101501 Question Period, Ottawa, ON

Back in the early Ooze* I didn’t have a whole lot of extra cash.  Oh sure, I had a wicked studio apartment and I made enough coin teaching guitar, gigging, working at the NAC, and lecturing at the university to keep food and beer in the fridge, but I was certainly happy to find my fun for free whenever I could.

I went to a lot of karaoke, free lunchtime concerts at the university, Thursday nights at the art gallery; if it seemed fun and it was free I went.  

Now, I’m not going to try and tell you that attending a sitting of the House of Commons is fun, but it’s free, and it certainly is a spectacle.  I think October 15th, 2001 was only my second time entering Canada’s Official Barrel of Laughs, and though it wasn’t my last time going to Question Period it occurs to me as I write this that my attendance record in the House has dwindled in direct proportion to the increase in wages that has come to me after years of consistent good luck. 

I guess there is something kinda fun about watching all the Members of Parliament argue back and forth.  You get a bunch of grown men and women yelling lies at each other that they know nobody in the room believes, and yet they don’t care.  Nobody cares!  The other team (yeah, they’re teams) just yells and screams over their opponent until it’s their turn to stand up and scream lies that nobody believes.  

And the funniest part is that MP’s can’t even talk to each other!  They yell at each other by proxy via the Speaker of the House.  Imagine…it’s positively Pythonesque!  And all of this while oodles of kids on school trips watch from the galleries overhead with quiet curiosity.  Hilarious!

Meanwhile, 90% of the Parliament members just ignore the whole affair and quietly put in their time doing crossword puzzles or chatting amongst themselves while pages race up and down the aisles passing notes on their behalf and refilling drinks from giant pitchers of vodka spritzer.

Come to think of it, democracy at work really can be fun!  And it’s always free!

Although I suppose when you think about the fact that pretty much everything I wrote here is 100% completely true (okay, maybe not the part about the vodka spritzer**), and that this is really how our country is run, how our laws are passed, and how major policy decisions are made here in Canada, well I guess it’s not so fun after all.

And maybe not so free either.

*”Ooze” was a term I coined to describe the decade from 2000-2009.  You know, the 00’s.  It never caught on.

**Though I’ve heard rumours that when our first Prime Minister Sir J.A.M. was enduring Question Period he used to have a water pitcher at his side filled with straight vodka.