According to a new survey, 65 per cent of Canadians think question period is “politically charged theatre that should be improved.”
“Question period is a show -- I think that’s how most Canadians would describe it,” Nik Nanos, chairman of Nanos Research, told CTV Power Play on Monday. “At two out of every three saying it needs improvement, this speaks to an opportunity.”
The survey, which was commissioned by CTV and conducted by Nanos Research between Dec. 27 and 29, 2017, heard from 1,000 people across the country and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
“We asked Canadians whether they thought question period was politically charged and whether it should be improved, whether it’s an effective way to hold government to account, or whether it’s irrelevant,” Nanos said. “The top response was that it was politically charged theatre that needs to be improved.”
In the survey, 24 per cent of respondents thought that question period “is an effective way to hold government to account” while only five per cent said that it is “irrelevant.” Six per cent were unsure.
According to the House of Commons’ Compendium of Procedure, the “primary purpose of Question Period is to seek information from the Government and to call it to account for its actions.” Officially known as “Oral Questions,” it occurs each sitting day of parliament.
“As some people joke, it’s question period, but it’s not necessarily ‘answer time’ for the government,” Nanos said. “But it speaks to the fact that this is a critical part of our democracy. Every party has an interest in making this work, but when Canadians tune in and think about question period, they just think of drama and political partisanship, and they think that it needs to be improved and that it’s not good the way it is.”
Nanos said that popular perception of question period could be improved if Canada were to adopt a system similar to Britain’s parliament, where under a constitutional convention, the prime minister shows up for “Question Time” to answer MPs’ queries every Wednesday afternoon. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau generally earmarks Wednesdays to be present at question period, unless he is out of town.
“I think perhaps things like that would probably help people at least have the perception that the government is being made more accountable and can answer questions from the opposition party, which is trying to put a spotlight on all the different things that are going on,” Nanos said.
