James Moore: The cynicism around floor crossings is well founded

Mike Le Couteur gauges the reaction in Ottawa following NDP MP Lori Idlout's crossing the floor to the Liberals, putting the party two seats shy of a majority.

James Moore is a former federal cabinet minister under prime minister Stephen Harper, and is a contributing columnist for CTVNews.ca.

It has been reported that this week, less than a year after being re-elected as a New Democrat member of Parliament, Lori Idlout was welcomed into the governing Liberals’ weekly caucus meeting as their newest floor-crossing recruit with chants of “Lori! Lori!”

Prime Minister Mark Carney triumphantly walked in front of assembled journalists and their cameras with Ms. Idlout by his side, proud that his caucus is on the cusp of having a majority of seats in our 343 seat Parliament.

It is understandable why. There is a bit of a sporting culture around our politics. We keep score on a near daily basis with the latest polling data showing who is up and who is down.

Seat modelling projects have members of Parliament, candidates, staffers and others quickly pinch-zooming in to see who would win which riding if an election were held today. Leadership favourable versus unfavourable numbers, provincial polling trends juxtaposed against federal ones, the obsession with status affirming data is an obnoxious constant in Canadian politics.

Real power, real consequences

But actual power — not prospective power and gossip and chatter — that’s a whole other thing. And when six of the last eight federal elections have yielded minority parliaments, the seat counts and positioning of voting alignments on Parliament Hill have great consequence. So, when four members of Parliament — three Conservative and one New Democrat — walk from the caucus into which they were elected and join the caucus against which they campaigned, the shift in the legislative balance of power is enormously important.

And the impact of tipping this Parliament from a minority to a majority isn’t just the difference between the anxiety of a minority parliament falling and triggering an election or having to manage the difficulty of not controlling committees in a minority government – where a great deal of power and influence can still be flexed.

The value of having a clear majority mandate goes beyond that, into, for example, allowing the prime minister to take risks on matters like the coming review of the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) on North American trade.

By not having to publicly respond to every sectoral reaction to possible trade demands by the Trump administration or Mexican negotiators, lest you risk losing political support from a key constituency that could spill into a parliamentary motion or protest demanding the government ‘rule out’ any compromises on a supposedly sacred policy expectation, the cushion of a majority could allow the prime minister more room to manoeuvre, stay silent, avoid comment and be politically nuanced in their approach to navigating the negotiations.

A word of advice

This is but one example, but it emphasizes that the consequence of floor-crossing MPs to bump Prime Minister Carney into a majority footing comes with real impact in the real world of governing.

So, with that in mind, a word of advice for the government: don’t strut, don’t be arrogant, and don’t turn an incredibly serious moment of becoming a majority government into partisan hackery by chanting “Lori! Lori!” because you like the feeling of embarrassing the other political teams in Parliament when an MP crosses the floor. Be better than that. Be above that.

These things matter to voters who already doubt the sincerity of members of Parliament who on one day attend a Conservative Christmas party as a Conservative MP and take proud pictures with the Conservative leader with whom they campaigned with as a Conservative candidate; and then the very next night attend the Liberal Christmas Party as a now Liberal MP with your new Liberal leader against whom you campaigned to prevent from becoming Canada’s Liberal prime minister.

To voters, this is gross. Voters don’t typically see floor crossings as some moral awakening that we are all fortunate to witness. More often than not, voters are – at best – suspicious of the whole exercise. At worst, they’re disgusted at the apparent breach of faith with voters and a set of ideals that political parties were constructed to reflect with dignity.

It would be one thing for members and supporters of Prime Minister Carney to suggest that his approach to governing, his speech in Davos at the World Economic Forum on global realignment, his push for major projects, his recent budget, or his daily habits of displayed leadership style have managed to attract new support to the government and that ‘anyone who aligns with this Prime Minister and this approach in this particular moment of Canada’s challenges is welcome to join our caucus and help us deliver for Canadians.’

That would be a substantive but humble way to put a defensible veneer on the floor-crossing MPs that we have seen and the diversity of support and candidates that he seems to be attracting.

• Tom Mulcair: Lori Idlout’s move to Liberals brings rewards to Far North

Canadians are plenty cynical about politics in general and the motives of politicians in particular – and they have plenty of well-founded reasons for their cynicisms. Stop feeding the cynics and making matters worse with partisan triumphalism around a generally unsavoury and undemocratic act.

Yes, floor-crossing is a common feature in legislatures across Canada and there have been noble and principled reasons from time to time when they occur. But voters will find the noble ones on their own and reward them. They will also find the dodgy ones in the fullness of time and either sanction the behaviour or tolerate it in the broader balance of things to consider on voting day.

But voters will have their eventual say.

Humility has its place here. For both the government and the opposition, the best course of action in the weeks ahead is to keep moving, adapt to the new parliamentary math, focus on what got you elected and what will allow your pool of potential voters to grow in the future. Opportunists will do what they will do, and voters will have the final political judgement.