In case you were wondering how anybody could persuade 70+ intelligent, rational, elected government representatives to define a dog as dangerous based only on they way it looks, here’s a Toronto Star article explaining how.
This is exactly what we said in early 2005 when we realized that, not only were the public hearings exactly as Jim Coyle has just described them (a sham), but almost every Liberal MPP closed ranks, parroted a very short party line written by McGuinty’s office, and responded to e-mails and letters with a canned reply, identical to every other MPP’s response.
Not only did they not listen to the valid points raised by the opposition parties and by experts in the field, they made it impossible for anyone with a different point of view to have their argument heard at all.
It was literally the equivalent of a four-year-old putting his hands over his ears and yelling, "Na, Na, I can’t hear you". Which brings me to one of my all time favourite lines, ever:
"WHAT ARE YOU? FOUR???"
I’ve included the entire article for posterity. Link to the original source is at the bottom.
Coyle: Too often, MPPs do as they are told
January 27, 2010
Toronto Star
Jim Coyle
At last word from the mountaintop where his rarefied ruminations are conducted, Premier Dalton McGuinty had not yet decided if he will prorogue the Ontario parliament and have MPPs return to work somewhat later than the scheduled Feb. 16 resumption.
Who knew that prorogation would ever become such a fashionable word or inflammatory concept?
Still, the larger question for MPPs than the date of return might well be what sort of parliament they wish to return to.
There was something significant in the grousing by government backbenchers over McGuinty’s latest handing down of tablets on his green-energy deal with a South Korean consortium.
As Star colleague Robert Benzie reported, some Liberal MPPs say they’re fed up with "one-man rule" and the dearth of opportunity to develop policies they’re obliged to sell.
As it was with the proposed harmonized sales tax dropped in their laps just before the last budget, so too was it on the $7 billion Samsung deal.
"The thing was just presented as a fait accompli," one Liberal told Benzie. "(The premier’s office) basically said `Here are the talking points; end of story.’"
These are hardly new complaints. Every government over the last 30 years or more has had backbenchers displeased with their influence and role.
What’s unusual about McGuinty’s is his almost utter control and the absence of even a few mavericks willing to speak out against the top-down, centralized administration of power.
It’s astonishing how MPPs armed with the most powerful authority – election by their peers as their community’s representative – become so complicit in their own diminishment, curtsying to unelected backroomers, the premier’s aides choreographing even House proceedings from a place in the shadows behind the Speaker.
Too often, MPPs speak as they’re told, vote as they’re ordered. Too often, they willingly participate in the cultish veneration of the leader, then complain when he acts like a god. Too often, they are the voice of the premier’s office in their ridings, rather than the other way around.
In the Ontario Legislature as it currently operates, no amount of compelling argument seems able to change any mind. A premier who has described himself as impatient uses closure to rush through complex legislation. Only under duress are public hearings granted, and those are usually a sham.
In opposition, all parties speak pieties about the sanctity of the process. In government, they do their utmost to limit scrutiny and hasten execution of the boss man’s will. Mike Harris tried to do it with an iron fist. Dalton McGuinty has done better with nice manners and an aw-shucks air.
Government MPPs could do worse than take a lesson from those who have gone before.
Chris Stockwell was a Progressive Conservative MPP who knew the conflicting pull of conscience and career and lamented later which he chose.
Stockwell told Steve Paikin, for the TVO host’s book The Life, that he ran into caucus colleague Gary Carr in the men’s room just before a vote on controversial legislation his government was pushing through the House.
"I’m voting against it, Gary," Stockwell said.
"Don’t vote against it," Carr replied. "They’ll (the premier’s office) kill ya."
Stockwell buckled. He voted for the bill. He was consoled later with the certainty that it would have passed no matter what he’d done.
"But I would have felt better about myself," he said.
Stockwell told Paikin for a later book that, for such sycophancy (among other things), no profession had a worse reputation than politicians.
"And we deserve it. That’s the one thing that makes me so mad. We’ve done it to ourselves."
Jim Coyle’s provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2010
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/756339–coyle-too-often-mpps-do-as-they-are-told