Western Producer staff
Charlie Mayer liked to tell a story about the prayer that MPs have used for more than a century to open every day of House of Commons sittings.
It is a secret prayer, read by the Speaker before the public is allowed into the Commons and before the television cameras are turned on.
But there should be no big secret about its content, Mayer was fond of saying.
“The Speaker looks to his right (the government side), then looks to the left (the Opposition side) and prays for the country.”
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Since the new Parliament opened in January, the daily prayer has become an issue of controversy.
In reality, it was a flowery 19th century Christian prayer filled with pleas for protection of the Royal family and for the guiding hand of the Christian God in the conducting of Canadian public business.
In the new Parliament, there are Sikhs, Moslems, Christians, Jews and Hindus. Many felt the old prayer reflected a kind of white, Christian, colonial Canada that no longer exists.
A committee of MPs was set up, a new, nondenominational prayer was written and approved after a short Commons debate. It refers to “Almighty God” but leaves MPs a moment of silence to define the spirit as they chose.
Enter politics.
Separatist Bloc QuŽbecois MPs said they objected to continued references to “Her Gracious Majesty” the Queen in the prayer. They chided MPs from other parties for continuing to pay homage to symbols of another country even as they claimed to be representatives of an independent Canada.
For many Reform MPs, the new prayer was an unwelcome departure from Canada’s Christian roots. There were complaints that references to Jesus Christ should not have been removed.
The whole issue got Reform house leader Elwin Hermanson into hot water with some members of his own caucus for not warning them that a vote on the issue was slated.
In the Commons, he said the new nondenominational prayer “properly reflects the makeup and nature of Canada.”
Later, some dissatisfied Reformers complained that people from other countries came to a Christian country and should be willing to recognize that fact.
In this age of high taxes, declining government service and on the Prairies, the impending spring planting decisions, the prayer patterns of MPs hardly seems like an earth-shattering issue.
But on the other hand, it isn’t irrelevant to Canadian voters who just months ago decided to vote for the biggest upheaval in Canadian political history.
After all, politics is more than budgets, taxes, programs and elections. It also is about the people voters send to Ottawa to make laws and set rules for our society.
Debate on the Commons prayer issue offered a small glimpse of the kind of Canada some of the new MPs wish to create, or perhaps recreate.
Hermanson said our view of God and religion affects Canadians “in a very deep and meaningful way.”
And, God knows, the people trying to run the country need all the help, divine or temporal, they can get.
