Putting a Nice Face on Things

This past week there were two breaches of decorum that were (somewhat) newsworthy.

Provincial Opposition Leader Marit Styles was ejected from Queen’s Park for calling the PC government corrupt and refusing to apologize. If you watch the video, toward the end MPP Styles made the accusation of corruption, and the Speaker said “I will ask the Member to withdraw.” What the Speaker meant was that she wanted MPP Styles to withdraw her statement, which is the parliamentary way of saying “you take that back.” When she refused, she was asked to leave.

In a similar moment later that same day, Cramahe Mayor/County Councillor Mandy Martin referred to a motion brought by Cobourg Mayor/County Councillor Lucas Cleveland as “arrogant”. Councillor Cleveland took her comments as referring to him as arrogant, and as a breach of decorum, prompting Warden Ostrander to require an apology from Councillor Martin. If you watch the video, you can see Councillor Martin’s comments starting at 2:58:30. Eventually Warden Ostrander said “if you apologize, we can all move on.”

So what is decorum, why do we do it, and why does it matter?

A Veneer of Civilization

Whether you call it decorum, etiquette, manners, politeness, political correctness, or “conversational pillows”, we have a lot of (mostly) unwritten rules about the way that we behave in public and treat one another. We use words like “please,” “thank you,” and “sorry” whether we mean them or not. A lot of these rules can be traced back to class distinctions, and even codes of chivalry: we are encouraged to “act like a lady” or “behave like a gentleman,” or “be classy.” Such notions of what it means to be classy, chivalrous, or even righteous have intermingled with patriarchy (when we hold a door or pull out a chair or otherwise perform small services for a lady entirely because of her sex, or when we refuse to allow women to serve in the military for the same reason); or our daily meals, dictating what should be eaten by whom and with which piece of cutlery; or the way we engage inter-generationally, with the blanket requirement to “respect your elders” regardless of their respectability and the notion that “children should be seen, not heard”; or even with warfare, which has at times been reduced to standing in straight lines and shooting at one another because to attempt to fight more effectively would be considered underhanded or uncivilized.

Such things are the unwritten rules of a culture, and vary from culture to culture. They are not laws, and are not policed by a central authority; rather, we self-police for such things, and violations are punishable by shame. There are a few ways to classify such things:

• A norm is something we consider to be normal, the things that we assume about our society. These can change over time, which can cause social upheaval, but for the most part they allow us to make assumptions about the way other people will behave so that we can trust people enough to live alongside one another. When a norm needs to be written down as a rule it sometimes stands out to us: does there really need to be a sign that says “no shirt, no shoes, no service”? Who would walk into a store barefoot and shirtless?
• Conventions are “the way we’ve always done something,” and you might think of them as procedural norms, unwritten expectations of how a process will be carried out so that we can all get through it together. Until a generation or so ago, it was conventional to begin a council meeting with a prayer; now it’s conventional to begin the meeting with a land acknowledgement. Nobody forces us to do these things, but it’s hard to imagine a meeting starting any other way, and omitting it would be controversial even if it was accidental.
• Decorum is the style norms: the way we talk to and about each other, the way we conduct ourselves, to indicate respect and respectability.

All of these norms, conventions, and decorum are supposed to be linked back to values and virtues. The convention of land acknowledgements reflects a commitment by governments today to respect Indigenous nations and uphold our treaty obligations to them, something that has been sorely lacking in the past; the previous convention of opening a meeting with prayer was a nod to Christendom, the cultural and political dominance of Christianity in our society, and at least in theory to Christian virtues and values. The convention of opening with prayer was criticized on two counts: first, that Canada is not inherently Christian, but instead a secular state comprised of people with many different faiths and traditions; and second, that governments have not exactly upheld those Christian virtues in the past, making the practice shallow and hypocritical. The newer convention of land acknowledgements has received similar criticism: we begin each meeting verbalizing a commitment toward partnership with and respect for Indigenous nations, but have we actually changed any policies toward them? Or is a land acknowledgement just a thin veneer of virtue-signalling that covers over a system that continues to systemically oppress Indigenous people?

