Speaker Regan’s ‘naming and shaming’ approach to hecklers isn’t working

Parliamentarians will take their seats in the new House of Commons for the first time on Monday. But while the setting will be new, the soundtrack will be the same — angry, unruly and just plain loud.

Since becoming the Speaker of the House of Commons after the 2015 federal election, Geoff Regan has tried to curb the worst aspects of question period. Whenever the heckling and jeering has gotten out of hand, Regan has taken the unusual step of calling out offending MPs by name.

It’s something his predecessors were reluctant to do — but Regan has been doing it more often lately.

Centre Block, where parliamentarians have gathered since the 1920s (after the original building burned to the ground in 1916), is undergoing significant renovations that will last at least a decade. Until those renovations are completed, MPs will gather in the new House located in what used to be the inner courtyard of the West Block on Parliament Hill.

Analysis
Speaker Geoff Regan more vocal than predecessors in search of House civility

Analysis
Naming and shaming hecklers in the House of Commons

The new House of Commons was already facing some acoustic challenges. It is a cavernous space topped with a glass ceiling, surrounded by corridors from which sound can reverberate off the courtyard’s old stone walls and into the House chamber.

The acoustics are about to get worse once the main players take the stage.

There has been no noticeable decrease in heckling in the House, despite Regan’s efforts — which have increased as this current session of Parliament has dragged on.

Over the last weeks of 2015 and throughout 2016, Regan called individual MPs to order 54 times during question period. In 2017, Regan’s interventions nearly doubled to 101. And in 2018, the number of times individual MPs were named by the Speaker jumped again to 163.

That makes a grand total of 318 occasions when Regan took an MP to task for heckling in the House — almost one ‘naming and shaming’ for every sitting day. In all, 80 different MPs have been scolded by Regan.