We've just seen another round of tales of woe from MPs about how much pressure they face in their jobs, and the fears of their health suffering as a result of it.  We've seen the usual complaints about loss of time with family, but I am always struck when I see complaints that the things they endure as an MP wouldn't fly under any labour code in the country something that is a bit of a specious argument because they're elected officials, not employees.  But as we listen to their complaints about their workloads and the slog of marathon votes, what would parliament look like if we started to heed their suggestions?

Let us first recall that number of sitting days has already been facing a slow decline, as have the number of sitting hours in each day.  This is by no means a federal phenomenon most provincial legislatures are also sit far fewer days than they did a decade ago, which is in no small part due to further centralizing power in the premiers' offices and their staff running large swaths of the provinces with little legislative oversight.  Federally there are similarities, but sitting calendars are much less dependent on the government setting them than they are by a committee of MPs who come to an agreement on them.  That's in large part why the sitting calendars every spring are so broken up MPs want to be back in their constituencies for March break, and the week following a long weekend (which doesn't always happen), but it tends to result in a fractured schedule for the first few months of every year.

Add to that, MPs already ended evening sittings in the early 1990s as a result of demands to make their schedules more "family-friendly."  That not only led to a loss of sitting hours, but to a loss of collegiality across party lines because they stopped having dinner together three nights a week in the Parliamentary restaurant.  (Note that the lack of nearby restaurant options in that era also helped ensure they all went upstairs to the dining room rather than each scattering around the precinct and returning a couple of hours later).  Nevertheless, there was a loss of time spent being able to debate bills and motions, and we are now seeing further demands to reduce those hours with MPs looking to end Friday sittings, but not having a clear notion about where those hours would be made up, particularly if they have already stipulated that they don't want to sit later in the evenings.

So where does this leave parliament that clearly has a lot of business to get done, while MPs want to spend less time doing it?  There has been talk about creating a second debating chamber, but some MPs already wonder how they will be able to spread their existing workload to be able to not only do their committee work, meet with stakeholders and attend debates in one chamber, let alone a second one.  What's especially concerning about the creation of the second chamber is that it would likely be used for items that aren't government business, meaning extended members' statements, debating (but not voting on) private members' business which would then bottleneck in the Senate because government business still takes priority there and take-note debates on issues that MPs think are important but don't get time in the House of Commons.  That's largely a lot of extraneous work that may feel good, but doesn't actually deal with the constitutional duties of an MP when it comes to holding government to account, or scrutinizing the Estimates and Public Accounts.

In order to deal with compress timelines but the same amount of work that needs to be accomplished, one could reasonably expect that a government dealing with these constraints would feel bound to use more omnibus legislation to get measures through more than they already do.  While I wouldn't imagine there would be an appetite to pass one or two major omnibus bills per season with everything crammed into them, I also wouldn't put it past some governments given recent experience in this country particularly if we are in a hung parliament and nobody is keen to go back to the polls in any hurry.

The other option would be a push by the government, whether Liberal or Conservative, to become much more draconian in their management of the House agenda by means of time allocation in one form or another, whether it's the blunt force of successive time allocation motions for all business, like we saw under the Conservatives (particularly during the tenure of Peter Van Loan as House Leader), or whether they look to the UK and start implementing programming motions on all legislation as it is introduced (which current House Leader Bardish Chagger tried to get started on before a revolt and filibuster by the opposition forced her to back down on the idea).  In either case, it would be a tougher hand to try and manage the government's agenda, leaving fewer options for the opposition to try and push back when necessary (which would in turn lead to more stunts like the marathon voting).

While I'm sure that most people would like to ensure that MPs could have better work-life balance, and to not wind up suffering burnout as a result of their duties, there are better ways of going about it than killing Friday sittings or trying to reduce the number of days they're sitting in order to spend more time at home.  We're already managing our debates poorly, and could do a lot of things better than they are now, but we also have to remember that MPs fill unique positions in the country and shouldn't expect to treat those roles like a 9-to-5 office job.  And while we should have conversations about what MPs could do better for their own sakes, we should also remember that there are some immutable realities to the life that they signed up for, and those can't be wished away.

Photo Credit: Maclean's