Question Period is Awesome

Must See TV

I spend just about the entirety of my day surfing the web, and to break up the monotony of keystrokes and mouse clicks I have to find conversations to listen to. These conversations are almost always in the form of podcasts, where I can sort of engage in these conversations while I look at gifs of cute cats doing cute things. One day, on a whim, I decided to put Question Period on and boy was it a good decision.

For some context, Question Period takes place in the Canadian House of Commons and serves as a period where the opposition parties in the house raise their issues (and there are many) with the current party in power. Televised for roughly an hour, Question Period sees a relentless attack on the Prime Minister and his Government and it is a spectacle. Insults fly, accusations are levied and questions routinely deflected. The absolute best part of it all comes when the PM and his Cabinet are ruthlessly jeered while attempting to justify their positions.

The most recent point of contention brought up centers around a vacation Prime Minister Trudeau took which violated conflict of interest rules. In short, the PM vacationed at a property owned by a fellow that happened to be lobbying in the Government. To make matters worse this trip was taken on the Canadian public’s dime, coming to about two hundred thousand dollars.

This issue has been brought up in each of the last ten or so Question Period sessions that I’ve watched recently and the opposition has made it clear that they intend to keep bringing this issue up until the Government of Canada reimburses the public, which it seems to have no intention of doing. Regardless of what you may think of this issue, it makes for great TV. There is drama, suspense and moments of comedy only reserved for few stand-up specials.

But nobody watches it. Why is that?

This has been a question that I’ve asked myself over and over again since I found the hidden gem that is Question Period. Since the last American election it appears as though most people I know obtained an advanced degree in political science and uses Twitter as a means to show the world their thesis. At any given point I can go on my timeline and see a minimum of five separate people critiquing Donald Trump. Justin Trudeau is not afforded this same commitment. The majority of the accounts that I follow are American so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised however I am starting to see more and more of the Canadians that I know mention Trump. But when it comes to Trudeau, silence.

Now I should have prefaced this by making it clear that I don’t think that the failures of my government are nearly as severe as the recent failures of its American counterpart but at the same time it is difficult for me to understand why it seems as though my government is getting a pass.

The easy answer is that Canadian politics simply is not as sexy as American politics, which is a fair observation, especially after recent events. I mean heck, Justin Trudeau’s vacation scandal pales in comparison to Russian collusion. But every time I see Canadians talking about The States and not Canada my inner cynic tells me that these people don’t actually care and are just picking at low hanging fruit. Criticizing Donald Trump is (justifiably) easy and doesn’t take much effort, especially since he lies on the other end of the political spectrum than most of his social media critics. This political-chic, as I like to call it, allows folks to appear to be politically interested without actually paying anymore than surface level attention to issues.

Because of this I suppose its a lot more difficult to critique our Prime Minister as criticizing him doesn’t really offer any sort of social credit, at least this is the best explanation that I can come up with. But I don’t really know.

I myself would be lying if I said that I had a full grasp of all of the issues in the Canadian Government (and American Government for that matter) and because of that I choose to be quiet. Social Media has this dubious characteristic of presenting all opinions as though they all deserve equal attention, wherein which Retweets and Likes (that do not in any way speak to the degree to which we should value an opinion mind you) are the only ways to further spread someone’s sentiment. As far as I can tell, the people that I suspect of knowing the least about politics seem to be the most vocal.

My tenth grade science teacher once said that in her country (Ukraine) they had a saying — “The loudest bottle is usually the emptiest”. Nowhere does this seem to ring true with political discourse on Social Media.

I said all of that to say this. If you want to be vocal about politics on social media, please carry that same enthusiasm when actually gaining knowledge about what the actual issues are.

And for that I have a great suggestion.

Go watch Question Period.

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