Mark Holland makes a case for a more human approach to politics

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"This place needs to be more human," Government House leader Mark Holland told a House of Commons committee during highly personal testimony on Tuesday.

In a narrow sense, Holland was making a case for the continued use of the "hybrid" arrangement that Parliament adopted shortly after the pandemic upended Canada and the world in 2020. At the most acute stages of the pandemic, allowing MPs to speak and vote remotely was a matter of safety. Looking forward, an openness to virtual participation could allow MPs to better balance their democratic duties with their personal lives.

In that respect, the conversation taking place in Parliament is not unlike the discussion that many workplaces have had about remote work.

But it's also possible that everything about our politics could stand to be more human — and that part of what ails modern politics is a lack of humanity.

"I think it would really miss what I'm trying to say to think it's just about hybrid," Holland said in a follow-up interview with CBC's Rosemary Barton that airs on Sunday.

"I think that there is something broken in our discourse, there's something broken in how [MPs] treat each other ... and how we talk to each other about what we do."

Although politicians are (with rare exceptions) — human beings, and although the debates they have and the policies they enact have very real implications for very real people, politicians don't always act or seem like normal people.

That's why moments of raw humanity — such as Holland's testimony on Tuesday — are often seen as revelations. It's not for nothing that commentators sometimes talk about efforts to "humanize" a politician.

Some of this might be unavoidable — the job is necessarily performative. Politicians are expected to lead and convey messages. They are a voice for others. To some extent, they have to entertain. They face constant and unforgiving media scrutiny.

Theatrics over humanity

As Holland noted, MPs spend their weekends racing around their ridings, going from one community event to another.

In short, there are many things about the life of a politician that would not be considered "normal" by most normal people. But politicians can also be captured by their own theatrics.

Consider, for instance, question period.

"I think we're all seized with the decline in the quality of discourse, the incredibly aggressive and partisan nature in the way we question each other and interact with one another," Holland said at another point during Tuesday's committee hearing.

"... For most people watching, it doesn't appear that we're really acting like human beings, that we seem to be more interested in our partisan interest rather than the fact that we're people who are attempting to do our best."

For these and other reasons, it's easy to be cynical about politics. It's too often treated like entertainment or sport. But social media may have now reduced it to a video game — turning politicians and other voters into disembodied characters to fight or mock or get mad at.

Research in the United States has found that Republican and Democratic voters dehumanize each other. They also assume that the other side takes an even dimmer view of them.

And though there may be several forces driving the toxicity that has shown up recently in Canadian politics — including the threats and harassment directed at politicians and journalists — it's worth considering whether politicians' own disconnection and a certain lack of apparent humanity is at least partly to blame.

Perhaps what we've lacked over the last few years are forums where — unlike question period or social media— voters and their leaders can act and interact like normal people.

Discord and theatrics in politics are inevitable and, to some degree, healthy. But in the continuing conversation about the future of liberal democracy, it's worth reflecting on the value of politicians and voters seeing each other as fellow humans.