Parliamentary Behaviour

While norms, conventions, and decorum are unwritten elements of our culture, in our democratic system they are also written rules. Procedural by-laws at the municipal level outline exactly how a meeting is to proceed, not just in terms of the order of procedures but also in terms of the courtesies and decorum that council members must uphold. That includes that we are not allowed to speak ill of each other, make accusations or insults, or pick fights. If a member makes a statement that accuses or insults another member, they are usually given an opportunity to withdraw that statement or make an apology; if they do not, they are ejected from the meeting, and may be subject to a complaint that they have violated the council Code of Conduct. Such a complaint will go to the Integrity Commissioner, who will rule on whether or not a violation of the code has occurred, and the member of council’s pay could be docked. The province is currently working on legislation that would even allow for a councillor’s seat to be declared vacant (i.e., we could get fired by the rest of council).

The point of codifying the unwritten cultural rules that govern society is, at the very least, to help the meeting proceed smoothly without having to shame one another into compliance. But I think the commitment to a high standard of decorum is also a way of nudging us all to the things that decorum, conventions, and norms are supposed to represent: the virtues and values that we’re supposed to strive to embody in the way we treat one another. We all fail to uphold those virtues and values from time to time, and it’s helpful to have a reminder baked into everything that we do: I should treat people with respect, no matter how mad I am about something, and if I want to represent my community I should be held to a high standard in that regard.

How Thin of a Veneer?

The trouble with this system is that it continues to apply even when people have no particular regard or respect for those virtues and values. It is possible to politely say the most horrible things, just as it is possible to open a meeting with reference to almighty God or respect for Indigenous rights and then decide at that meeting to violate the humanity of the people we represent and have legal and moral obligations towards.

Or consider the cases from this week. Marit Styles has held to her position that the PC government is corrupt, which is a serious charge; the OPP is investigating, and this is not the first investigation the police have made into possible corruption by this government: the RCMP has been investigating the Greenbelt land swaps for two years now. Her comments are not without some warrant, and if it turns out to be true then we can understandably feel that she was right to say so, or at least that her offence of making an unparliamentary accusation against her colleagues was of lesser importance than actual corruption.

Councillor Martin’s comment at the County Council meeting was a little different: it did not refer to an unfinished police investigation, but rather to the tone and content of Councillor Cleveland’s motion. Councillor Cleveland described himself (starting at 2:59:20 of the video) as behaving “in a professional, collaborative, and appropriate manner,” and indeed he follows all of the rules of decorum. Councillor Martin’s comments, though, are asserting that despite that decorum his approach violates the values that are supposed to underpin that decorum.

For context, Councillor Cleveland brought a three-page motion to County Council, and asked that the agenda be amended to allow it to be considered. The size and scope of the motion are enormous: he’s calling for a complete overhaul of the Social Services department, and while his language meets all of the standards of parliamentary decorum, the content of his motion was so insulting to staff that some of them left the meeting, and Interim CAO Glenn Dees felt compelled to defend them. You can see the discussion of Councillor Cleveland’s motion starting at 2:19:30.

In such a situation, then, someone can say things so offensive that people leave the room so long as they are worded appropriately; while others who point to the disjunct between the decorum of the words and the hostility of the content are made to apologize for doing so because they did not use adequate politeness pillows to soften their statements.

Tone Matters

When someone’s etiquette doesn’t match the moment, we sometimes say that they are “tone deaf.” On the flipside, when someone insists on decorum from people who are expressing criticism or outrage we sometimes say that they are “tone policing,” putting decorum ahead of the important content of someone’s speech. The protest refrain “no justice, no peace” is about reminding people in power that the norms of a “civilized” society depend on it being a just society. But we tend to describe all of these things with the term “tone.” This is because etiquette or decorum are very similar to the way that tone of voice and body language moderate our words as part of the total package of communication; while tone of voice (harsh and loud, or quiet and gentle) might indicate emotions, decorum and etiquette indicate social things like respect and status.

