Democracy is not a dinner party

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, left, shakes hands with Prime Minister Mark Carney before Question Period, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Sept. 15.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

David J. Murray is senior vice-president at One Persuasion Inc. and the former director of policy in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s Opposition Leader’s Office.

Every few months, a clip from Question Period circulates and Canadians cringe. Grown adults heckle. Ministers dodge. MPs shout over each other. Viewers shake their heads and say: If anyone behaved like this in my workplace, HR would step in.

That instinct is human, but it misses what Parliament is for. The House of Commons is not a boardroom. It is the only room where the people who run the government must answer, in real time, to elected opponents who want to unseat them. The friction is not a flaw of the Westminster set-up. It is the point.

The prime minister and cabinet sit in the Commons and stay in office only as long as they hold the confidence of a majority of MPs. Because the same majority writes the laws and runs the government, the only check that bites is tough public scrutiny from the opposition benches.

That work happens most visibly during Question Period in the House.

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