There are some practical questions to be asked about any proposed rules around floor-crossing.
How, for instance, would Poilievre's proposal or an outright ban deal with a situation like what happened in February 2004, when all Canadian Alliance MPs and 15 Progressive Conservative MPs chose to sit together under the banner of the newly formed Conservative Party of Canada?
What about the Canadian Alliance MPs who, a few years before that, left their party and formed a group called the Democratic Representative Caucus?
Beyond the practical concerns, limits on floor-crossing risk further empowering party leaders and whips, at the expense of individual members. And at the heart of the debate about floor-crossing is a question about what should be considered the fundamental building block of Canada's parliamentary democracy: the individual members who are elected, or the political parties whose banners they run under?
If switching parties is fundamentally wrong, what about voting against the wishes of your party? Should MPs be beholden to every element of their party platform?
Wherry is not ready to suggest that making MPs the "fundamental building blocks" of Parliament really means making party leaders accountable to their caucuses, rather than vice versa. That seems to remain beyond the pale of Canadian political speculation. But his arguments do help to move the needle:
Putting committee membership beyond the immediate control of party whips wouldn't necessarily lead to all of the investigations, hearings and legislative amendments that opposition MPs might like to see. But it would at least increase the ability of committees to more often act with a mind of their own — regardless of whether Parliament is operating with a party majority.
In that way, the path forward for Parliament after these remarkable 12 months might have less to do with reinforcing the importance of party affiliation, and more to do with actually empowering the individuals that Canadians elect to represent them.
