Oh look – via the Globe and Mail, we learn that there are MPs in the House of Commons who have broken ranks. That’s pretty great for democracy, right?

Oh ook, there are some real breaks in there.

Oh, you mean that Bruce Hyer, waaaaaaaay out there on the left, actually broke ranks with the NDP last year, to sit as an independent? That’s kind of cool.

How much did he vote against his own caucus? 2.22 per cent of the time.

Oh.

It’s a surprising move at a time when many people believe federal politics have become more polarized than ever.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she was unaware of any other parliamentarians addressing a convention for a party to which they didn’t belong, but she believed it would be a healthy exercise for the Greens — and Canada.

“There’s no point in getting together and being in an echo chamber and listening to yourselves,” she said.

“If you’re going to be an intellectually honest, relevant political party, you’ve got to be open to new ideas from different people and not just listen to the usual suspects.”

May described Dion and Hyer, both of whom will address the convention in Sidney, B.C., on Saturday morning, as colleagues and friends.

She said the MPs will be presenting proposals they have come up with for how to improve Canada’s democratic system.

“In the absence of a leadership race, there’s an interest in hearing new ideas and being part of an evolving conversation about Canadian democracy,” she said.

Dion said he ran his appearance by interim Liberal leader Bob Rae before agreeing to attend, and that he will be appearing as a Canadian wanting to fix the electoral system.

“My first sentence is ‘I’m here for Canada,’ ” he said. “I would say exactly the same speech if I was invited by the Conservatives or the NDP or facing my Liberal friends.”

Dion has recently authored a paper that argued Canada’s current system of electing governments not only rewards parties that secure less than a majority of votes, but is also geographically divisive.

His idea is a form of proportional representation that would see the number of ridings across the country reduced and instead of one MP being elected for each, there would be between three and five.

“Thus, seats would be truly up for grabs in all ridings, even in the most Conservative ones in Alberta and the most Liberal ones in Toronto and Montreal,” he wrote.

Dion, who headed the federal Liberal Party from 2006 to 2008, said it is important for members of different political parties to set aside their differences to discuss issues that are important to all of Canada.

“We are opponents, we are not enemies, and there are some situations where, for the sake of Canada and Canadians, we need to talk,” he said.

Hyer is currently an independent MP, having quit the NDP in April after supporting the Conservative government’s bid to scrap the long-gun registry.

May said he is better known by many Greens for having championed a key climate change bill several years ago.

He has become an advocate for freer voting in the House of Commons and random seating for MPs in order to foster congeniality.

While Dion remains a committed Liberal even after his unpleasant experience as party leader, May wouldn’t rule out trying to recruit Hyer to the Greens — at some point.

“I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t want (Hyer) to consider it,” she said with a laugh.

“You never know. But I don’t think this weekend, that’s for sure.”

lberthiaume(at)postmedia.com

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After two hours of waiting around for someone to show up, May closed the doors to the exam room in the centre block of Parliament Hill, lamenting the fact that no one came by to test their knowledge of the 425-page budget implementation bill. The bill passed through the Commons Monday night and is now in the Senate.

“I am disappointed and very concerned,” said May “I was hoping that at least one Conservative would take on my challenge and demonstrate his or her knowledge of the unprecedented ‘ominous’ bill.  Either none of them felt capable of passing or Mr. Harper issued a stern order not to attend.”

Any MP that received a passing grade on the multiple choice, open-book exam would have a tree planted in an area of their choosing.

The only MP that took a shot at the quiz was former NDP MP and current independent parliamentarian Bruce Hyer. He earned a perfect score.

C-38 is scheduled to pass through the Senate next week.

So you’d split up the Cabinet? “Especially the Cabinet,” he said.

And if the Prime Minister ends up sitting next to the translators in the back row? “Why not?”

The Independent MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, who left the NDP after being disciplined for voting against the party’s position on the gun registry, has put forward a motion that calls for the committee on procedure and House affairs to recommend changes, based on randomized seating. He said democracy is ill-served by MPs sitting in hockey style blocs, waiting for their captains to send them over the boards.

[np-related]

The comic potential is boundless. Imagine Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair as desk-mates; or John Baird and David McGuinty as neighbours; or Pierre Poilievre and … well, just about anyone on the other side of the aisle?