Councillor Cleveland has publicly commented that his tone can be controversial. He identifies as neurodivergent, connecting this to being fidgety during meetings and seeming to be disengaged. (I don’t know that I’m neurodivergent, but anyone who has ever watched a Brighton council meeting has undoubtedly seen me disassemble and reassemble a pen, over and over again, as I listen. In case you’re wondering, I’m listening, it just helps me sit still if I have something to do with my hands.) One prominent type of neurodivergence is autism spectrum disorder, of which one aspect is a lack of awareness of tone. This can be true with written words as much as spoken words, and it’s something that we need to be conscious of: the nonverbal aspects of communication are not a universal language, and sometimes people learn them only by learning the written rules of things like parliamentary decorum in a code of conduct or procedural by-law. I don’t want to say that is the case for Councillor Cleveland, but I’m willing to acknowledge that it could be, and that he may be completely unaware of how offensive his comments are to some people. But for our purposes here, it simply illustrates that decorum, written or unwritten, doesn’t mean anything if the content of the speech doesn’t align with the values and virtues that our etiquette is supposed to embody; and it may also not mean anything at all to someone who is incapable of intuiting the social cues that such etiquette is supposed to communicate.

I don’t have a solution. I don’t think we should do away with parliamentary decorum, but I think we need to be very aware of just how toxic our politics are in spite of decorum requirements. And I think we need to do better at addressing that toxicity in ways that go deeper than the thin veneer of civility that so many so often hide behind. Because when people look at Marit Styles and say “she may or may not be right, but I’m glad she said it and stuck to her guns,” it’s a short step between that and the many people who appreciate Donald Trump because “he just says what he thinks.” Marit Styles and Donald Trump couldn’t be further apart in terms of their respect for the values and virtues that underlie our norms and conventions, but when both of them feel compelled to violate decorum in order to say what they believe to be true we end up in a situation where people from across the political spectrum favour breaking the rules, and subsequently the value for respect in politics that underlies those rules. We’re well into that dangerous territory now, and I think we need to start charting a course back toward a civility in politics that is rooted in true respect for one another rather than just tone policing.

In this case, while I don’t think I would have done any better given the situation, I do think that the conversation that needed to happen at the County Council table started but was not finished. Councillor Martin brought a serious challenge to the way that Councillor Cleveland was approaching the issue, and did so in a way that could have been taken as a rebuke to the approach; it was instead taken as a rebuke to the person. Warden Ostrander did his job of upholding parliamentary decorum, and rightly so; but the focus then turned to whether or not Councillor Martin would apologize, and so the important part of her comment was lost. I think she tried to hold onto her point through her refusal to apologize, but eventually the conversation moved on. I think the question she raised through her comment is an important one though: is this the right approach? Is this motion well-grounded? Should it even have been brought up in this way? Those are relevant questions, and County Council has the chance to revisit them on December 17th when they consider Councillor Cleveland’s motion, which was deferred to the next meeting.

No meeting is perfect, and sometimes even the rules and tools we have to help us stay focused and collaborative can get in the way of a good conversation. In such situations we must find ways to always return our focus to the matter at hand: can we deliver for our residents, and uphold a just and supportive society? What is right, ideal, or optimal on this issue? How can we collaborate better to achieve good results? Decorum, when it is grounded in real respect for one another as collaborators for our shared goals, can help us do that. But when it is a rule to be upheld in spite of hostile or disrespectful content, it can shield that content from any consequences. It takes more than a ruling from the Speaker or Warden to uphold that respect, it takes a shared commitment from all parties. I look forward to seeing that commitment in action in December.