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This is a really good thread, and @PhilippeLagasse is right all the way through. The only caveat I have is that many have wished throughout the years that QP be more substantive/less meatheaded; I think this is the wrong avenue for improving parliament (thread) https://twitter.com/PhilippeLagasse/status/1252393467768004608
QP is 45 minutes, general in scope and with very short questions and answers. Ministers aren't compelled to answer within their brief. It simply isn't a good forum for substantive questioning of a single policy area or current issue (very much like PMQs in the UK)...
However, the UK has other avenues to ask substantive questions - in particular departmental questions.
This should be the way Canada goes. It should develop other forms of questioning Ministers within the chamber...
This should be the way Canada goes. It should develop other forms of questioning Ministers within the chamber...
QP has real value as a general temperature check (in the same way that PMQs is really helpful to the government in forcing a scope check every week). We should do something like QP twice a week, and have more specific departmental questions about four or five times a week...
More broadly, Canada has a tendency to think that if we just improved the mechanisms we already have Parliament can improve. I tend to disagree; we should add to our arsenal, not just hope that things that haven't changed much will change if we tried hard enough.