But the intent is deadly serious. Mr. Hyer said the partisanship over the omnibus budget bill reached new lows. “The mindless tribalism has always bothered me, but never more so than [Thursday] night. Most of those on the other side have never read C-38 or the opposition amendments. It’s difficult to believe that of the 800 or so amendments, not one deserved consideration.”

He blames the evolution of party politics since 1970, when leaders began signing the nomination papers of candidates. “Before 1970, the leaders worked for MPs. Now MPs work for the leaders and they use it like the Sword of Damocles,” he said.

Mr. Hyer makes some fair points, although his historiography is questionable.

Even back in 1878, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic character, Sir Joseph Porter, was boasting that he “always voted at his party’s call/And never thought of thinking for himself at all.”

And even then, there was a quid pro quo. “I thought so little, they rewarded me/ By making me the ruler of the Queen’s Navee.”

The day may not yet have arrived for randomized seating but there are other measures put forward by Mr. Hyer and others that could increase cross-party co-operation. For example, there is a petition to gain support for a change that would allow MPs of different parties to sponsor the same private members’ bill.

In the 2008-2011 parliamentary session, there were 441 private members’ bills introduced but only four were adopted. Invariably, this was because parties felt they couldn’t vote for a bill introduced by another party, even if they supported it.

The cross-party co-operation campaign calls for the standing orders of parliament to be changed to allow co-sponsors, so that the merits of the idea becomes more important than where it originates. This seems a sensible reform that would enable more private members’ bills to pass and make the role of MPs more meaningful.

Pierre Trudeau once said that most MPs were nobodies 50 yards off Parliament Hill. But the same maxim holds true these days within the parliamentary precinct — a feeling shared by many MPs themselves. One survey suggested they feel like “outsiders” and have little influence in the 24-hour media cycle world of spin and talking points.

The rules of parliament are not conducive to walking a mile in the shoes of MPs of other parties. Yet even in the middle of the omnibus vote marathon there was kindred spirit. “John Baird is the kid with gum on his nose,” wrote the NDP’s Megan Leslie, referring to the Foreign Minister’s horsing around in the House. The tribalism is not so innate that it cannot be transcended by the common cause of MPs representing their respective communities.

National Post
• Email: jivison@nationalpost.com | Twitter: IvisonJ

Hyer announced last Monday that he would sit as an Independent, citing what he called “lock-step discipline” under new leader party Tom Mulcair.

The Thunder Bay, Ont., MP went out with a blaze of publicity, telling reporters that his failure to be named to Mulcair’s shadow cabinet showed he was being punished and muzzled for voting with the Conservatives to kill the federal long gun registry.

“I didn’t come here to be a trained seal,” Hyer told The Canadian Press last week.

But in a lengthy letter over the weekend to his northern Ontario constituency association’s annual general meeting, Hyer says he’s still a New Democrat and he’s willing to reconsider his decision and to apologize.

“I want to clarify that I have not left the NDP, but rather the NDP caucus in the Parliament,” says the letter obtained by The Canadian Press.

“I remain committed to 95 per cent of the NDP party platform. I will be voting with them … with you … MOST of the time.”

Hyer’s defection has caused a considerable stir in his riding association and about 60 people attended Saturday night’s two-hour annual meeting where the letter was circulated. Hyer himself did not attend the meeting.

“Many people have asked me if I am willing to reconsider my decision,” said Hyer’s letter.

“I am willing to do that: to apologize, to accept MOST party discipline and drudgery, and I am willing to ask the riding association and Mr. Mulcair to let me resume my NDP seat.”

Nonetheless, Hyer defended the independent voices he wrote are needed within the NDP to represent northern and rural constituents, and made it clear he does not like whipped votes in which all MPs are compelled to toe the party line.

“I urge that some sensitivity and flexibility is crucial,” said the letter.

A spokesman in Mulcair’s office was unaware of Hyer’s letter and said the MP did not speak to the NDP leader before he quit last week and hasn’t approached Mulcair about returning.

Hyer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Hyer’s departure leaves the NDP with 101 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons. The governing Conservatives have 165 seats, the Liberals 35, there are four Bloc, one Green and two Independents.

