Every constituent deserves a voice in question period

When the Manitoba legislature returned to session on Tuesday, Sept. 29, former Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba leader Obby Khan, who resigned as leader and from the party on Sept. 28, took his seat as an independent.

He joined a small group that rarely gets much attention — the members who sit outside the recognized parties. With him, there are now four.

How the legislature treats them says a lot about how seriously it takes the voters who sent them there.

Under the Rules of the Legislative Assembly, a party needs four members to be recognized.

The Liberals have one. So Cindy Lamoureux, the Liberal member for Tyndall Park, sits outside the recognized parties, just like Mark Wasyliw of Fort Garry, Bob Lagassé of Dawson Trail and now Mr. Khan of Fort Whyte. None of them has a house leader, so none of them has a seat at the table where question period is arranged.

Question period doesn’t treat them the same, and Hansard (the official record of legislative proceedings) shows it. Through the fall and into March, Ms. Lamoureux asked three questions on almost every sitting day. Mr. Wasyliw got a turn about once a week, on Wednesdays, and some weeks not at all. Mr. Lagassé, after he left the PC caucus in March, got a turn on just three days of the whole spring sitting.

I don’t say that to criticize Ms. Lamoureux. She’s earned her questions by using them well, and she should keep asking. But it isn’t reasonable for one member outside the recognized parties to ask three questions nearly every day while others, elected by the same kind of voters under the same rules, get a turn once a week or less. With a fourth member joining them, the gap only matters more.

The order of questions isn’t set by the Speaker on some principle of fairness. It’s worked out among the house leaders of the recognized parties and handed to the Speaker (Rule 29(4)).

Members outside those parties have no house leader to speak for them. That’s how an arrangement like this survives.

I know the position these members are in. I sat as an independent in the Manitoba legislature myself. You learn quickly that the rules give you real rights, on paper, and that the parties decide how you get to use them, in practise.

The people who lose out are the more than 100,000 Manitobans these four represent, about 26,000 in each constituency. A family in Fort Garry waiting for surgery, a farmer in Dawson Trail dealing with a bad permit decision, a small business owner in Fort Whyte hit by a tax change — each of them sent someone to the legislature to ask the government questions on their behalf.

How often their member gets to do that shouldn’t depend on a deal they had no part in.

Question period is the one part of the day when a government has to answer, in public, on the record, to someone who isn’t on its side. It’s the most-watched 40 minutes in Manitoba politics.

Being rationed to a question a week, or less, isn’t a small thing. It means those constituents have a representative who can make a speech but can rarely hold a minister to account.

The fix is simple, and there are two fair ways to do it. Either each of the four members outside the recognized parties gets the same access, or the questions set aside for them are shared equally in a rotation over the sitting week. Either answer is defensible. Three a day for one member and one a week for the others isn’t.

The timing is right. When the make-up of the house changes, the rules require the house leaders to tell the Speaker the new order of questions before the next sitting. Mr. Khan’s move to the independent benches triggers exactly that. The house leaders are going to redo the list anyway. They should do it fairly.

This should matter to the government, too. The NDP spent years in opposition arguing that the legislature works best when every voice can be heard. Premier Wab Kinew has a large majority and a comfortable lead in the polls.

Giving four members an equal turn costs him nothing, and doing the fair thing without being forced would earn his government some credit.

And it should matter to the official Opposition. A strong opposition isn’t only about the number of seats one party holds. It’s about how many people in the chamber are able to press the government on the issues their constituents care about.

Manitobans don’t elect parties. They elect members. The rules already treat every member outside a recognized party the same way.

The house leaders should make question period do the same.

The Hon. Steven Fletcher is a former member of Parliament, federal cabinet minister and Manitoba MLA.