Funnily enough, my view on this was cemented when Mark Carney's previous boss poached an MP from a Vancouver riding which had never elected a Conservative MP, but wound up with one anyway. People made so much noise, Stephen Harper said "this is getting old," and my immediate thought was "yeah, democracy's fucking ancient."

Every now and then there are reforms mooted at giving individual MPs more power but the trend continues to be ever-greater concentration of power in the party leader, their inner circle and comms team. It's no wonder backbenchers get bitter.

@UrbanEdm @chris

Really feel like people are mad about the wrong thing.

What you propose, those MPs banding together and raising their concerns first, is an excellent idea.

I mean, governments are generally unrepresentative because of FPTP. Then mix in some floor crossing, it doesn't represent those MP's constituents any better.

But may functions of government wouldn't work as well without parties. Who decides who is part of a committee?

But a less political government would do better job of usihg logic to govern the country instead of being influenced by lobbyists.

Untying MPs from a party would then require elected MPs to vote in the House to choose the Prime Minister, or for voters to vote for both MP and a "President".

Just a different POV on the floor-crossers, traverseurs/traverseuses.

I grew up in a riding that was fairly ProgCon, but shifted Lib as I grew older. At the federal and provincial level.

Both parties had hacks for candidates. Apart from one guy for a couple of years at the federal level, I don't think that there was one cabinet minister among them, maybe a parliamentary Seceretary to the minister without portfolio.

But the NDP. Pretty much every election, the Dippers found a guy (for it was always a man back then) who was smart, charming, and... NDP. And people would say, "shame that he's NDP, otherwise he'd win".

Even before voting age I used to think to myself, "AYFKM: you think that you're better off with a party hack?"

Add on top of that a general disrespect for the parties, and to this day I have no emotions when I learn about any floor-crosser, traverseur/traverseuse.

Im actually tired of the discussion of floor crossing. To me its a byproduct of the FPTP party system. If you get rid of FPTP in favour of a system where MPs can form coalitions around specific legislation there should be less incentive to switch parties.

The Members should have to face their constituents and voters should be the ones to decide if they’re for or against the switch.

It’s just another pathway for corruption of the democratic process.