Make Committees Matter

Requiring Ministers to appear regularly before Parliamentary Committees would help make the government truly accountable to Parliament.

A significant number of Canadians now believe Stephen Harper shut down Parliament to avoid embarrassing questions about Afghan detainees—like a student who pulls the fire bell before going into an exam he knew he was going to fail.

And who can blame them? This government has repeatedly shoved Parliament aside when the prospect of being held accountable for its actions became inconvenient for it.

Jim Travers observed that it has taken 500 years to wrestle power from the King and only 50 years to get the power back in one man's office.

It's time for another revolution. It’s time we made the government truly accountable to Parliament.

Here’s a first step: make regular appearances before Parliamentary Committees mandatory for Ministers, and require Ministers to stay at Committee hearings until all its members’ questions are answered.

Parliamentary Committees are the most important vehicle MPs have to hold government to account. They allow in-depth discussions on serious policy issues, without the rhetoric and theatrics we see during Question Period.

But lately, we have seen an unhealthy amount of deference to Ministers’ “busy schedules,” with unacceptable lags between their being called and their eventual appearance in Committees (if at all).

They often only stay for an hour, much of which they spend making a very long, general opening statement, which allows barely enough time for one round of questioning by members. And if the government decides to call MPs for a vote in the House during a hearing—which happens often—our hearing is cut short.

This new norm must be reversed, because our parliamentary system relies upon the ability of Parliament to hold the government to account. Ministers should be ready to answer for their actions when Parliament calls them, not when they decide to squeeze it into their schedules.