Hyer’s decision is closely related to his support of the abolition of the long-gun registry. Hyer has long opposed the registry, agreeing with Conservatives that it was wasteful, unnecessary and not worthwhile crime-fighting tool. He had been disciplined by the party before for breaking ranks to vote for the registry’s abolition, and did so again in February, when the (ultimately successful) bill to scrap the registry passed third reading in the House. After Thomas Mulcair was elected leader of the party, to replace the late Jack Layton, he named dozens of MPs to his shadow cabinet or to serve as opposition critics. Hyer was not among them, and that led him to decide to work for his constituents outside of the confines of the NDP caucus.

Mulcair, of course, is not impressed. “Bruce simply feels that he’s allowed to come up with his own decisions,” Mulcair told reporters when asked his thoughts on Hyer’s departure. It’s an interesting statement … because, when you think about it, Hyer is allowed to make his own decisions. Mulcair isn’t obligated to like him, but Hyer can certainly make them.

It’s not that Mulcair is wrong about the need for the party leader to have their authority respected. Nor was Mulcair wrong to leave Hyer out of a critic or shadow cabinet post. If Mulcair doesn’t have faith in Hyer’s ability to be a team player, Mulcair certainly isn’t obligated to reward him. Fair enough, and par for the course. That’s politics. Hyer’s been ’round the block once or twice. He gets it.

But it is interesting to note Mulcair’s response. “Allowed to make his own decisions”? Well, of course he is. Mulcair may have been elected leader of the NDP, but Hyer was still elected to serve the residents of Thunder Bay–Superior North. Every so often, that’ll mean making his own decisions. If Mulcair would instead prefer that every member of the NDP caucus serve as a proxy of his will, he can certainly try that out. It’s likely, in that case, that Hyer wouldn’t be the last one out the door.

Mulcair isn’t the only leader to impose rigid control on his rank-and-file MPs, of course. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has become legendary for his muzzling of all but a very select group of Tory MPs, and isn’t any more welcoming of independent thought than Mulcair seems to be. This, and the separate-but-related issue of the Conservatives viewing secrecy as the default approach to everything, has rubbed a lot of Canadians the wrong way, but has probably helped maintain discipline. It’s doubtful the Tories would have gotten to where they are today had they not had an iron-fisted leader like Harper in command.

Maybe that means that Mulcair is set to make many of the same mistakes that have angered Canadians and led to the creation of a small but vocal minority of Harper-haters. If so, he might drive some would-be NDP voters away with such tactics, perhaps to the benefit of the Liberals. Then again, people have been saying for a while now that Harper and Mulcair have a lot in common. So it’s no surprise that Mulcair might use similar tactics and see the role of an MP’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in comparable terms. If Mulcair proves as effective a leader as Harper, and learns from the mistakes that Harper made before him, the Conservatives may head into the next election facing a mirror-image of themselves, but one without nearly as much electoral baggage.

National Post
mgurney@nationalpost.com

NDP

OTTAWA — Bruce Hyer has quit the New Democrats, electing instead to sit as an Independent member of Parliament, weeks after being at odds with his party about the end of the long-gun registry.

Hyer was one of two New Democrat MPs to vote with the government on the end of the long-gun registry, a move for which he was disciplined.

In a statement on his website, Hyer said being a part of the three main parties requires members to follow “lockstep discipline with little room for meaningful public debate.”

“Instead of cooperation and compromise, voters often see mindless solidarity, where political parties are always right and voters are always wrong,”Hyer wrote.

First elected in 2008, Hyer was left out the NDP shadow cabinet announcement last week, which was apparently the last straw.

“One of the jobs of any new leader is to unite their party, and there are different ways to do that. Being excluded from any position was a clear message that my constituents will be muzzled,”Hyer said.

On the long-gun registry where there has been no “real compromise.” Hyer said NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s stance that the registry should be brought back was a major concern, as was the party being “hopelessly locked to cap and trade.”

Hyer’s seat in the House of Commons was empty Monday afternoon during question period.

With a file from Mike De Souza

[np-related]

Socializing between rounds

This blog has been a bit bare in recent weeks as the Championships have taken up large amounts of my time. For this post, I decided to take a break from just politics and talk a bit about the experience. The National Public Speaking Championships is an annual event, hosted by St. John’s-Ravenscourt School (SJR) in Winnipeg. It brings together the top speakers from across Canada, with the top finishers earning places on Team Canada, heading to the World Individual Debate and Public Speaking Championships in April (this year they’re in Australia). The hosts usually produce the best speakers—the national champion is almost always an SJR student.

