Personal conscience, caucus solidarity and public responsibility.

• Author: Koenker, Mark

Mark Koenker is the NDP Member for Saskatoon Sutherland-University in the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly. This article is based on his presentation at the CPA 20th Canadian Regional Seminar in Fredericton, New Brunswick in October 1996.

Legislators have to deal with conflicting pressures imposed by party solidarity, public responsibility and personal conscience. This article suggests that if parliamentarians want to do anything about rehabilitating public trust in parliamentary democracy they had better consider how to deal with these pressures.

The question of how a member deals with conflicting pressures is fundamental to the question of honest representation. If we are going to talk about honesty in representation, we also have to talk about issues of risk and trust. Honesty can be terribly risky in any human relationship, whether in business or personal affairs, and it is particularly true in our political relationships. Why else is there so much public cynicism about the political process if not for the fact that many people feel you simply cannot trust politicians to tell the truth. The media, of course, have their role in feeding this cynicism but I suggest that we as elected members have to acknowledge our role also.

Two years ago my provincial party held its annual convention in Saskatoon. Why would an elected member miss his party's convention, particularly if he did not have to leave home and family for yet another weekend out of town? I did. it because I was feeling increasingly uneasy about my government's decisions to proceed with casinos and gambling in Saskatchewan.

I had spoken against this both in Caucus and in my constituency before the decisions were made. I had voted against it in Caucus. Once the decision was finalized, I had, when appropriate to caucus discussion, expressed on-going reservations and pressed for clarity on particulars. But essentially, I had accepted it and did not dissent publicly until some two years later, when, in the course of door to door canvassing and membership renewals the issue started to surface again. I felt compelled to admit I shared many of the reservations being raised with me.

The upshot of all this was that when it came time to attend the party's provincial convention I did not exactly have a song in my heart and decided not to attend as a way of stepping back for a reality check. It was a way of saying to others, that I wanted to register my reservations about gaming policy and...