Article content

OTTAWA — Remember that time a House of Commons backbencher called a government minister a “piece of shit”?

Now that man is prime minister and half of rookies elected as Justin Trudeau took government want all heckling, from which such gems sometimes emerge, to be forbidden, says a new report from Samara Canada.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Rookie MPs more likely to want heckling abolished, consider it 'a form of harassment': report Back to video

Almost half of rookies and a third of MPs overall consider heckling “a form of harassment,” and two-thirds of female members report being heckled based on their gender, the civic education charity has also found.

Visitors to House galleries could surely draw the same conclusion its report does: that heckling is a “deeply embedded” part of parliamentary culture.

Speaker Geoff Regan is rising several times a day to calmly urge order as noise from both benches dominates question period. “You’d think it was Grade Five,” he told Samara.

The Liberals, when they came into government, promised more civility. So did other parties. But today, honourable ministers still come prepared for loud booing. The rah-rahing of opposition members for their own kind reminds us of hockey parents — those hockey parents — cheering a goal.