Justin Trudeau recently stopped answering questions in the Commons from Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.

It’s a small but significant break from the unwritten protocol of the House which says party leaders always get replies from the prime minister if he’s in the Commons. Prime Minister Stephen Harper always answered May’s questions, for instance.

But for the past two months, on the infrequent occasions that May has had a chance to pose a question during question period, Trudeau has delegated to other ministers the job of replying to the Green Party leader.

It could be an oversight, of course. But it’s also a visible and highly symbolic reminder of how the old Green-Red friendship — often a source of deep annoyance to Conservatives and New Democrats — has taken some real hits in the past few months. Is Trudeau inclined to mend the frayed relationship? The signs so far point to ‘no’.

The two biggest hits go well beyond breaches of good manners in the Commons (where May and Trudeau used to sit beside each other in the distant reaches of the back benches not so long ago). With his decision to walk away from electoral reform and to approve the Trans Mountain pipeline, Trudeau in power has adopted policies at direct odds with those of his old Green Party allies.

May said last November she was willing to go to jail to protest the pipeline. When it came to Trudeau’s climbdown on electoral reform, May took it personally. “I feel more deeply shocked today by this government’s actions than any other in my adult life,” she said on Feb. 1, in the wake of Trudeau’s announcement that he wouldn’t be keeping his promise to change Canada’s voting system before 2019.

A week later, the prime minister took a question from May in the House. That was the last one to date.

This week, May released a considered, ambitious set of suggestions to change how politics is conducted in the Commons. It is her party’s constructive reply to the Liberals’ discussion paper — the same one that triggered angst and filibusters in the opposition caucuses.

One of her more eye-catching suggestions is to have the Commons sit six days a week for three weeks at a time, followed by three weeks back in the ridings for MPs. I see many advantages to this proposal. For one thing, it would cut a lot of travel time out of MPs’ schedules and ensure that the work taking place in Ottawa is not constantly being interrupted by weekend breaks for trips back to the ridings. (May also notes — as she would — that it’s more carbon-friendly.)

There are two ways to become cynical in politics. Losing makes people bitter cynics. Winning makes people smug cynics. After nearly 30 years covering politics here, I still haven’t decided which cynics are the worst. There are two ways to become cynical in politics. Losing makes people bitter cynics. Winning makes peoplecynics. After nearly 30 years covering politics here, I still haven’t decided which cynics are the worst.

That kind of schedule might also help demonstrate to citizens that MPs’ time away from the Commons is not a ‘break’, as so many persist in calling it, but the other half of a demanding job in public service. (The riding work, as I’ve written here before, may be the hardest — but also the most ‘real’ — part of the job.)

May acknowledges this widespread misperception in her proposal, arguing that a six-day work week, for three-week bursts, would more politically marketable than eliminating Friday sittings.

“No one will think MPs are shirking if we work a six-day parliamentary schedule,” May said. Displaying a good grasp of anti-elite political language, May calls her proposal “a work cycle similar to Atlantic Canada workers in Fort McMurray.”

But the really intriguing suggestions in May’s paper are all about dialling down the partisanship in the Commons — by, among other things, breaking up caucus-based seating and placing MPs in the Commons alphabetically, or by the geography of their home ridings.

When I was talking to May recently at an iPolitics Live event on democratic reform, she talked about how we’ve gotten accustomed to the idea that the Commons is supposed to be partisan theatre — a place to bray and bellow, and test out talking points and strategies for some future election.

It doesn’t have to be that way, May says. “Parliament and parliamentary strategies are controlled by the same people who control election strategies,” she said.

As the Green Party’s reform paper puts it: “I urge the House Leaders and fellow MPs to consider that the reason it is harder and harder to have a smoothly running Parliament is not our rules. It is a worsening political climate of constant electioneering.”

May assures us that this isn’t rainbow-and-unicorn thinking. She said that John Turner, as justice minister in the 1970s, would only introduce bills after informal consultations over dinner with his opposition critics. Believe it or not, debates at committee and in the Commons in the past actually revolved around making bills better, not polarizing the conversation along party lines. It really isn’t that radical an approach to making government work, May says.

May’s paper makes clear that she hasn’t given up on the dream of getting rid of Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which encourages toxic partisanship, a pervasive, winner-take-all mentality in politics and the slicing-and-dicing of the electorate into separate camps of supporters and antagonists. But, says May, if we have to keep putting up with that nonsense at election time, thanks to Trudeau walking back electoral reform, politicians could at least drop those tools between campaigns. Again, not a radical idea.

This is the point where the cynics tend to weigh in, arguing that politics is fundamentally about winners and losers and if you’re not winning, you’re whining.

Actually, there are two ways to become cynical in politics. Losing makes people bitter cynics. Winning makes people smug cynics. After nearly 30 years covering politics here, I still haven’t decided which cynics are the worst.

May doesn’t seem all that bitter about losing the electoral reform fight, or even overly troubled about getting what seems to be the back of the hand from her old friend over the past two months in QP. In fact, her proposals to fix how the Commons works seem optimistic — filled with a fond hope that politics in Ottawa could be better than it is right now.

Trudeau’s new, more distant relationship with the Green Party, on the other hand, runs the risk of looking like smug cynicism — an image it doesn’t seem wise to cultivate, given his investment in trying to be the very picture of culture change in Ottawa politics. The PM might want to get back in the habit of answering May’s questions — or, better yet, taking her reform ideas seriously.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.