The Rot of Parliment

Imagine waking up next to this face every morning. I've been doing just that in an attempt to watch Question Period for our Canadian parliment. I've tried convincing politically interested friends to do it with me, but so far noone has been able to tolerate more than 20 minutes or so without walking away, becoming interested in anything else, or screaming and raging within inches of punching my monitor screen out. If you want to give it a try, just head to this website, but the odds are good you may have the stomach for it.

People are interested in politics, but their apparent disinterest indicates otherwise. After talking to them about it, the problem isn't the issues themselves, it's how they are dealt with. Question Period is supposed to be a way to get information from the Canadian government and get them to account for their actions. Unfortunately, there seems to be no obligation for the minister questioned to actually answer the question. Instead it is a lot of backtalk, accusations, subtle and not so subtle insults and honking about what a great job they are doing. The questions asked aren't always objective either and often try to trap the person answering the question, which is probably what started the behaviour in the first place. Either way, it has become a skeletal farce of angry shouting bureaucrats, where really very little gets accomplished. Ask anyone and they will tell you bureaucracy sucks for a wide variety of reasons, but sadly we have not created any better system that balances representation, due process, and thoughtful action.

I may keep watching it through the summer, or I might give myself a little vacation. I find myself mentally tuning out the droning Bairds and Prentices and Odas with their robotic reading and rereading of party rhetoric, but the ineffective hammering repetition of the opposition parties doesn't really encourage me either. Does the fundamental pillars of our parliment need to be redesigned from the ground up, or is there some way to wade through the bog currently in place and make something usable a few minor but well placed adjustments ?