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Reflecting on declining voter turnouts and deepening disdain for federal politics, JackLayton deplores incivility in Parliament, but traces citizen disengagement to deepercurrents. Simmering disenfranchisement is peaking under a “pseudo-majority”government based on a minority of both votes and seats. Layton also unpacks a“generation-long process,” driven by vested interests, of teaching citizens that Ottawahas no positive role to play in their lives. Undeterred, the New Democrat leaderoutlines his hopeful vision that Canadians will re-take ownership of their federalgovernment — as a concrete embodiment of our collective capacities as citizens.

À propos du recul de la participation électorale et du dépit grandissant suscité par lapolitique fédérale, Jack Layton déplore l’incivilité qui règne au Parlement mais trouvedes causes plus profondes au désengagement citoyen. Il couve selon lui un réeldésenchantement face à un gouvernement « pseudo-majoritaire » qui n’a obtenuqu’une minorité de sièges et de suffrages. Le chef du NPD regrette aussi qu’unprocessus fondé sur des intérêts en place depuis une génération en soit venu àconvaincre les Canadiens qu’Ottawa ne peut jouer aucun rôle positif dans leur vie.Optimiste malgré tout, il croit possible que nos concitoyens se réapproprient ungouvernement fédéral qui puisse incarner leur capacité collective.

N early five years ago, a Canadian election turned onStephen Harper’s promise that his Conservativeswould bring accountability and transparency back

to Canadian democracy. Parliament would once again berespected, and the needs of Canadians put ahead ofentrenched interests and the old ways.

So much for that. Even his commitment to level the political playing field

by assigning fixed election dates — signed into law withmuch earnest chest-beating — was cast off for partisanadvantage. Inside players, lobbyists and cynical manoeu-vring to disempower the House of Commons dominates ourgovernment more than ever. Parliamentary debate contin-ues to degenerate, as if to underline its growing irrelevanceto results on the ground.

Is it any wonder more Canadians are turning off? More andmore are staying home on election day in a mass condemnationof our democratic institutions: “A pox on all their houses!”

Through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, 75 percent of usregularly participated in federal elections. By 2008, voterturnout had collapsed to 59 percent, an all-time low. Ifturnout rates were akin to blood pressure readings, ourdemocracy would be headed to the ER. Among those who

do troop dutifully to the polls, the two parties that havealternated in government since Confederation can nowmuster the support of barely half between them.

Canadians are clearly not happy with the traditionalofferings.

Is today’s sorry state of affairs all Stephen Harper’s fault? No. His government is certainly accelerating a trend. But

this trend is founded on ideology that’s limited neither toConservatives nor to Canada. Its essence argues that citizens arebest off left to our own devices. Therefore, this ideology holds,the only things we can and should do together through our fed-eral government are to stop bad people through our justice sys-tem, immigration policies and a robust defence infrastructure.

S o much for working together to achieve better health careand education, basic social equality, a viable environ-

ment, livable communities or a robust economy. Not to men-tion doing our part to create a more peaceful and sustainableworld. Ottawa is increasingly gripped by a belief that weCanadians cannot and should not do substantial thingstogether through our government.

As a city councillor in Toronto, I saw the first dramaticand tangible evidence of this thinking taking hold in Canada

SOMETHING’S WRONG INOTTAWA: GETTING CANADIANSRE-ENGAGED IN DEMOCRACYJack Layton

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with the 1995 federal budget. Thatbudget launched cascading cuts tomany of the programs and policies thathad been built by the postwar genera-tion. That left cities like mine scram-bling to cobble together socialinfrastructure to protect the most vul-nerable. Often we found ourselves hav-ing to rob Peter to pay Paul — deferringinvestment in roads and sewers to fundchild care subsidies or social housing.

Ottawa’s punishing cuts were

wrapped up in the seductive notion ofwrestling a budget deficit to the ground.For the old-line parties, “deficit fighting”became the big new pan-Canadian proj-ect. But even though that deficit was gonein three years, reckless cuts continued forten. And these cuts drove a generationalwedge between the federal governmentand programs that defined us asCanadians — health care, post-secondaryeducation, inequality-reducing socialtransfers, family-protecting employmentinsurance, affordable housing.

T hose cuts set Canada on a course forneedless human misery and social

inequality. A second predictable resulthas been massive surpluses of tax rev-enues and EI premiums. But instead ofusing those funds to rethink and rein-vest, both old-line parties have givenaway most of that capacity as tax cuts,mostly to those with little need for them.

