It is a sign of our times that MPs are turning into consumer advocates. Grocery CEOs are others are trekking to Ottawa to appear before parliamentary committees, mostly to be dumped on about high prices and the cost of living.
I first wrote about this last year in The Conversation, after the massive Rogers outage that led to Rogers executives being hauled before the industry committee to explain themselves. The hearing was largely a chance for MPs of all parties to express their outrage; the minister of industry also appeared, saying he was outraged and assured the committee he had expressed to Rogers his outrage.
At the time I was cynical. This felt right out of Yes, Minister. One of the principles of that show is that politicians love to look active in a way that gains publicity without having to make unpleasant decisions. The Rogers hearing seemed exactly that. Though actual experts also appeared, it was not much of a discussion about telecommunications regulation and policy options. But it was a high profile chance for MPs to be seen conveying the frustrations of Canadians.
Now it’s grocery CEOs that are getting roasted. The price of food is a big deal. But politicians don’t have any great solutions of their own, nor do the parties even have clearly different positions. Instead both MPs and ministers strongly agree that the companies themselves need to do something. They just are light on what that something should be.
I said above that “at the time I was cynical.” And what concerned me a year ago was how far this could go.
Parliamentary committees are not courts or judicial inquiries. They are sledgehammers. Sharon Sutherland argued years ago that committees have never been suited for serious inquiries. MPs are not disinterested judges; they are politicians competing with each other, and committees are not bound by normal legal guardrails and due process. So, Sutherland argued, committees only made a hash of things. After all, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
So while I’ve never fully agreed with Sutherland, I was concerned a year ago along the same lines as her that MPs were expanding their horizons well past oversight of government itself. Committees might start hauling all kinds of other private sector actors into hearings just to dump on them, potentially ruining reputations, compromising other processes, etc. Sure, no one cries for wealthy CEOs. But where does it end?
But I’ve rethought that, because of another example I used last summer: Hockey Canada.
The Hockey Canada hearings were about serious problems of sexual violence and oversight. Despite the seriousness of the issue, I was skeptical that committees were the appropriate venue, following Sutherland’s concern that committees just made a hash of things. It seemed as futile as the Rogers hearings.
I wrote my piece in summer 2022. But as the hearings went into the fall, and the full rot of Hockey Canada became apparent, I realized that in fact Parliament was doing something no one else could do: use its sledgehammer powers to break into a secretive organization that needed scrutiny.
The hearings revealed that Hockey Canada was at best a dumb and clueless organization that did not understand the severity and magnitude of its problems of ignoring and covering up sexual violence. But politicians sure did, and they used their special powers to push and push. Hockey Canada tried to hide behind lawyers and avoided cooperating and sharing information. But they couldn’t withstand the sledgehammer. We learned a lot of things from those parliamentary hearings, which the media and advocates could then follow up on.
So, more and more, I think the sledgehammer has its place after all. Parliament plays many roles in the Canadian parliamentary system beyond lawmaking, and a prime one is to reflect and amplify what Canadians are thinking. MPs have limited individual power. But they can do a lot collectively, with powers beyond what the media or others can achieve, and that was shown with Hockey Canada. Despite the seaminess of the issue, it was Parliament at its best.
So when MPs berate CEOs, they are in the end doing what they were elected to do, and what Canadians expect: to represent the voices of the country. It’s not MPs’ only role of course. Parliament also has to make decisions itself, not just dump on others for not making the right decisions. So while I don’t want to see MPs turn solely into consumer crusaders, I’ve rethought my earlier view. This is indeed a role for Parliament after all.
My research on parliamentary committees is supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), for which I am grateful.