A Heckle to the Hecklers

At once hilarious and trenchant, a good heckle has its place. That place, however, is not in the House of Commons.

Amy Langstaff’s recent defence of (good) heckling is undoubtedly appealing. “Where there is good heckling there is substance and shared attention,” she writes. “A heckle can be a shining moment of intelligence of humanity in an otherwise full, pompous, or unfocused gathering.” And who can dispute her?

Good heckles are witty, provocative, and genuinely funny. At their best, they engage, entertain, and stimulate thoughtful discussion. They can tie up even the most confident and eloquent of speakers, leaving them so uncertain about whether it might be better to respond in kind or continue on as planned that they fall silent, appearing defeated.

Effective heckling is great entertainment, and it certainly has its place – but not in Canada’s House of Commons.

Langstaff argues that banning heckling during Question Period would not improve the quality of debate. Improve the quality of the dialogue first, she writes, and better and more appropriate heckling will follow.

At one level she is right. Certainly, it is easier to heckle effectively when you have good material to work with. Nevertheless, it is worth asking, as I did in my original article, whether the act of heckling – essentially deliberately interrupting the speech of another in order to engage (and perhaps impress) the audience with your wit – should be part of the parliamentary process at all.

If, as I contend they should be, our MPs are role models for Canadians as a whole, then why should we allow them (or, in Langstaff’s case, encourage them) to behave in a manner that would be condemned in any of our public classrooms?

How can our educators teach their students to hear out their peers and refrain from speaking out of turn if those same students can reply that they learned how to deal with conflict by observing the public conduct of their prime minister during Question Period?

Moreover, how can Canadian parents tell their children that cutting people off with the intent of poking fun at them (however thoughtfully) is inappropriate if we reward our elected representatives for acting similarly?

We should not expect parliamentary debate to be consistently exciting. Some aspects of public policy are dull, if not genuinely boring, to most, if not all of us.

It is not the job of our elected members of parliament to try to change this by making us laugh. They are paid to deliver good public policy and represent the best of what Canada has to offer both at home and abroad.

Banning heckling would not solve all of parliament’s problems. Again, Langstaff is right. What we really need is more good debate, not just less juvenile behaviour. And cynics might well argue that if we take away the right to heckle, parliamentarians who wish to be disruptive would simply find another way to do so.

Nevertheless, parliamentary discussions free of heckling would restore a degree of dignity to the political process.

Banning heckling would make it easier for high school, community college and university instructors to use CPAC as a teaching tool. It would allow Canadians whose relatives from abroad are visiting Ottawa to take them to Question Period without having to apologize for the unnecessary childlike antics that would otherwise have taken place. And it would hopefully help to restore the image of our political leaders as responsible representatives of the national good.

Those who are capable of making legitimate contributions to public policy will continue to speak freely. Those for whom parliamentary debate has typically served as a public stage for name-calling and partisan accusations, however, will say nothing at all.

No longer able to bully their way to political reward, some MPs will lose interest in federal politics; they won’t be missed. Others, however, will adjust to the new environment by raising the level of debate.

Banning heckling is about more than just the heckle; it is about restoring a modicum of decency to Canadian political culture.