Now we have a federal govern-ment that does less for Canadians. Nowonder Canadians care less about theirfederal government.

When Canadians criticize federalpolitics, many cite incivility amongpoliticians themselves. Even in myseven years on the Hill, I’ve witnessed adecline, especially in Question Period.There’s too much adolescent name-calling, especially from the govern-

ment side. Too many ministers duckquestions, day after day, by returningfire with sputtering aggression.

When the remarkable EdBroadbent retired for a second time in2005, he shared these pointed wordswith colleagues in the House:

If I were a teacher, I would notwant to bring high-school stu-dents into Question Period anylonger. There is a differencebetween personal remarks based

on animosity and vigorousdebate reflecting big differencesof judgment...However we maydiffer, we are all human and weall have the right to have ourinner dignity respected, especial-ly in debate in the House.(Hansard, May 5, 2005)At times, incivility even blends into

outright harassment, even misogyny.When Belinda Stronach crossed the floorfrom the Conservatives in 2005, one-time colleagues called her a “dipstick”and a “whore.” Alexa McDonough,while serving as my foreign affairs critic,was told to “stick to her knitting” by theman who is now Canada’s defence min-ister. At its worst, posturing in Ottawaseems almost designed to turn off voters,as if to telegraph, “There’s nothing wor-thy of your attention here.”

I do believe that fading decorum islinked to a deeper shift that is takingplace in Ottawa. This is a structuralshift in how power is exercised inOttawa — a shift that is increasinglyundermining Parliament as the seat ofour democracy.

“It’s about who you know in thePMO.” Fifteen years after Paul Martinused that line to poke Jean Chrétien,power continues to concentrate in thePrime Minister’s Office. Today’s PMO isan integrated policy and promotions

shop that treats the best-connectedlobbyists as privileged clients. Thatleaves our elected House of Commonsless empowered to represent voters andkeep prime ministerial power in check.

Stephen Harper has gone furtherthan any past prime minister to under-mine Parliament’s constitutionalsupremacy. He has ignored duly adopt-ed motions of the House. He hasignored legal orders to hand over doc-uments to members for scrutiny. He

has instructed political staffto ignore summonses totestify at committee. Hescuttled the PublicAppointments Commissionwhen Parliament vetoed hishand-picked chair. He evenprorogued Parliament forpartisan ends, once to save

his government from defeat, thenagain to sidestep legitimate questionsabout his government’s knowledge ofAfghan prisoner transfers.

M y assessment: As MPs sense thattheir Parliament is being sup-

planted by the PMO, gravitas tends tofade and posturing tends to thrive.Some government backbenchers seemto approach the House as a self-con-tained political game, as opposed to aforum for getting practical results forCanadians back home.

I’ll be plain: I don’t believe thatincivility alone is driving Canadiansen masse away for Ottawa. When Iexplore this more deeply withCanadians on my travels, I usually findthat they are experiencing Houseantics as symbolic of a deeper malaise— of a democracy that’s losing its con-nection with ordinary citizens.

While voter alienation has been sim-mering for some time, many peoplebelieve it’s coming to a head underStephen Harper’s government. I sense apublic mood that bounces between disin-terest, perplexity and despair. Democracyshould not have to feel this way.

Canada’s first-past-the-post votingsystem has long fuelled voter disen-gagement. When a party can win all ofthe power with a minority of votes,

Something’s wrong in Ottawa: Getting Canadians re-engaged in democracy

Even though that deficit was gone in three years, reckless cutscontinued for ten. And these cuts drove a generational wedgebetween the federal government and programs that definedus as Canadians — health care, post-secondary education,inequality-reducing social transfers, family-protectingemployment insurance, affordable housing.

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people start to wonder if their votesreally count. But now look: Even aminority of seats seems to be givingone party 100 percent of the power —executive and legislative too.Something’s wrong in Ottawa, andCanadians feel it.

Beneath all the posturing, we’vehad a stable but unacknowledged gov-erning coalition in Ottawa since 2006.As I write, the opposition Liberals havebacked the Harper governmentthrough 108 confidence votes. Theyhave done so without securing anyconcessions on behalf of their voters.For a brief stretch last year, MichaelIgnatieff withdrew his blank cheque,announcing that Stephen Harper’s“time was up.” I took the opportunityto negotiate with the government;Prime Minister Harper earned my cau-cus’s vote to deliver a $1-billionemployment insurance package forworkers who’d lost jobs in the reces-sion. But I lost the hammer when Mr.p went back to supporting Mr. Harper— unconditionally, once again.

