The political narrative about Parliament favoured by critics, analysts and commentators these days tends to be about the irrelevance of individual MPs.
Centralized control, party discipline and powerless parliamentary committees ignored by the government all add up to MPs being little more than voting machines, according to the line of argument. Pierre Trudeau’s famous clip about MPs being “nobodies” when they leave Parliament Hill now applies to the Hill as well.
In most ways, on most days, the analysis is correct.
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But these days, there is another, more hopeful development on the Hill. Some individual MPs are showing that by quiet lobbying work with other MPs, they can get private hobby horse bills and resolutions through the first crucial stage of approval-in-principle that launches a more thorough committee discussion.
Despite the often-bitter partisanship and divisions of the minority House of Commons, some bipartisan deals are possible.
On rural issues, it has been a good run for individual MPs with issues.
Last November, 20 rural Liberal and NDP MPs defied their parties to vote for a private member’s bill from rookie Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner that would abolish the long gun registry.
Committee hearings are slated to start in May and while private member’s bill votes are supposed to be free of party discipline, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff announced April 19 the Liberals will vote against it.
It will be interesting if the anti-registry opposition MPs continue to defy the party position in favour of an amended registry but whatever the outcome, Hoeppner’s bill was the first to make it through approval in principle in more than a decade of attempts to abolish the system.
Dissident NDP members still could give the bill the votes it needs to pass.
Then came the April 14 vote to send to committee a private member’s bill sponsored by New Democrat Alex Atamanenko that would require a market impact assessment before any new genetically modified seed variety is approved for sale.
The bill is unlikely to make it out of the agriculture committee intact but Atamanenko is correct to call the vote of support “historic.” It is the first time after many attempts that a proposal to inject political or economic judgment into GM licensing or to require labelling has made it through the first parliamentary hurdle.
And there was the April 16 agreement to approve a motion from rural Ontario MP Bev Shipley that Canadian regulators should more readily accept research, testing results and approval judgments by foreign governments on farm input products as long as they meet Canadian standards.
Shipley argues that Canadian farmers lose when inputs available to farmers in competitor countries have not been approved in Canada.
His motion is not binding but it won the support of Liberals and made it through the Commons.
None of these initiatives may succeed in the end or change Canadian policy. But MP efforts to have contentious issues get past tough parliamentary hurdles shows the power of skillful and hard-working MPs to make a difference.
