It's well and good to point out the apparent frustration of some MPs with the state of federal politics, as Susan Delacourt does this morning. But it's also worth noting that there are a couple of fairly clear beneficiaries of any disillusionment that's leading politically active Canadians to withdraw from Parliament or from politics generally.
Within in each party, a system of top-down control only figures to become all the more firmly entrenched if high-profile figures who have the capacity to challenge it decide not to bother. And when it comes to the parties' relative positioning, it's a government which wants to depress turnout in order to eke out a majority of seats with just over a third of the popular vote that has the most to gain if even the people at the core of our system of government send the message that it isn't worth their time or attention.
Needless to say, those consequences would figure to be the worst possible outcomes for anybody who thinks a political system can and should matter in improving the lives of citizens. So it's well worth making sure that any message about how meaningless politics might seem at the moment is accompanied with some effort to change that status quo - both by pointing out the sources of the problem, and especially by highlighting the purposes that our elected representatives should be able to serve.
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