Rather than crossing the floor, let the voters decide

Earlier this week there were rumours that a trio of Liberals was considering making that short walk across the floor of the House of Commons to sit as Tories.    This rumour was started by an official of the Conservative party and was quickly dismissed by the Liberals as mischief intended to wreak havoc within an already weakened party.    Regardless of whether there’s any truth to the rumours, the fact that the phrase “floor-crossing” surfaced again in Ottawa this week had me thinking about it and the fact it is not that unheard of in the history of Canadian politics.    Rightly or wrongly, plenty of people get upset with politicians who switch parties after they get elected. It’s understandable. In the current era of Canadian politics, most people vote for the party not the individual, so when the person who was elected suddenly switches teams in midstream, those who help get that MP elected can’t help but feel their vote was wasted.    Even though many people are angered when their MP switches parties, it still hasn’t stopped a multitude of MPs from trading parties in the history of Canadian politics.    In fact, the floor was first crossed federally when Canada was just over a year old. In September 1868, Stewart Campbell, who had been elected to the House from Nova Scotia as an Anti-Confederate, switched to the Liberal-Conservatives.    Since then there have been many people switch parties federally and provincially.        A number of people who have run for party leaderships, and lost, have later swapped parties.    After losing the first leadership race for the NDP in 1961, Saskatchewan MP Hazen Argue jumped to the Liberal party less than a year later.    Paul Hellyer ran for the Liberal leadership in 1968 and lost. In 1972 he became a Progressive Conservative and in 1976 lost the leadership of that party.     Scott Brison ran for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2003 and lost. When that party merged with the Canadian Alliance, he jumped to the Liberals and ran for that party’s leadership in 2006.    Also five Progressive Conservatives, along with one Liberal and one independent (Gilles Duceppe), shucked their previous affiliations, or lack thereof, to form the Bloc Quebecois.    Since the merger of the Alliance and the PCs in 2003, the most common swap has been between the Conservatives and the Liberals. In total, eight have swapped between the parties, with four going each way.    Many people believe that someone who switches parties should resign and run in a byelection under the new party banner instead of just changing teams in the House.    I actually think this is a good idea because of the fact the party is often more important than the candidate.    History is littered with MPs who switched parties only to be stomped by the party they left in the next general election. Also, in the cases where the MP resigns before the next election, the party he jumped to is often soundly toppled at the polls.    In the last election, there were five such ridings up for grabs.     In the three ridings where the MPs ran with their new parties, all of them — Liberal Garth Turner (formerly Conservative), Conservative Wajid Khan (formerly Liberal) and Green Blair Wilson (Liberal) — lost. Turner’s and Khan’s ridings were reclaimed by the parties they had previously won with while Wilson’s riding was won by the Tories.    The other two ridings, where the sitting MPs — David Emerson and Joe Comuzzi, who both jumped from the Grits to the Conservatives — retired, were both won by the NDP.    But there are some MPs who prove they are more than just a placeholder for their parties and take the support they’ve received with them.    In 2005, former Conservative party leadership candidate Belinda Stronach jumped to the Liberals. After winning her seat of Newmarket-Aurora as a Tory in 2004 by less than 700 votes, she won it in 2006 by close to 5,000 votes. When she did not run in 2008, the Conservatives won the seat back.    And B.C. MP Keith Martin, who was elected as a Reform party member twice and an Alliance member once, has since been elected as a Liberal three times (albeit by smaller margins than in his first three elections).    But despite the fact there have been some cases where an MP who has switched parties and survived, I think they should always give voters a chance to decide if they still like them with their new party.Jason Small can be reached at 691-1255.