Democracy in the 21st century: where have all the ideas gone?

• Author: Segal, Hugh
• Position: Guest Editorial

I want to advance the proposition that we need to make more room for ideas in our parliamentary and legislative instituions. I believe that the absence of ideas--and the creative forum for their elaboration and discussion within our parliamentary precincts and practices costs Canada and Canadians dearly.

By ideas and their discussion, I mean the open and engaged discussion between parliamentarians around ideas in social, defence, foreign or economic policy that matter to Canadians and that Canadians can themselves see and engage.

This does not happen much on Parliament Hill--for reasons that are not the fault of parliamentarians per se--but the absence of this kind of discussion is corrosive to the legislative role and purpose and harmful to the relevance of the institution. There are structural reasons why there is not much discussion of ideas--structural reasons that while addressable, run to the very core of how things are pre-scripted and pre-organized in our parliamentary system.

As the Lortie Commission after the 1988 general election made clear, we have a compelling lack of engagement of our political parties around the notion of serious policy development and the advancement of ideas. The amounts spent by our political parties on polling, on organization, offices, media relations, websites, leaders' tour and fundraising far outstrips what is spent on policy. While parliamentary research offices help the parliamentary party deal with house pressures, question period and standing committees, their operations are by definition ad-hoc and their contribution not terribly deep. This is largely not their fault--they lack the capacity to have experienced economists or international relations or social policy experts on the payroll in any but the most ad-hoc or junior way.

Now that our parties are largely dependent on the public purse, the notion that they should have no formal legal obligations in this regard is actually quite stunning. In Europe public funding comes with public obligations. We would do well to reflect on what that kind of framework could and should mean here.

In our constitutional system, the parliament of Canada is largely driven by the government's agenda or lack of agenda, depending on the dynamics at any one time. Question period has become what it has unavoidably become--and whatever that is--it is not about ideas, and has not been for many decades. Television has certainly not helped.

And while public servants search...