When leaving politics in June 2022, the former deputy for Iberville Claire Samson had created a certain stir among the elected members of the National Assembly by describing the backbench deputies as “green plants”, who had the choice between repeating the “lines” of the government or closing it. In all her life, she had never worked as little as during her years in Parliament, she said, including during her youth, when she was a clerk at Miracle Mart or a waitress at Da Giovanni.
In an interview with Radio-Canada, she explained the role of “green plant” – or parrot – that she was made to play within the CAQ team.
In anticipation of the study in parliamentary committee of the bill on caregivers presented by the minister responsible for seniors, Marguerite Blais, she had done her homework and had specific questions to ask him. “A girl arrives, I don’t even know her, she hands me a piece of paper and whispers in my ear: ‘Here are the questions you should ask the minister in the parliamentary committee.’ Me, as a legislator, I find it insulting, this pantomime of the political game, ”she said.
“The communications team gives us our lines. They tell us what to say to journalists and make us rehearse as we make actors rehearse scripts. She found this all the more infuriating since she had worked in press relations for a good part of her professional life.
Several had put her remarks on the account of her frustration at having been dismissed from the Council of Ministers after the CAQ victory of October 2018, when she was part of the 2014 vintage and had produced a report that François Legault presented it as the language policy of his government.
Elected under the colors of the CAQ in Charlevoix–Côte-de-Beaupré in 2018 after having acted as political attaché in the office of Mr. Legault, Émilie Foster perhaps did not have the same expectations as Ms.me Samson, but she did not seek a second term. She, too, clearly found her parliamentary experience challenging.
Holder of a doctorate in political communication, she is now an associate professor at Carleton University. In a text published in the journal Policy optionsshe makes the same observations as M.me Samson — just using more scholarly vocabulary.
“Political parties have become machines for centralizing power and controlling the message. Impregnated by a logic of marketing, they are sold like a product and are in permanent campaign. This phenomenon is not new, but it has a downside. The private member, crushed by the control of communications and the party line, is losing more and more power in our democracy,” she wrote.
A backbencher has much more leeway in opposition. Prime Minister Legault may assure that the CAQ deputies are completely free to say whatever they think behind closed doors of the caucus, Mme Foster finds that this freedom is curtailed by the fear of being “judged and stigmatized for expressing opinions contrary to the key messages put forward publicly by the government”.
It is true that being labeled a “problem deputy” considerably reduces the chances of gaining access to the Council of Ministers, of being granted a position to which an attractive bonus is attached, or even of advancing a project in one’s constituency.
We have been talking about the revaluation of the function of deputy for decades. From one parliamentary reform to another, we seek without much success the means to make it play a more important role. There even seems to be a regression.
Freshly elected under the colors of the Union Nationale in 1966, Marcel Masse declared: “The MP is no longer the busy and prestigious man he once was. In my opinion, the member is not useless, it is misused. »
Fifty later, the Liberal MP for Fabre and former president of Quebec, Gilles Ouimet, submitted his resignation 16 months after his re-election in 2014. “The government MPs have a role of extra. […] It is clear to me that we must change the grip of the executive on the legislature,” he said.
Like all his predecessors, Mr. Legault had assured, the day after the elections of October 3, that he intended to continue the work “in order to improve the role of each of the 125 deputies”. We’ll see.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, Éric Duhaime, accused him of “buying” his 98.6% vote of confidence by offering MPs a $30,000 salary increase. In reality, it may just be a way to soften their frustration at having to parrot. It’s still a bit expensive