Preparation is intense. There are four events to compete in. They are: impromptu speaking (where we’re given a topic and have two minutes to prepare a five minute speech on it—nerve wracking), parliamentary debating (where we’re assigned a random partner and have 15 minutes to prepare for a debate on a topic we’ve just been given), the aforementioned persuasive speaking, (a 7-13 minutes memorized speech presenting a problem and offering a solution) and interpretive reading (a dramatic reading of a passage of literature). Weeks and months are devoted to preparing for this verbal slugfest. I qualified by winning the Ontario sSpeaking championships in Oakville in November. Nine other Ontarians (all from the GTA besides myself) also made the pilgrimage to the Prairie.

The weather is always a highlight of going to Winnipeg

This was my second year competing. I did my persuasive on youth mental illness, a story told through the frame of the suicide at my school last year. My reading (a little less weighty) was a selection from Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself, which was able to get the room laughing. This was a godsend, especially when most other competitors had Holocaust and Rwandan Genocide pieces. Other highlights definitely included sitting beside NDP MP Bruce Hyer on the way there—the Member for Thunder Bay—Superior North was so compelling I almost want to join the NDP! This was contrasted by my billet in Winnipeg, who turned out to be the CEO of the Conservative Party of Manitoba. I was only missing Liberals.

In the end, I finished 13^th overall. Not one of the lucky few heading down under, not everything I wanted, but not too bad either. I am on the “shadow team,” so I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that I get the call. There’s always next year, though. The weekend did teach me a lot about the power of words. Here were 50 young Canadians, drawn together by their love of speech. Ideas, perspectives, the future was in Winnipeg. And boy, was it talking.

SJR takes its debating/speaking very seriously

Published On: The Canadian Charger, November 24th, 2010
[http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=694]

On November 16th, 2010, by an unprecedented snap vote, the Canadian Senate struck down the Climate Change Accountability Act, otherwise known as Bill C311.

Scientists say that 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe limit for humanity. We're at 387.

As the UN Climate Summit to take place in Copenhagen grows nearer, people around the world are uniting to show political leaders the we’re ready and able to deal with climate change. Saturday, October 24th is International Day of Climate Action. At 350.org, you can find the location of an event near you. If you find yourself near Ottawa, Ontario, you can join the Fill the Hill event.

Canada’s political leaders made it clear that they need to hear from Canadians who care about the future of the planet, as the Liberals joined forces with the Conservatives to vote down the Hyer Bill, Bill C-311. The bill would have allowed Canadians to go to Copenhagen with some semblance of integrity intact. Here is a news report about the lack of progress on Canada’s Climate Change Accountability Act. The news report is reproduced in part below:

OTTAWA – Liberal and Conservative MPs today joined forces to stall the only legislation addressing climate change before the House of Commons. Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, is MP Bruce Hyer’s private member’s bill that commits Canada to firm science-based greenhouse gas pollution targets. More than 40 Canadian conservation & environmental organizations including Nature Canada, the Jane Goodall Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Council of Canadians sent an open letter yesterday to all MPs urging against delay.

It is feared that without passage of C-311 before the Copenhagen global climate treaty negotiations this December, the Conservative government would be free to arrive on the world stage without a plan, and hold back a climate agreement from being reached. “Adopting this bill will not only reflect the sentiments of the majority of Canadians who are deeply concerned about climate change, it would also signal the commitment of Canada to do its part,” said Bruce Hyer, the New Democrat Deputy Environment Critic. “Today’s vote was a chance for Liberals to join the rest of the opposition to direct the government on Canada’s stance for Copenhagen. Instead, they have chosen to side with Conservatives and delay action.”

The vote comes on the heels of testimony by leading climate scientists at the Environment Committee, who voiced strong support for the Bill’s science-based greenhouse gas pollution targets and urged the passage of the Bill in advance of Copenhagen.

Canada’s “leaders” seem determined to reduce Canada to third-world status. I can understand that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is obsessed with winning the next election, no matter the cost. What I can never understand is why he doesn’t care about the world his own children will inherit.