Why Is Parliament Dysfunctional?

It seems to me that the current Ethics Committee hearings into the Conservative In-and-Out financing scam are a pretty good place to look for a few clues as to why Parliament is so thoroughly dysfunctional.

Fortunately for us, Maclean's writer Kady O'Malley has been liveblogging some of the goings on in session.

We already know that the party instructed its people not to show up when summoned (after all, why would a Conservative in government want to actually have government do its job?).

And then we have some of the Conservative attempts to disrupt the committee proceedings - straight out of their little handbook, no doubt:

3:53:05 PM
David Tilson is reading the names of MPs whose expense reports have not been finalized - all NDP and Liberal, that is - so I think I’ll take a moment to do a staff check.

Conservative side: three staffers and A. Hamilton
Opposition side: six staffers, apparently no legal counsel

3:54:33 PM
“We have made allegations,” says Tilson. I think it’s safe to say we all agree with him on that. He’s making rather a leap here, though - just because a report hasn’t been finalized, it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the numbers; it could be administrative, or it could be something entirely unrelated to expenses.

It’s also a bit of a stretch to claim that all these files are “under investigation”.

3:57:23 PM
This is the dullest timewaster ever - Tilson is just reading names and ridings into the record, and he goes crazy when the chair mildly suggests that he move it along. “This is my question and I’ll ask it however I want, and you’ll just sit there!”

At which point he runs out of time without ever actually getting to the question.

Gee...I wonder who in the PMO gave instructions for that little performance?

And then there's the opposition MPs who actually seem to understand how to use the wheels of procedure to move things forward constructively:

4:56:15 PM
Carole Lavallee gets the floor finally - finally - and she has a motion to introduce, but only as a warning, that would authorize the chair to go to the Speaker for a warrant, it would apply to all the no-show witnesses from the last week. She doesn’t propose debating it *now*, but wants to table it, so it can be passed if necessary. She wants these potential Speaker’s warrantees to “take the time to think about it,” and, eventually, she hopes, choose to come back. Talk to lawyers - not, she suggests Conservative Party lawyers - and make that decision.

“We are asking the Conservatives to respect this institution,” says the member whose party is, in theory, dedicated to breaking up the country. She begs the governing party to “think about the consequences” - if they care about law and order; these witnesses should be here.

Man, she really is sane, isn’t she?

Amusingly, here's a typical Conservative whine in response:

5:36:25 PM
Pierre Lemieux believes that totalitarianism is when six MPs consistently outvote five MPs, and that’s just about all there is to say about his views on parliamentary democracy.

I'm the first to admit that committee hearings are probably among the most deadly dull things one can imagine - creatures of process and quasi-legal procedures. But when the utterly pathetic behaviour of the governing party's parliamentarians is so clear, it's worth looking at as a case study of the current parliament.