Navigating Party Discipline.

• Date: 22 December 2020
• Author: Loder, Hannah

Parliamentarians are rarely forthcoming about the furtive phenomenon of party discipline. A recent public event at Memorial University of Newfoundland brought together four political mavericks to discuss their experiences with the constraints of party discipline. Two of them were sitting members of parliamentary assemblies who in 2019 accomplished the rare feat of being elected as an Independent. The discussion was moderated by the Samara Centre for Democracy.

**********

On February 6, Memorial University hosted a public discussion called "Navigating Party Discipline," sponsored in part by the Royal Society of Canada. Moderated by the Samara Centre for Democracy's Michael Morden, the St. John's event brought in a 300-person audience for a frank discussion with four politicians who have experienced first-hand the harsh reality of party discipline in Canada.

The panellists included Independent Member of Parliament Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Liberal MP Jane Philpott, former New Democratic Party MP Ryan Cleary, and current Independent member of the Newfoundland House of Assembly Paul Lane. Participants were selected based upon their experiences of chafing against the Canadian party system. In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau removed Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from the federal Liberal caucus for speaking out during the SNC-Lavalin affair. They ran as Independent candidates in the ensuing federal election, with Wilson-Raybould retaining her seat in the House of Commons. Cleary, a former chief editor of the Independent newspaper, sat as an NDP MP from 2011 to 2015, and soon thereafter ran as a provincial Progressive Conservative candidate. Lane was elected to the Newfoundland House of Assembly as a Progressive Conservative in 2011, as a Liberal in 2015, and as an Independent in 2019. It was a rare opportunity for two sitting Independents from two different legislatures representing constituencies at opposite ends of the country to participate in the same interactive forum.

The event began with a word from Memorial Political Science Professor Alex Marland. Marland provided an overview of his research on the phenomenon of party discipline in Canada and his new book Whipped: Party Discipline in Canada (UBC Press, 2020). He emphasized the intrinsic difficulty in collecting data due to the private nature of political parties and the constraints on parliamentarians placed on them by party leadership.

Marland further remarked that "party discipline...