New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair, standing with backdrop of a sampling of his fellow caucus members and a fresh NDP sign in front of him on the lectern, told reporters Wednesday morning how happy he was to see his party putting a stop to a contentious government immigration bill at committee, via a filibuster. That bill, C-425 went completely unmentioned when, not long after that, Conservative House leader Peter Van Loan told many of the same reporters how the government had passed an “unprecedented” number of private members’ bills during the past few months.

“Never before have we seen this number of substantive Private Members Bills become law,” Van Loan told everyone before repeating the message, just to make sure everyone got it. “Again, this is a strong record of hard work and delivering results that Members of Parliament can take pride in.”

A week before the Conservative party’s policy convention in Calgary, this kind of comment is surely no mistake. The party has apparently sold all its tickets to the conference and it would be safe to assume MPs – not to mention cabinet ministers – are expecting a different sort of earful this year than at the post-2011 election gathering. Back then, with a majority secured, the party could count on unbridled support as it looked forward to implementing its most prized ideas like dismantling the long-gun registry and the Wheat Board, or cracking down on crime. Now, though?

Brent Rathgeber is why Van Loan said what he did Wednesday. And if MPs from both sides of the House are worth their salt, they will decide to make Rathgeber’s exit from the Conservative caucus more important than it already has been.

Here is why they should: Rathgeber’s decision to leave on an issue of principle attached to a well-reasoned argument is encouraging not just for the fact that it proves such a thing can happen, no matter how clamped-down we may think a political party. It was encouraging also because as he left the Conservative fold, Rathgeber expressed himself in more than a soundbite.

About an hour or so before Van Loan reassured the world that MPs in the Conservative caucus could actually play a role in the legislative process, Liberal MP and former interim party leader, Bob Rae, was telling reporters and staffers that he was officially stepping down from his seat. Someone asked Rae, one of the more skilled orators in the House, about the acrimony in the chamber. Is it nastier in there now or things just the same?

“It’s a bit of each. I don’t want to get too philosophical about it. I think things have become nastier and I think they’ve become more rote… In the old days, there were lots of insults. What we see now is about as spontaneous as the Normandy invasion,” Rae quipped. “I mean every step that’s taken, every question that’s answered is answered with an attack. It’s kind of a Haiku form of you have to answer the question, you have to do this and then you have to attack.”

Rae was a presence in Canadian politics, both provincially and federally, for decades. His first day in the House of Commons (as CPAC reminded everyone on Twitter Wednesday), was in October, 1978. Perhaps it’s difficult to pinpoint all the minor things that have changed about debate in the House since then, but something surely has. It would be ridiculous to assume otherwise. House debates don’t happen in a vacuum. How could it stay the same when so much in the rest of the world has changed? Impossible.

So, while Rae said he did not want to get philosophical about it, maybe we ought to – a little bit, anyway.

The essence of talking points is well known, but worth quickly recapping. Talking points (or the “rote” messages Rae mentioned) inherently by their nature assume is that in order to get people to pay more attention to politics, everyone has to get faster at talking about it. If you can just grab a Canadian for one quick moment, maybe you can implant enough of an idea to change their vote. So you put out an ad, you script a snappy line. That “kind of Haiku form”of responses in the House Rae described is an extension of these political commercials. And since those are somewhat effective, the goal becomes to be to make every clip, anywhere, a mini-ad.

None of this strikes us as odd. To hear information about politics delivered this way makes sense to us because it’s the same way information about anything else is delivered. And, difficult as it may be, this is what MPs have to fight back against in the House.

Dismantle Van Loan’s message further and you see that it’s not simply a reassurance to his MPs that they’re getting things done as part of the Conservative party, but, at its core, it is an endorsement of the way things are – an encouragement for continuing to operate and treat the House of Commons as they have been so far, including all the partisan advertising that stands in for substantive debate. In other words, Van Loan was saying that if MPs keep doing what they’re doing, they will have value. That’s not necessarily true at all. If what they’re doing is furthering the cause of political advertising over and above anything else – which is what happens each and every time MPs stand to read a scripted line – they are being the exact opposite of valuable, for they have then turned themselves into nothing more than cheap advertising.

And what does advertising offer us? What does it teach us about discourse?

Neil Postman once evaluated how advertising affects the way we think about politics thanks to the lessons commercials teach us over time. Commercials, he said, teach us that “short and simple messages are preferable to long and complex ones; that drama is to be preferred over exposition; that being sold solutions is better than being confronted with questions about problems.” When that becomes the normal, Postman went on, “a person who has seen one million television commercials might well believe that all political problems have fast solutions through simple measures or ought to. Or that complex language is not to be trusted, and that all problems lend themselves to theatrical expression. Or that argument is in bad taste, and leads only to an intolerable uncertainty.”

Do our MPs believe all political problems have fast solutions through simple measures? Do they believe that complex language is not to be trusted? Or that all problems lend themselves to theatrical expression? Do they believe that argument is in bad taste or that it only leads to intolerable uncertainty?

Watching MPs stand and bleat out party catchphrases into the public record, we have to assume they do. If they do not, then there is one way easy way to prove it.

The importance of Rathgeber’s exit from the Conservative fold goes beyond the superficial politics. That he left on a matter of substance, refusing all along to be downgraded from public servant to walking partisan advert, should count for something. We will wait now to see whether our MPs decide it does.