Inside The Pink Palace - Ontario
Legislature Internship Essays. Graham White, editor, The Ontario Legislature Internship
Programme/The Canadian Political Science Association, Toronto, 1993, 309 pages.
In the mid 1970s the
"Trinkets" took the Ontario Legislature by storm. Not a musical
group, the Trinkets were the first band of interns who pioneered a new
partnership between provincial politicians and the academic community. They
were given that nom de guerre by a veteran Queen's Park columnist who
saw the interns within the context of a political culture which he probably
felt was expanding excessively and losing the intimacy of the men's club of
yesteryear. He labelled the interns the latest trinkets in an expansion of the
services and facilities for MPPs. Only five years earlier members were provided
with individual offices, half a secretary and a telephone. The expansion was
getting to be a bit much - more trinkets!
Patterned after the successful
internship program in the House of Commons under the auspices of the Canadian
Political Science Association, the Ontario program had several goals. For the
M.P.P. the interns would provide badly needed additional staff capacity. The
intern would see the real world of the provincial politician. The community,
particularly the academic community would learn more about the legislature and
its political denizens. The dearth of authoritative writing about the
provincial legislative assembly would be supplemented by a requirement that
each intern submit to the academic director, a paper on some aspect of the
legislature.
Inside the Pink Palace is a compilation of some of the papers
Interns prepared between 1987 and 1992. They cover the predictable field of
Ontario legislature life. The editor of the volume is the current academic
director Graham White, one of the original Trinkets. His own internship paper
remains an important chronicle of the development of the contemporary Ontario
legislature.
Remembering that the Interns are
named by the selection committee for a variety of reasons one should not expect
these papers to be doctoral dissertations. Thankfully they are not, although
some are heavy with academic theoretical debate and references which will be of
interest to political scientists. The goal of the paper is a tough one - to
illuminate an aspect of political reality from the privileged position of the
trusted fly on the wall.
The devastation wrought upon our
Parliaments by a fickle electorate brings a high turnover in the membership of
these bodies. It results in much reïnvention of the wheel by newcomers. It is
therefore not surprising that some themes have remained constant over the
years, such as the inordinate time and resources focused by both opposition and
government on preparation for the oral question period and the dependence on
the Queen's Park media to communicate party messages. The oral question period
is traditionally defended as a great democratic accountability session.
Christopher Jones describes an interesting scene from inside the NDP caucus
before that party came to power. It is one in which the leadership and the caucus
researchers dominate question period with minimal involvement by private
members who may wish to raise questions of peripheral news value or of
important local interest. The victory of partyism over the needs and interests
of local representatives is familiar in many Canadian parliamentary bodies.
Other aspects of legislature life
are new and the interns examination is a useful one. Those who feel that
members of legislatures should have a role in the scrutiny or ratification of
order-in-council appointments to government posts should read carefully the
contribution of Valerie Moore and Heather Plewes. Several Canadian
parliamentary bodies have attempted to involve themselves in the scrutiny of
political appointments or have attempted to expand their role to share the
Crown's authority to make political appointments. When parliamentarians attempt
to cross the dividing line between Crown responsibility and parliamentary
scrutiny the results are inevitably unsatisfactory.
There is a thread running though
these papers, although it is not likely intentional. It is the angst of
parliamentarians coming to grips with the parliamentary form of responsible
government in a society which is profoundly influenced by American
congressional democracy. While reading Catherine Curtis' and Gordon Wong's
comparison of the Rae NDP caucus in opposition with the Peterson government
Liberal caucus, and Gerard McDonald's assessment of the Rae government NDP
caucus I recalled one former Ottawa MP telling of his expectations after getting
elected. "I thought I would come down to Ottawa, sit in a big chair and
make decisions about how the country would be run." Canadians generally do
not know much about their parliamentary monarchic form of government. They
start, like the ex-MP, with the naïve thought that Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington is real, and a part of the Canadian fabric. In response to
dissatisfaction by their membership both the Liberal and the NDP parliamentary
groups have had to significantly restructure their caucus structures when in
government to meet the demands of the caucus for more authority over new
legislative initiatives.
Donald Figol assesses the lot of
the Parliamentary Assistant and concludes that the role in the present
administration is a marginal one. In doing so he highlights an ongoing
discussion which is taking place here and at Westminster - that the number of
parliamentarians who hold offices of Crown pay, whips, house leaders, committee
chairs, parliamentary secretaries, junior ministers, etc, has grown so large
that the natural competition between the front and back benches of the parties
which should encourage mutual performance has largely been bought off with
public money. In Ontario for over half a century members have been paid
supplementary amounts for attendance at committee meetings during periods of
parliamentary recess. While initially it was a way to fudge low parliamentary
indemnities it has now become part of the Whip's reward and punishment system,
a discipline founded on discretionary public expenditure rather than party
nominations and constituency party pressure.
Perhaps the most important paper
for current political practitioners is by Rachel Grasham who describes the
selling of the 1992 NDP budget. Several proposals for a reformed budgetary
process are currently in the market place, including one by the elite Public
Policy Forum. They focus on diminished budgetary secrecy and greater public
consultation, usually involving a parliamentary committee. Grasham reports that
the NDP have successfully used communications, marketing strategies and caucus
structures rather than parliamentary structures to satisfy members and the
public. Says Grasham, "Members firmly believed that this was a new, more
open, consultative process based on public education, in keeping with NDP
philosophy. This elevated their self-confidence as well as their confidence in
the government's future chances of success. Several MPPs commented that they
thought it was a turning point, and that for the first time, they felt that the
government had a chance of being reelected."
In less than two decades the
internship program has paid off handsomely, as this collection illustrates.
Former interns carry a legacy of insider knowledge. Sufficient time has passed
to see former interns in positions of influence in academe, business,
professional and public service, journalism, and the like. Their experience
generally brings a sympathy for the person who is prepared to serve the public
by standing for public office. Janice Duggan arrived "believing that
politicians were overpaid and under-worked and that most of their efforts were
self-interested, with reelection rather than the public interest as the crux of
their efforts." She found the opposite to be true. After an excellent
insiders description of the frustrations involved in the politics of Private
Members' Business she is left frustrated and ambivalent about the system rather
than the participants. It is a commonly held belief.
The function of the internship
program has changed. Members have many more resources at their disposal than
they did fifteen years ago. Staffing and resources for the Legislative Assembly
has grossly proliferate with the consequential ballooning of its budget. We are
entitled to ask if we are exponentially better governed, is public policy
better considered, or is it as one retired party leader responded, "I'm
afraid most of the resources get put into a longer Christmas card list".
Perhaps this is a subject for a future intern paper, and like Inside the
Pink Palace it would be worth reading.
John Holtby, Brockville, Ontario