In 2014, Paul Calandra became the poster boy for the perennial problem of parliamentary dodges.

Faced with a tough grilling in question period from then-NDP leader Tom Mulcair about Canada’s military operation in Iraq, the Conservative MP responded with a non-sequitur. He spoke not about the matter of life and death at hand, but about a social media post purportedly written by an NDP staffer on the issue of Israel. Asked again about Iraq, Calandra repeated his comments on this unrelated matter.

Days later the Conservative MP offered a teary-eyed mea culpa. “Clearly, I allowed the passion and anger at something I read to get in the way of appropriately answering the question to the leader of the Opposition,” an emotional Calandra said as he “unconditionally, unreservedly” apologized to the House.

At the time, Calandra’s dodge and its fallout caused yet another fleeting re-assessment of question period including an NDP motion, eventually defeated, to change House rules to allow the Speaker to crack down on irrelevant or repetitive answers.

The Star’s analysis of a week’s worth of question periods shows Calandra’s brazen dodge is typical of this daily exercise. While outright lies were relatively infrequent over the course of the week, stretches of the truth and off-topic canned talking points offered as responses to serious questions were the norm.

In our system of Westminster democracy, question period is intended to be a venue for Parliament to hold government to account and glean information the executive may not want to reveal. In Canada, “QP” is supposed to be a key part of our parliamentary democracy.

“There’s the value. Any member in the House can get up on any day without prior notice and ask a question of the government to account for a decision, a policy, a piece of legislation,” says Robert Marleau, who worked on Parliament Hill for 32 years, including 13 as Clerk of the House of Commons.

“It’s a very, very powerful tool,” he said.

“I’ve seen the House rise to the highest level of accountability, where we are dealing with serious issues and it’s quite impressive to watch. And I’ve seen it slide into the gutter, too,” Marleau said.

Any discussion of question period very quickly shifts to the theatre that dominates the 45-minute slice of democracy that is on display each day the House sits. Scripted exchanges are the norm, interrupted by heckling and raucous partisanship. Performance trumps substance, conflict conquers collaboration and controlled messaging subsumes organic debate.

So how did question period evolve from its original intent as a spontaneous truth-seeking forum to a tightly orchestrated spectacle?

The United Kingdom’s version of question period, the model for our own, has many and very strict rules to promote serious exchange on policies and ideas. But in Canada, while rules do exist, they have never been nearly as robust.

This deficit was made worse when cameras were introduced in the chamber in 1977, said Jane Hilderman, executive director at Samara Canada, a democracy advocacy non-profit. “It became more about reaching a nightly newscast audience so it favoured pithy, short theatrical performances.

“You want to be seen with a united team behind you that stands and claps to show the force of the idea or opinion.”

Michael Chong, the Conservative MP for Wellington-Halton Hills, is a vocal critic of question period, which he says is broken. One necessary reform in his eyes is changing the rule, introduced in 1997, that capped questions and answers at 35 seconds.

“Try to give an answer in 35 seconds, you are literally punching for sound bites rather than giving substantive answers. Conversely, in asking the question, you are going for the punchy sound bite,” Chong said.

He places many of the problems partly at the feet of Speakers who have ceded “unprecedented” power to the parties. Opposition parties provide the Speaker with a list of MPs who will ask questions. And the government decides who responds.

This undermines the role of politicians, whether in the governing or opposition parties, to hold government to account and represent their constituents, not only their parties. It also undermines the important role of the Speaker.

“The Speaker is effectively a figurehead but doesn’t play any real role in question period. The real decisions are being made by the leadership of the respective parties,” Chong said.

That’s a problem because it allows a cabinet minister to sidestep questions, he said. For example, if a minister is in hot water over an issue, he or she often stays mum in question period and other ministers are allowed to answer in their place. “That’s not accountability,” Chong said.

Government House Leader Bardish Chagger says that criticisms that cabinet ministers are ducking the questions are not always fair.

“It’s not that you haven’t provided an answer. It’s that the opposition doesn’t like your answer. There come times when you are not able to provide more information,” Chagger said.

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A standing order — the playbook for parliamentary procedure and decorum — states that a Speaker facing “the conduct of a member who persists in irrelevance, or repetition, may direct the member to discontinue his or her speech.” However, that’s been interpreted to apply only to debates and not question period.

That needs to change, Chong says, so the Speaker can “compel cabinet ministers to respond and compel them to give real answers.”

Part of the Liberals’ 2015 election platform promised to make question period “more relevant” by empowering the Speaker to challenge and sanction MPs, and allowing more time for questions and answers. Chagger says the government’s commitment to “bring this place into the 21st century” remains.

“Question period is a period of time for the government to be held to account,” Chagger said in an interview. “We committed to being more accountable and we really want to ensure that we are prepared to do that.”

Former Speaker Peter Milliken echoed Chong, saying the reliance on “party lists,” the roster of MPs scheduled to speak, “dramatically” changed the nature of debate.

Milliken, who famously said it’s question period not answer period, said there’s little room in the standing orders for Speakers to compel relevant answers, or what constitutes a response in the first place.

“In taking it away from the Speaker, the whips took control of everything, not just who was asking the questions but what the questions were going to be,” he said.

“We’ve lost out on questions about constituency matters almost completely. You hardly ever hear questions on subjects like that. It’s important members get to ask those questions in the House,” Milliken said.

How those questions are asked is dictated by tradition, precedents and rules. In 1986, Speaker John Bosley laid out some principles: question period is short so use the time wisely; with Canadians watching, MPs should be on their “best possible behaviour”; while MPs may have other “purposes and ambitions,” the primary purpose must be “seeking of information” and calling the government to account.

There are some rules. For starters a question must be posed, not a statement or expression of opinion. It must relate to the administration of government. It cannot seek secret information, such as the subject of cabinet discussions. It cannot reflect on the Governor General. It cannot “create disorder.”

You can’t mention that an MP is absent from the chamber. You can’t call another MP a liar. And you most certainly can’t refer to another MP as a “piece of s--” as Justin Trudeau shouted across the aisle in 2011 to then-environment minister Peter Kent. (Trudeau apologized.)

Investigative reporters Marco Chown Oved and Brendan Kennedy were on a team of six reporters that fact-checked question period over five days. See what they thought of their findings.

Those rules don’t seem to be enough. According to Samara’s 2017 democracy audit, only about half of Canadians surveyed believed MPs did a good job of representing their constituents or of holding the government to account. Meanwhile, 63 per cent believed they represented the views of their party.

A recent poll from Nanos Research found that 65 per cent of Canadians think question period is “politically charged theatre that should be improved.”

Hilderman agrees with Chong that the solution lies in part in extending the 35 seconds allotted for questions and answers. She also advocates taking away politicians’ prepared notes to promote genuine debate.

But whatever the technical changes required, most advocates agree that if question period is to become the powerful democratic tool intended, then control will have to be wrestled from the parties and put into the hands of the Speaker and all the MPs who comprise Parliament.

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