After four and a half years of thispseudo-majority government, every-day life is more expensive, and thebest-connected insiders are still gettingall the breaks. The PM is more empow-ered than checked by his OfficialOpposition. He chose the darkesthours of the BP oil spill, for heaven’ssake, to weaken environmental assess-ment for offshore energy projects inCanada. Instead of pragmatic invest-ments in Canadians in this time ofgreat need, he has delivered billionsmore in tax breaks for banksand oil companies.

By rights, this shouldn’tbe possible. MinorityParliaments should be ven-ues for interplay and negoti-ation. That’s how past minorities havefunctioned. That’s how NewDemocrats helped bring in medicareand public pensions. But StephenHarper has instead been free to imple-ment an agenda that 62 percent of vot-ers rejected in the last election.

This is not what democracy is sup-posed to look like.

T his current Parliament underlinesdeep reasons why many people are

losing faith in politics. Citizens are inthe midst of a generation-long processof being taught that their Canadiangovernment can’t and shouldn’t domuch for them. Today’s do-nothingcoalition of old-line parties is a symbol-ic embodiment of that par excellence.

What’s being undermined is thevery notion that we can tackle bigissues through our collective capacitiesas Canadians. That punishing 1995budget did not simply cut vital fund-ing. It disassembled the CanadaAssistance Plan, which had encodedthe idea that Ottawa played a vital rolein achieving social equality. It disas-sembled the notion that Ottawa’s jobincludes keeping education and train-ing leading-edge and accessible, as partof building our country’s future. It dis-assembled the idea that Ottawa has aleadership role to play in modernizingpublic medicare.

The ensuing 15 years have donenothing to change Canada’s course.From time to time, we see one-off con-tracts with provinces when a crisis hits— a little homelessness funding inresponse to a tragedy, or one-off childcare deals with each province that canbe cancelled at a whim. But the federalgovernment has all but stopped advo-cating major pan-Canadian solutionson big issues that affect people’s lives.

This shift has been promoted bothby ideologues and by lobbyists and thecorporate clients they represent. Nowthose same companies are coming in

and backfilling the lost capacity, forprofit. We see an ever-expanding corpo-rate presence on our college and univer-sity campuses. We see tremendous forceapplied to open up health care servicesfor profit. We’re seeing a proliferation offor-profit, big-box child care operations.We’ve seen an increasingly privatizedtransportation system, with the sell-off

of Air Canada and Canadian National. Ottawa has withdrawn from peo-

ple’s everyday lives to the point wheremany no longer see a role for Ottawa asthe embodiment of our collective capac-ities. When people are told over andover that their government reallyshouldn’t be involved in things, theystart to lost interest — “Why bother?”It’s an ideological shift shared by old-line parties and plainclothes ideologues,and battered home daily through mediaoutlets that are increasingly concentrat-ed in the hands of a corporate elite thatshares the same perspective.

One of the most insidious of theideologues’ tactics is to demean thosewho stand for public office. Right-wingcolumnists have made careers out ofslamming politicians, whipping everyerror into an absolute frenzy of disdain,inviting citizens to wish poxes on allpolitical houses. It’s working. In anAngus Reid poll this April, barely one-quarter of Canadians could bring them-selves to say they respect politicians —down from two-thirds in 1994.

These results are tragic. When citi-zens withdraw from their democracy,powerful lobbyists and ideologues rushinto the vacuum, in greater numbers,with even more influence.

And so goes the vicious cycle.It’s time to change things up.

L et me share something from thefloor of the House of Commons: It’s

not all ugliness. Much of Parliament’swork takes place outside the theatrics ofQuestion Period. In routine debate and

committee proceedings, I still witnessthoughtfulness, cooperation and com-promise. Useful legislation and effectiveregulations are developed and passed,sometimes with unanimous support.Canadians deserve to hear about thiswork more often.

I am privileged to work with good-willed Members of Parliament on all

Jack Layton

Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system has long fuelled voterdisengagement. When a party can win all of the power with aminority of votes, people start to wonder if their votes really count.

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sides of the House. These are commit-ted public servants who sacrifice muchto stand for elected office. We can dis-agree profoundly on policy but share acommitment to building a bettercountry. It should give citizens hope toknow that many people are in this pro-fession for the right reasons.

