In the past 10 years, there has been a steady drop in the public trust in politicians. In a recent poll, 41 per cent of respondents said they trusted the national government and 58 per cent said they did not.
This produces a net trust rating of -17. In 2004, this rating was +45. Even to a non-statistician, these figures indicate a dramatic loss of confidence.
I will suggest that one part of this disenchantment from the public is the terms of address used by politicians.
A widely used term is “honourable” with reference to members of the provincial and federal parliaments. The dictionary definition of honourable is “worthy of esteem; possessing or characterized by high principles; having or showing honesty and good moral character; fair and proper; not deserving blame or criticism.”
The thesaurus gives us “admirable, worthy, praiseworthy, moral, principled, good, respectable and upright.”
If members of parliaments want to regain the trust of the public, they should do the honourable thing and resign from office when their performance in or out of the House has been less than satisfactory.
It was painful to watch three honourable members of the Senate having to be pried out of the Red Chamber, still clutching their extended benefits, after they had been found deficient in their bookkeeping with reference to their publicly paid expenses.
Closer to home, B.C.’s former right honourable premier brought disgrace and embarrassment on Canadians by being found driving with an excess of alcohol in the blood while on holiday in Hawaii. He admitted his guilt and paid his fine. All well and good, but he did not resign his premiership. He continued in office for several more years. I could barely believe that he was subsequently appointed as Canadian High Commissioner in the U.K. with the lofty title of “Your Excellency.”
Prime ministers are entitled to the term “Right Honourable” for life.
In 1994, a former prime minister, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, sued the Canadian people for $87 million and ended up settling for just over $2 million.
This phenomenon is also present at the municipal level. Does Toronto’s buffoonish Mayor Rob Ford really deserve a title of “Your Worship”?
It will be argued that these terms of address are based on tradition going back centuries. A reasonable response is that ethical behaviour in public servants is an equally long tradition.
I suggest that these meaningless, and even misleading, titles should now be abandoned or their value re-earned.
Dr. Chris Pengilly is a family physician in Saanich.
