The Floor Crossing Delema

“The floor crossing tradition reflects the importance of preserving the independence and mobility of members of Parliament to vote with their feet when they feel it is in the best interests of their constituents or the country to do so.”

And that is exactly the point – sometimes an MP needs to vote with their feet. Party leaders can become drunk with power or abusive. Party cultures can change around them despite their best efforts. And it also gives primacy to the party and not the individual MP, even though our entire system is predicated on the role of the individual. We vote for individual MPs – not a party slate.

So said Dale Smith in a recent post........

And therein lays the dilemma when political partys with whom a particular MP is affiliated will not countenance any independent thought or action that does not follow 'the party line' it can leave an MP who truly does represent his constituents (a rare animal indeed) little choice if he or she is to remain true to their original commitment.

Dales full post follows, he is right on the money with this one.......

Yesterday the NDP had second reading debate on a bill that would attempt to ban MPs from “crossing the floor” to another party. Mathieu Ravignat, the bill’s sponsor (though the same bill has been introduced repeatedly by Peter Stoffer but never actually debated), said he felt the bill would somehow restore Canadians’ faith in our democracy.

“This bill also reflects a fundamental objective of my party, which is to do politics differently in order to renew people's trust in elected officials,” Ravignat said in debate.

And of course, he brought up David Emerson and Belinda Stronach to illustrate his examples of people who supposedly traded away principle for power. Except that people forget that Stronach actually had legitimate reasons to cross the floor, from the iron-fisted discipline that was being imposed on a party, that resisted her attempts to bring cultural change from within, that used human rights – and especially gay rights – as tactical wedge issues, and which marginalised her from the discussions despite giving her a relatively high-profile critic position. But hey, she crossed the floor just for a cabinet seat! She must have been grasping for power! Except that the government could have toppled the very next day, which was something she was fully prepared to accept.

Nobody mentions Scott Brison crossing the floor in debate. Unwilling to become the token gay poster boy for the “tolerance” of the new Conservative Party, Brison found a party that respected his fiscal conservatism and social progressivity (seeing of course that his former party, the Progressive Conservatives, ceased to exist). But do the defenders of this bill bring him up? No, of course not.

And of course what David Emerson did was reprehensible, no matter that he may have justified it as being in the best interests of his constituents to have a representative in Cabinet. Nobody denies that. But he also knew the consequences of his actions, and didn’t run again. At the same time, voters in the ridings held by Stronach, Brison, and others who did cross the floor, returned their MPs to Parliament, obviously feeling that their reasons were sufficient.

The bill itself has a number of technical flaws and loopholes, and is aimed at making MPs who want to leave their party be forced to sit as an independent, and that they be forced to resign and hold a by-election before they became a member of another party. Never mind that they could simply vote with the party they wished to cross to until the next election and run then. They could even join the caucus and simply not pay their $5 membership fee to become an official party member until such time as the next election, when they’d have to face a nomination race anyway (which they may not win – such things have happened to floor-crossers in the past).

But technical flaws aside, the bill doesn’t actually do anything substantive to address Canadians’ faith in politics or renew trust in elected officials. In fact, what it does is say that an MP is no longer to exercise their own judgement and independence, and that they must in fact submit themselves to the tyranny of the party.

“According to the Library of Parliament, there have been approximately 194 floor crossings since Confederation,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel in speaking out against the bill. “The floor crossing tradition reflects the importance of preserving the independence and mobility of members of Parliament to vote with their feet when they feel it is in the best interests of their constituents or the country to do so.”

And that is exactly the point – sometimes an MP needs to vote with their feet. Party leaders can become drunk with power or abusive. Party cultures can change around them despite their best efforts. And it also gives primacy to the party and not the individual MP, even though our entire system is predicated on the role of the individual. We vote for individual MPs – not a party slate. As such, we are placing our faith in the judgement of those MPs. If their conscience demands that they walk out of a party that they can no longer stand with, we have given them the authority to do so with the proviso that when the next election comes around, we must hold them to account for that decision.

This bill affirms that MPs cannot be trusted to exercise their own judgement on the basis of one bad apple, and attacks made on the character of a select few others, which don’t necessarily reflect the reality of their situation. This is a sad statement for any sitting MP to make because it admits that they themselves cannot be trusted. It also seeks to capitalise on any voter anger of the “betrayal” of a floor crossing while tempers are still hot, which serves nobody’s best interests. Knee-jerk reactions are not the means by which we should hold our elected officials accountable.

Gimmicks like this bill don’t serve to restore trust – it just reaffirms cynicism. And that’s the last thing that we need right now.

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