put it forward just as the government's reputation on accountability, democratic reform, and respect for parliament is, well, even lower than usual -- but just when the PMO might be glad to have MPs and the public talking about something else than its own mendacity.
Chantal Hebert, who started out dubious about the Chong bill and seems to be coming around, thinks the Chong bill may be part of a process more than a stand-or-fall proposal:
That MPs take matters in their own hands and have an open conversation as to how to restore meaning to their status as parliamentarians is long overdue. That this debate takes place outside the more adversarial context of government legislation offers more hope that they may achieve a workable consensus.That sounds about right. This is an appetite that will grow with the eating, I suspect.
Think of Parliament as a patient entering rehab and Chong’s bill not so much as a cure but as the first tentative step in a much-needed therapy.
Update, December 6: Andrew Coyne, the strongest public advocate for Michael Chong's reforms, argues that they do not go far enough: that to be effective representatives of the public, MPs have to choose the leaders and not just remove them (which is all the Chong proposal offers).
Coyne's right in principle, but Chong's strategic judgment may be good. Coyne understands parliamentary accountability means leaders accountable to MPs, and that means firing and hiring -- or at least having the power, the nuclear option, to do both. Chong may well know that too, but evidently thinks if he gets MPs practising some real responsibility, they will get the taste for more and have the means to acquire it. But in seeking supporters in the House, he may have found the whole package a hard sell.
Update, December 7: Marjaleena Repo (noted above) responds:
your December 5th blog has the oddest comment:
"First, who's for and who's agin? Seems that the party organizers, pollsters, advisers, and consultants are mostly hostile or incredulous: Warren Kinsella, Marjoleena Repo, Calgary Grit, and so on. This figures: if you have built a career striving to be the power behind the throne, it stands to reason you will be alarmed by a challenge to the power of the guys on the thrones. Something similar with a lot of the Parliament Hill press corps, many of whom seem determined to be dismissive (though I have not been keeping track systematically). Spend your career measuring the forces among (and nurturing sources among) the apparatchiks while sneering at the helpless, spineless backbenchers, and you have cause to be alarmed by MPs suddenly considering giving themselves a spine transplant. It's editorialists and punditti who seem more understanding of what Chong's bill is driving at."
It is odd, because it presents those of us who object to Michael Chong's Reform Act, as"the power behind the throne" who criticize the proposal from that clearly elitist position.
My perspective, however, is a grassroots one, as that is where I have been most active, advocating for more outreach and more membership participation in the affairs of the party. The Chong proposals go in the opposite direction, eliminating members from the all-important leadership selection, as the caucus is to determine who becomes the leader and who stops being one. There is no compensation for that disenfranchisement in allowing riding associations to nominate a candidate without the leader's approval, as that will, in my opinion and experience, invite a new element, namely the inability of the riding association members to hold candidates to a "party line," i.e. to prevent hostile takeovers by single-issue groups and organizations.
I'm afraid that a lot of support the Reform Act is getting is coming from people who have no experience of being an active party member and who are not able to truly grasp how important it is that members have a say in decisions affecting them, such as the choice of a leader. If not part of that decision, then what ought to be the role of party members? Just fundraising for the caucus to make decisions for them? If "editorialists and punditti ... seem more understanding" of Chong's proposal, it is exactly because they appear to have no clue as to the role of riding associations and party memberships in our political life.
