Brosseau Brouhaha: Rights & Wrongs

MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau (Photo: ruthellenbrosseau.ndp.ca)

Let’s start with the rights. The people of Berthier-Maskinongé riding in Quebec had the right to elect who they wanted, and as long as the candidates and the voters did what they had to do within the law, no one, rightly, can force a different outcome. But just as voters had the right to choose, so do others have the right to criticize or voice concerns about their choice.

Here’s the situation: Ruth Ellen Brosseau ran as NDP candidate in Berthier-Maskinongé, a riding in which the NDP usually places fourth. She won with 40% of the vote. But no one could find Brosseau to tell her she’d won — and when she was located, it transpired she hadn’t run a campaign, had never visited the riding and spoke only limited French, the language of the majority of its population. She lived 300km away, in Gatineau, QC.

In the aftermath of this decidedly odd outcome, there have been some visceral reactions, with legitimate points and irrational claims on both sides. Let’s examine two of these: Rob Granatstein’s “NDP Makes a Mockery of Vote” at London Free Press, and Kelly Egan’s “What’s So Bad about Some Fresh Blood?” at the Ottawa Citizen.

Vacationing Barmaid Makes Big?

Granatstein is furious at the election of “an assistant pub manager at Carleton University, who doesn’t speak the language spoken by 98% of the people in her riding and spent part of the campaign in Vegas.” There is something very troubling about the assumptions behind what Granatstein chose to highlight here. Is there something particularly objectionable to being an assistant pub manager? While not having run a campaign is a startling situation for an incumbent MP to be in, does it make any difference whether she was in Vegas? There’s a nasty message that comes through very clearly here to those who’ve been following the media ruckus over Brosseau’s election: She works in a menial job (elsewhere, she’s been characterized as a “barmaid” and a “bartender”), and she parties when she should be campaigning.

Granatstein shows his hand later on in the column:

While it’s called the [House of] Commons, it typically attracts doctors, lawyers, religious leaders, champions of industry – and the NDP does have some new MPs of that pedigree to help determine the direction of our country.

Is that what this is really about? A parliament of professionals only? Possibly Granatstein needs educating here — a formal education and a high-paying job are not the only route to gaining the skills and experience an MP needs.

Of the newly elected NDP members of parliament, he writes:

This esteemed bunch includes four McGill students. Did these new MPs choose the NDP table over the World Vision one, or the safe sex display at the university job fair?

Here’s good news from the new president of McGill’s student government: “They weren’t chosen at random,” Maggie Knight told the National Post.

OK. Were they just the ones not good enough to be elected to McGill’s parliament?

Here Granatstein descends into blatant prejudice. Rather than assessing this “bunch” on their own merits, he draws attention to their age and occupation, as if those facts alone proved their unsuitability for parliament. Any sense of fair argument is lost in this kind of sneering arrogance.

Fresh Blood?

In this unnecessarily polarized debate over Brosseau, Kelly Egan complains of “the ongoing crucifixion of Ruth Ellen Broussea.” She is right to denounce personal attacks — if the outcome of the election is a problem, it’s difficult to justify pinning the blame on Brosseau. She admits she ran as a favour to the New Democrat Party after the first-choice candidate pulled out. No one ever expected her to win. Even the other parties in the riding forwent the opportunity to examine the details of her candidacy in the same mistaken belief that she didn’t have a chance.

Egan then slides into a knee-jerk defence that leaves this writer goggle-eyed, however. Here’s the kicker:

It raises, of course, another awkward question: does it even matter who your MP is, as long they remain loyal to the party favoured by the riding? What do backbenchers do, anyway, except keep an office that works on individual gripes and act as a conduit to the higher-ups? How hard is that?

Here we go from Granatstein’s notion that parliament is only for professionals to the idea that anyone can be an MP. According to this logic, there’s little point to having candidates. Let people vote for the party they want, and then the party can pick someone who’ll do what the party says, listen to fed-up constituents and report back to the people who have the real power. Easy job, right? This simplistic assessment is offensive to dozens of skilled, talented, hard-working and very effective MPs, not to mention the thousands who work equally hard as candidates yet fail to gain a seat.

The Problems

No one saw this coming. In my own riding of St Catharines, I saw the deficiencies of the local NDP candidate — but I honestly didn’t think it mattered in terms of the outcome. NDP, here? In a riding that’s only ever been Conservative and Liberal (and almost always votes with the majority of the nation)? Yet Mike Williams, NDP, came in second with 23.8 percent of the vote, leaving Liberal candidate Andrew Gill trailing in third with 20.6 percent.

My concern with Williams was that apologizing for being out of his depth was a feature of every public appearance. He did it on TV, on the web and in local debates. I didn’t mind that he was a foreman from a local factory — but it became an issue when he frequently prefaced remarks with “I’m just a factory worker” and a tone that sent the message “I have no experience, and I don’t know much.” He said explicitly that a vote for him was a vote for Layton precisely because of that. He began a public debate by apologizing for not knowing the platform well enough.

I assumed this was an exceptional case, but when the NDP steamrolled over the Bloc and Liberals to become the official opposition, it became clear this was the case in many ridings, including those who elected NDP MPs.

As for Brosseau, I find it difficult to believe her most vigorous defenders don’t see the very large problems. While the image of a hard-partying barmaid is an ugly distortion, Brosseau’s apparent ignorance of the riding and the local issues doesn’t do much to recommend her. Nor does being rusty in the language of most of her constituents.

It seems Brosseau is an extreme case. Before other parties condemn her or the NDP for this situation, it would be interesting to know how many other parties have, in 2011 and past elections, put up paper-only candidates in the expectation that they would never be able to win. We have to acknowledge the problematic situation Brosseau and the NDP are in now because of this kind of thing — but it’s useless to apportion blame to individuals if no one really gave a damn and then everyone was equally caught by surprise. I don’t think we have to attack Brosseau herself to admit she’s in a very sticky and unenviable situation, along with the riding that elected her.

There’s also the glaring issue of how and why a constituency ends up voting for the party and its leader with, presumably, little knowledge of who will be their local representative. This is a state of affairs for which all the parties must take responsibility. It’s the way campaigns are run — we’re urged to vote for Harper, Ignatieff or Layton, as if it’s a presidential race. This is a distortion of parliamentary democracy, but it’s something the nation rarely questions — and something all the parties are happy to exploit.

Of course, some people will call Brosseau and the NDP arrogant for this. But “arrogant” would be if a candidate didn’t bother campaigning because she was sure she would win. I’m not sure what I call not campaigning because you’re sure you’ll come last.

Update (May 10 2011): St Lawrence College, Kingston, says it did not award Brosseau a diploma in Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications, as her bio on the NDP website claimed. Political rivals are also alleging that her nomination papers contained fake signatures. See The Globe & Mail.