Random Access

“Walkin’ the floor over you,
I Khan’t find an MP that is true
He’s switchin’ and crossin’
As our hearts break right in two,
Walkin’ the floor over you.”

There is something about party floor-crossing that brings out the floor-pacer, if not the beast, in all of us: the core betrayal that it epitomizes.
You don’t have to live in his riding or have voted for Wajid Khan to be angry about his decision to switch parties in the midst of a term.
It may well be, as Khan told our Managing Editor Steve Pecar in an exclusive interview Friday, that his decision to join the government benches was motivated by love of country, and was an act of patriotism over partisanship.
Patriotism trumps a lot of things but it still doesn’t trump the democratic process.
If you believe strongly that the new Conservative government has the right approach on the Middle East and Afghanistan, or foreign policy in general, that’s fine: Resign your seat, declare yourself a Tory and put your political future where your principles are.
Many people in Mississauga-Streetsville voted for Khan not out of love for him or his party, but because of their deep concerns about the approach of the Conservative Party of Canada on numerous issues. Imagine their horror at finding out, in retrospect, that their vote for Wajid Khan was a vote for Stephen Harper.
Khan is not the first to cross the floor, but he should be the last to do so without severe political consequences.
The Manitoba NDP became the first jurisdiction in Canada to propose legislation to deal with the problem last April when it moved to amend its Election Act so that there will be a price to pay for the David Emersons, Belinda Stronachs, Scott Brisons and Wajid Khans of this world.
Anyone who crosses the floor would either have to sit as an independent until the next election or resign and run in a by-election for their new party. Seems a sensible idea.
The federal NDP has tried the same gambit a couple of times, without success. Their last effort was an amendment to the Tories’ Public Accountability Act that would have automatically have forced a by-election.
When it comes to minority governments and survival, it’s all about the headcount ability and not much more.
When politicians cross the floor, it dishonours the entire process, no matter which parties and governments are involved. The guys in government today, who howled about the shame of it when they were in opposition, will shrug their shoulders and welcome a new member to caucus.
The spate of floor-crossings is symptomatic of a much bigger problem in Canadian politics: the continuing blurring of the ideological lines between the parties and the supremacy of political perception over political policy.
Maybe one of the reasons that turnouts for federal elections keep dropping is that voters are having a tough time discerning any significant differences between the parties. Figuring out what you’re really voting for is tough enough, without having to wonder if the guy you elected is going to turn out to be a poster boy, literally, for what you voted against.