Something else that fuels my hopeis the modern rebirth of citizen jour-nalism, as a healthy balance to mes-sages that often dominate corporate

media. Together, especially throughblogs and social media, engagedCanadians are sharing diversely con-structive perspectives on politics. It’s arefreshing counterpoint to the “pox onall their houses” defeatism that onlysours citizens on their own democracy.

I also take heart in citizen-drivenefforts to renew our democracy. In thepast five years alone, we’ve seen majorcampaigns to bring proportional repre-sentation to British Columbia, Ontarioand Prince Edward Island. While theydidn’t succeed this time, they provedthat grassroots passion for votingreform is alive and well. That samepassion bloomed in the publicresponse to Stephen Harper’s last pro-rogation. Countless Canadians con-tacted New Democrat MPs — calling,writing, stopping us on the street.Hundreds of thousands voiced theiropposition online or attended protestsin communities from coast to coast tocoast. I was struck by the number ofprotesters who told me they’d long agogiven up on politics, but felt newlymotivated to reclaim their democracy.

Turning things around in Ottawawon’t be easy. But New Democrats areready to work with citizens to build onthe energy and hope that we seeemerging. And I believe we can do it,one practical step at a time.

This spring, Parliament passed anNDP motion to limit the prime minister’sprorogation powers. We have put for-ward practical proposals to raise the bar

of decorum in the House. We continue toargue for the abolition of the Senate —because we believe it is an undemocratic,unaccountable and unnecessary checkon the people’s House. New Democratsare consistent champions of electoralreform to make every citizen’s vote countin every election.

By re-empowering the people’selected House, these reforms can help tore-engage citizens in their democracy.Taken together, they form a structure to

build on. But what we need mosturgently in this country is a refreshedrole for the federal government: A feder-al government that embodies our collec-tive capacities to look after each other.The kind of government that empow-ered us to build great things together —our national railroad, a national broad-caster, a public health care system thatwas once the envy of the world.

Emerging from recession,Canadians face historic challenges andopportunities. Middle-class living stan-dards are eroding as the gulf betweenthe rich and the rest widens. A quarterof a million seniors are living in pover-ty, and one in three Canadians willsoon be retiring with no savings.Health care services need an upgradeto accommodate our aging populationand modern medicine. Families aregrappling with chronic shortages ofchild care spaces and affordable hous-ing units. The world is waiting forCanada to do its part to head off cli-mate catastrophe, and we have deepunrealized potential to remake thiscountry as a green technology leader.

These are the kinds of challengesand opportunities that we can tacklebest by working together. That’s whyNew Democrats have introduced legis-lation is virtually all of these areas —painstakingly developed over the lastseveral years. I look forward to aCanada where citizens can expect clearvisions from all party leaders for wherewe can take this country — with a com-

mitment to move forward one practicalstep at a time.

M inority Parliaments will be rou-tine in this country for the fore-

seeable future. This should be anexciting and productive era forCanadians, but only if Parliament startsgetting it right. Opposition parties havean indispensable role to play in minori-ty situations — by representing their pri-orities in the crucible of the House with

vigour and clarity. Thatprocess will always blendforce, negotiation and com-promise. But when opposi-tion parties fail to oppose,

they kill their own leverage, leaving gov-ernments free to run roughshod. Wehave seen too much of that in our cur-rent Parliament, insulting voters andcalling into question the role of thePrime Minister’s junior partner.

I believe principled compromiseand cooperation need to deliverresults. Last year, we secured an EIextension for long-tenured workers. In2005, I worked with Prime MinisterMartin to rewrite a budget to redirectneedless corporate tax cuts into priori-ties like affordable housing, training,public transit and energy efficiency.Looking forward, we will continue toreach out to other parties inParliament, working with those whowill help move our agenda forward.

New Democrats will always be clearabout whose side we’re on. We aim topresent a pan-Canadian vision that vot-ers can engage with and hold us account-able to. My bottom line will always bethe same: getting results for voters andthe priorities they asked us to fight for.

Let’s turn a vicious cycle into ahealthy cycle. Canadians deserve to seetheir government making a positive dif-ference in their lives. When that hap-pens, we’ll see more Canadians not justtaking an interest in the federal govern-ment, but taking back ownership of theirgovernment — once again making it atool to build a better world together.

Jack Layton is leader of the NewDemocratic Party of Canada.

Jack Layton

We can disagree profoundly on policy but share a commitmentto building a better country. It should give citizens hope to knowthat many people are in this profession for the right reasons.