Excerpt: Chapter 3, Partisan TeamsPolitical TeamsCanadian partisans have been referring to political teams since at least the 1940s. The party leader is presented as a team leader who presides over the parliamentary party and the extraparliamentary party. Members of non-governing parties formally constitute the opposition (i.e., opponents who resist). The word team is a euphemism for group conformity under a corporate brand and is a popular substitute for the negativity associated with party. A team philosophy papers over wounds that are slow to heal after a bitter leadership race and binds together people in conflict with one another. It also infuses a mentality of fierce polarity with opponents. Sports metaphors are common when Canadian partisans – particularly men – talk about party discipline. For example, “I look at it like a sports team. Very rarely will you have players on a hockey team or a basketball team come out and criticize the coach publicly. It may go on behind closed doors. As a political party, you're part of a team. You don't beat up on your own team in public, your own coach, your own captain. If you have those issues, they are usually dealt with in the dressing room. If it's a political party, it's usually dealt with at your caucus meeting.” [Ken McDonald, Liberal MP]“When party discipline is publicly compromised, it is a major distraction. When it breaks down, you cannot focus on public policy issues or goals that you need to focus on for re-election. You're putting pucks in your own net rather than your opponent's net.” [Political staff, name withheld]“Politics is a team sport, and if you don't want to play a team sport go and play something else. You want to form government? You want to be successful? Think you can determine what the message is? Run for leader and see how hard that is and see how, when you're the leader, what you think about the importance of communicating a unified message. Even if you win, you'll go back to having message discipline because politics is a team sport. In order to govern, you need to have unity of purpose, unity of vision. Otherwise, you won't win, and/or you won't govern very well.” [Ken Boessenkool, former political staffer] The thrust of sports comparisons is that people join a side in organized competition. Teams form rivalries with opponents who are differentiated by labels, uniform colours, and logos. Coaches advocate an offensive system and a defensive structure. Players are driven by camaraderie and a competitive will to win as they perform assigned roles and stick up for each other. Opponents are trash-talked; banter fills private locker rooms. The conduct of competitors is guided by rules and officiated by referees. Breaking the rules draws penalties or suspensions. As they go on quests, some teams congeal under a common banner, whereas others turn on their coach or one another. Not everyone agrees with equating politics with sports. Some parliamentarians believe that the caucus is more an army than a team. A less popular analogy treats frontbenchers as management and backbenchers as workers. Criticism of partisan teams is that government-side members become insignificant: “Team is code for a trained seal and synonymous with [a] team-trained seal ... If being a team player means being a trained seal and an irrelevant government backbencher, then who wants to be one? The fact is there is no team in Ottawa. When you're on the government side, power is concentrated in the hands of half a dozen people, half of whom are not elected.” [John Nunziata, former Liberal MP]“Understand that if you are going to get involved it is a team game. You will follow the team rules. If you can't follow the team rules, this level of government is not for you. It is not always what you want to say; it is what you must say. You will support the government, its policies and procedures, and the budget, because you're a team. You may think that you have a free voice. You may think that you are representing your constituents. But foremost you are representing the party. Period.” [David Wilks, former Conservative MP] There are psychological downsides to a system that organizes politicians into combative teams. The political hierarchy wants the game played to perfection. Identifying with a team makes it easier to loathe opponents, hurl insults, and communicate within echo chambers without discussing public policy. The media participate by covering politics as sporting events, ranging from anticipation of a knockout punch in a party leaders' debate to horse-race treatment of party standings in public opinion polls. The resulting game-style media stories about politicians' strategic calculations breed public distrust. Some parliamentarians – particularly women – disagree with the characterization of politics as combative sport: “I understand the concept of being a team but not a blood sport. It's incredibly problematic for democracy if we're not looking beyond our self-built fence about what we think should be done about particular issues. Political parties can take away from making good public policy when people cannot work with someone else who might have just as good an idea or a better idea. There needs to be a better balance.” [Jody Wilson-Raybould, Independent MP]“People in party politics say “get thick skin, toughen up, politics is a blood sport.” It's not a blood sport! We're there trying to help people. So why are we hurting each other in the process? I've seen a blood sport. It's people fighting in a caged octagon ring, and they come out with broken bones and bloody noses. That's not what politics is. It's about helping people. And, if we're not kind to each other in the process, then what are we doing there? Quit the illusion that you're supposed to be some kind of tough guy in a ring, and get to the work of creating policy that helps people in a bold, transformative way.” [Celina Caesar-Chavannes, former Liberal MP] Team mentalities can lead to cautious fraternizing with opponents. Some partisans brush off being seen with their counterparts from another party. They hesitate to mingle with them over food and drink. Some turn down breaking bread when abroad; some are advised where to sit in the parliamentary dining hall. In Ottawa, MPs segregate by party when they lunch together in the assigned lobby outside the chamber.Yet some parliamentarians do form strong relationships with members of opposing teams. People with formal titles find that they can sometimes build a stronger rapport with their counterparts across the aisle than with many members of their own caucus. Backbenchers can recognize the usefulness of cross-party alliances to advance a private member's bill or an amendment. Focused work on a parliamentary committee and travel are opportunities for partisans to be acquainted, says Jay Hill, a former government whip: “You can diffuse a lot of potential issues by having MPs from all parties get to know one another in a less structured way than in the House of Commons, which tends to be very adversarial,” Hill advises. “In a strange way, getting together on foreign trips and delegations lends itself to better cooperation once they get back to Ottawa and into the parliamentary cycle.” When travelling abroad, partisanship often becomes secondary to a shared Canadian identity.Excerpted with permission from Whipped: Party Discipline in Canadian Politics, by Alex Marland, 2020, UBC Press, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. For more information, go to www.ubcpress.ca