It was deeply unpleasant this week to see the opposition parties quarreling like ragpickers over speaking time and over every dollar of research budgets coming from the National Assembly.
With a special mention to the Liberal Party, which showed that a title and a bonus were more important for certain deputies than the mandate they received from the population a month and a half ago.
It is therefore useful to recall certain facts from the outset. There will be in the National Assembly, when it resumes its work, three opposition parties which have practically tied the game in the votes cast: 15 4% for Québec solidaire, 14.6% for the Parti Québécois and 14.3% for the Liberals.
Apart from 40,000 votes—or less than one percentage point of the vote cast—they are all tied, and that does not justify anyone wanting to limit the other person’s right to speak.
In addition, the distortion of our electoral system means that the opposition party with the lowest score of the three will form the official opposition. As if the system didn’t produce enough distortions like that…
Furthermore, the thresholds for the number of deputies and the percentage of votes cast were established in 1970 taking into account the results of the previous elections. They are not engraved in stone in the Tables of the Law and the National Assembly has almost always made the necessary accommodations.
Finally, it is difficult enough to get deputies elected to the National Assembly – ask Éric Duhaime! —, we must respect those who sit there. The rules were essentially established during the bipartisan era and it would be very surprising if Quebec did not return to them in the foreseeable future.
From this should flow a couple of essential considerations: since each party represents a political option which has the right to express itself on the subjects of the day.
So, let’s drop the proportions of the number of questions from each party out of all the questions asked in an entire parliamentary session.
Every party leader should therefore have the right to question the government every session day. At least one question a day is far from exaggerated.
It is true that we are in a parliamentary system and that in principle we could only take into account the number of deputies. But since the law has decided to also take into account the percentage of the vote received, this must be reflected, at least in this central institution of parliamentarism, which is question period.
The number of elected officials must also be taken into account in other aspects. Normally, a party should have three parliamentary officers: a leader, a house leader and a whip — the old British institution of an MP responsible for ensuring the presence of MPs in the House (hence the whip!), but, in facts, caucus discipline.
Except that it makes sense that you don’t need a whip in a caucus of three (or even a little more!) MPs. These are things we can easily agree on if we are in good faith.
On the other hand, the unqualified application of the rule of the number of MEPs for the allocation of research budgets would be totally unfair. In this way, the official opposition would end up with almost two-thirds of this budget, leaving only one-third to the two political parties that obtained more votes than it.
Moreover, the government could easily contribute to having a calmer and more functional National Assembly by increasing the research budget allocated to the opposition parties, which is currently around $7 million.
This budget stems from the oversight and accountability work of the opposition parties in the National Assembly. And the opposition often raises important and urgent questions on a daily basis that otherwise we would learn much later from the Auditor General or another authority. A small additional investment in the research budgets of the opposition would solve many problems and would be a kind of compensation for the distortions to which the electoral system condemns them.
But, in the meantime, the post-election period has certainly not been inspiring for voters, who have seen opposition parties engage in hateful partisan maneuverings that only increase voter cynicism.
It is to be hoped that the short parliamentary session at the end of this year will bring them back to a better disposition, because the job of the opposition, all parties, is to monitor and hold the government to account, not to start immediately the partisan debates of the next electoral campaign.